When the United States frees convicted spy Jonathan Pollard in November, many in Israel will celebrate the moment for which they have fought and hoped. What Pollard’s release won’t do, officials and analysts say, is make most Israelis feel any better about the nuclear deal with Iran.
Pollard, who was convicted in 1985 of sending classified information to Israel while working at the U.S. Department of Defense, will be released on parole in November, the Associated Press reported July 28. A July 24 report in the Wall Street Journal quoted U.S. officials as saying they hoped the release would help smooth relations with Israel, though the White House and Israeli government have since denied that the two issues are linked.
Relations between Israel and the United States have been particularly fraught in recent weeks following the nuclear deal reached July 14 between Iran and the major powers led by the United States. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been one of the deal’s most vocal opponents.
“It could be because there’s a desire to send a signal to the Israeli public or the Jewish community here that whatever the differences between the president and the prime minister, there are other issues that are simply not going to be affected by” the Iran deal, said Dennis Ross, a former Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiator.
But the notion that releasing Pollard will soften Israeli opposition to the nuclear agreement is “insulting,” said Zionist Union lawmaker Nachman Shai, who chairs the Knesset caucus to free Pollard.
“It’s an attempt to use his release, it seems, to advance other issues that don’t have to do with it, like the agreement with Iran,” said Shai, a member of the opposition in the Knesset. “It’s a wretched thought. It doesn’t take into account that you can’t buy the Israeli public with these tools. That won’t work. Israelis understand — they know it’s not connected.”
This week, Jewish groups were quick to applaud the news of Pollard’s upcoming release.
“We have long sought this decision and we believe this action is long overdue with Pollard serving a longer sentence than anyone charged with a comparable crime,” the leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, chairman Stephen Greenberg and CEO Malcolm Hoenlein, said in a statement July 28. “We are grateful that he will soon have the opportunity to rebuild his life with his wife and address his medical concerns.”
Pollard’s prospective release has been unsuccessfully used as a chit in U.S.-Israel relations at least twice, according to Israeli and international reports. President Bill Clinton reportedly offered Pollard’s release in 1998 in exchange for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians. His release was again floated last year as part of a failed last-ditch effort to save Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
But while releasing Pollard may have helped soften right-wing opposition to a peace deal, it will not reduce opposition to the Iran deal, which has united right- and left-wing Israelis.
“You’ve had different Israeli governments, in the context of moving on peace, that saw the benefit of trying to defuse right-wing opposition to certain moves,” Ross said. “This is something different because Iran is seen in existential terms, so I don’t think you can draw much of a connection between the two.”
Chuck Freilich, a former deputy Israeli national security adviser, said that connecting Pollard’s freedom to disputes between the United States and Israel could have made U.S. intelligence officials less inclined to endorse his release.
“From an American perspective, the man was convicted of treason,” Freilich said. “We’ve tried to link it to all sorts of issues over the years, and each time it was the U.S. intelligence community that stepped in and said no. They don’t want Israel to be compensated for a traitor.”
In the three decades since Pollard, now 60, has been behind bars, campaigning for his release has become a rare consensus issue in Israel. In 2013, 100 of the 120 members of Israel’s Knesset signed a letter calling for his freedom. Ronen Bergman, an analyst who’s finishing a book on Israel’s intelligence agencies, said Israelis view Pollard as they would a prisoner of war.
“From his point of view, he was trying to help Israelis,” Bergman said. “He was [put] in jail, so he’s a POW.”
Pollard’s release gained urgency in Israel as he served more time, in part because his health has deteriorated. Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, told a conference of Israeli settlers last month that former Israeli President Shimon Peres, while in office, would raise Pollard’s case at the start of every meeting with President Barack Obama.
“In my opinion it’s an open wound between us and the Americans,” Oren told the conference. “I worked without end to free him. I’m sorry, and not proud to say, I didn’t succeed.”
Next up for Pollard: Can he move to Israel?
ron kampeas | jta
President Obama will not alter the terms of Jonathan Pollard’s parole once he is released, a signal that Israel’s struggle to bring him to the country whose citizenship he has assumed will outlast his November release date.
“Mr. Pollard will serve his sentence as mandated by statute for the very serious crimes he committed,” Alistair Baskey, a National Security Council spokesman, said in a statement emailed to JTA. “The president has no intention of altering the terms of Mr. Pollard’s parole.”
It is not clear what, if any, parole terms may be imposed on the convicted Israeli spy upon his Nov. 20 release after serving 30 years in a federal prison. Pollard’s lawyers in a statement July 28 said that Pollard would be required to remain in the United States for five years. Within minutes, however, attorneys Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman issued a corrected release removing that sentence. It read: “President Obama, who has the constitutional power of executive clemency, has the authority to release Mr. Pollard before November 21, 2015, as well as the authority to allow Mr. Pollard to leave the United States and move to Israel immediately.”
Pollard’s lawyers have secured lodging and employment for him in the New York area once he is released.
Israeli officials and U.S. advocacy groups for years have called for Pollard’s release. The hope is that he would immediately move to Israel.
A number of Israeli officials rushed to express their desire to greet him on his arrival in Israel, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was cautious, stopping short of anticipating his arrival in Israel. In a short statement he released after speaking with Pollard’s wife, Esther, Netanyahu said, “After decades of effort, Jonathan Pollard will finally be released. Throughout his time in prison, I consistently raised the issue of his release in my meetings and conversations with the leadership of successive U.S. administrations. We are looking forward to his release.”
Pollard was granted Israeli citizenship in 1995, in part because he hoped to travel to Israel as soon as he was released.
Among those criticizing Pollard’s release was Donald Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, who on July 28 revealed that he advised President George W. Bush to “forcefully” refuse Israeli entreaties to free Pollard.
Rumsfeld, Bush’s defense secretary from 2001 to 2006, posted a letter on Twitter that he wrote to Bush in March 2001, ahead of a visit by Israeli officials early in Bush’s presidency.
“Releasing Pollard was a bad idea in 1998 & 2001,” Rumsfeld said in his tweet. “It is not a better idea today.”