Israel Matzav: American Jewish leadership recognizing Pollard injustice?

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

American Jewish leadership recognizing Pollard injustice?

Is the mainstream American Jewish leadership finally recognizing that an injustice has been and is being done to Jonathan Pollard and that the cause is plain old anti-Semitism? Consider this from Tablet Magazine.

Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League said he had come to conclude—after years of thinking otherwise—that Pollard’s continued imprisonment does imply prejudice at work:

When the Jonathan Pollard affair surfaced 28 years ago, there were claims by some that the sentencing of Pollard, life imprisonment, was tinged with anti-Semitism. We at the Anti-Defamation League took that charge seriously, made our own investigation, and concluded there was no basis for such an accusation.

I bring that up now because as the years pass and the world has changed many times over, and with more and more prominent Americans, including individuals from the intelligence community, saying “enough already,” Pollard remains in prison.

Pleas for his parole are raised on a regular basis, but go unheeded. The whole thing at this late date makes no sense. There surely is no information that Pollard possesses after all these years that can be harmful to American interests. The fact that Pollard shared information with an ally—Israel—was no reason for him not to be punished. But after this long imprisonment, the fact that it was such a close ally who received his information should have influenced a positive response when the subject of parole arose.

I am not one to equate what Pollard did, to betray his country, to the recent revelations that the United States has been spying on top Israeli leaders. Here too, however, these revelations add further context to the absurdity of the ongoing vendetta against this one man.

Yes, I use that word because that’s what it seems like at this point. If it were only a vendetta against one individual it would be bad enough. But it has now become one against the American Jewish community.

In effect, the continuing imprisonment of this person long after he should have been paroled on humanitarian grounds can only be read as an effort to intimidate American Jews. And, it is an intimidation that can only be based on an anti-Semitic stereotype about the Jewish community, one that we have seen confirmed in our public opinion polls over the years, the belief that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their own country, the United States.

In other words, the underlying concept which fuels the ongoing Pollard incarceration is the notion that he is only the tip of the iceberg in the community. So Pollard stays in prison as a message to American Jews: don’t even think about doing what he did.

I come to this conclusion with much sorrow and, as noted, as someone who resisted efforts early on to connect the Pollard affair to anti-Semitism. It is harder and harder to do so any longer.

I don't think Foxman could have written that even a year ago. And I don't think he has ever written anything truer. If only his fellow mainstream leaders - who were invited to but did not respond to Tablet's editorial calling for Pollard's release - would follow his lead.

Labels: Abe Foxman, American Jewish leadership, anti-Semitism, dual loyalty, Jonathan Pollard