Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is nothing if not an expert in chutzpah. He wants Washington to release Jonathan Pollard, arrested a quarter century ago on the steps of the Israeli embassy after spying for Israel, in exchange for a freeze on West Bank settlements. Even stranger is the fact that 39 American congressmen also are urging the release of Pollard who was, well, a traitor.
Presumably peace is in Israel's interest. Israel's future as a democratic Jewish state is threatened by its militarized occupation of the Palestinian territories. Why then should the U.S. government have to release someone who spied on the U.S. government for Israel to induce Israel to seek peace?
Some advocates of Pollard's release contend that the damage from his activities was exaggerated and his sentence was unduly harsh. Perhaps, though it ill behooves the Israeli government to make this case. After all, Israel maintains arbitrary restrictions on Mordechai Vanunu 24 years after he was kidnapped by Mossad agents and returned to Israel for trial after exposing the details of Israel's nuclear program.
But Vanunu's plight suggests an obvious deal. Israeli officials, so solicitous of Pollard's welfare, should show equal concern for that of Vanunu. The U.S. and Israeli governments should do a trade akin to the hoary spy swaps between Washington and Moscow. Send Pollard to Israel. In return, Israel should allow Vanunu to emigrate to wherever he wishes.
Jonathan Pollard spied for Israel for money. He claimed he also did so out of loyalty to Israel. Although he was arrested attempting to enter the Israeli embassy, the Israeli government disclaimed any responsibility for his actions, claiming his was a rogue operation. Israeli officials later admitted their role and sought his release.
Mordechai Vanunu was a Sephardic Jew whose family immigrated to Israel from Morocco. He went to work at Israel's undeclared Dimona nuclear plant -- the sign outside declared it to be a "textile" factory. He gradually grew disillusioned with Israel's secret nuclear program, thought to have produced 150 to 200 atomic bombs, and surreptitiously took photos of the plant. He immigrated to Australia, converted to Christianity, and traveled to Great Britain after meeting a journalist for the Sunday Times who was interested in his story.
Vanunu's account made the paper's front page, but a Mossad agent convinced him to join her in Rome, from which he was kidnapped, drugged, and returned to Israel. Shimon Peres, usually seen as a liberal peacenik, apparently insisted on Vanunu's seizure.
Vanunu was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He spent the first 11 and a half years in solitary confinement. Although formally released in 2004, he remains in a form of prison: barred from leaving the country, approaching foreign embassies, talking to journalists, owning a cell phone, or even using a computer. Ironically, these rules are part of the 1945 British Mandate State of Emergency Regulations -- imposed by the British colonial overlords ousted to create the state of Israel.
Since then Vanunu has been periodically threatened, arrested, convicted, placed under house arrest, sentenced to community service, and imprisoned for violating the terms of his parole. In October the Israeli Supreme Court denied his appeal to be released from these restrictions and allowed to leave the country.
Vanunu has become an international cause célèbre, regularly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, termed a "prisoner of conscience" by Amnesty International, and awarded the Carl von Ossietzky Medal, named after the renowned German pacifist murdered by the Nazis. Nevertheless, Israel, the Mideast's regional superpower, claims to be afraid of Vanunu.
The justification for maintaining his informal imprisonment is that he might share more nuclear secrets. However, he gave away the big story in 1986 and any other information likely is badly outdated. As he put is, "I am not harming Israel. I am not interested in Israel."
While he could be expected to say that, a decade ago Ray Kidder, a nuclear scientist at America's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, observed: "On the basis of this research and my own professional experience, I am ready to challenge any official assertion that Mr. Vanunu possesses any technical nuclear information not already made public."
Knowledgeable Israelis also dismiss the claim that Vanunu remains a security risk. For instance, retired brigadier-general Uzi Eilam, who ran the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission between 1976 and 1986, said "I don't think he has significant things to reveal now." Eilam urged Vanunu's release.
The better explanation for the continuing restrictions is simple spite. Despite Israel's vaunted reputation for security, Vanunu shot two rolls of photos of the Dimona plant. Despite Israel's calculated public subterfuge, Vanunu demonstrated that everything Israel's leaders had said about their nuclear capabilities was a lie. The Israeli government does not forgive and forget.
Ironically, it is hard to discern any international harm done Israel by Vanunu's revelations. After all, Israel was widely believed to have nuclear weapons. Uzi Eilam even argued that Vanunu "served the regime because his revelations helped Tel Aviv intimidate others."
Now would be a good time for both America and Israel to turn their backs on the past. Pollard's sentence was abnormally heavy; Vanunu's post-imprisonment restrictions are unreasonably onerous. Neither figure poses a security threat to anyone.
A swap would be good in another sense. Pollard wants to go to Israel. Vanunu wants to go to America.
The latter explained: "I would like to move to the United States. I have adopted parents in Minnesota. I have many, many friends in the United States, who used to write to me and send me letters and cards for many years during eighteen years. I read a lot of your history of United States and am very appreciative of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. freedom."
The U.S. should not have to release Pollard to reward Israel for making peace. Peace should be its own reward. Palestinians understandably see ongoing settlement activity as a further attempt to colonize the West Bank and thereby impede Palestinian statehood. Expecting the Palestinian Authority to negotiate without a settlement freeze is expecting the PA to risk political suicide.
But Washington should offer to swap Jonathan Pollard for Mordechai Vanunu. Indeed, who better symbolizes the president's desire for a nuclear-free world? Mordechai Vanunu has suffered enough for a crime which did Israeli security no harm. It is time for Israel to return his freedom.
Israel has yet to allow International Inspectors into the aged Dimona plant, which is leaking and endangering the health of its own citizens.
Dr. Avner Cohen, author of "The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb" told Haaretz, that in a late-1969 meeting between Golda Meir and Nixon, "the United States and most of the Western world agreed to accept Israel's special nuclear status. In other words, Israel did not join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but it received special status, and pressure was not exerted on it with regard to this topic. Ambiguity is the Israeli-American policy. Without the West's agreement, there would be no ambiguity."
http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1881&Itemid=239
Anyone know where we can get that list? Very important information.
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1894&Itemid=239
I appreciate the efforts, though.
Gary L. Ackerman (D-NY)
Robert E. Andrews (D-NJ)
Shelley Berkley (D-NV)
Robert A. Brady (D-PA)
Danny Davis (D-IL)
Theodore E. Deutsch (D-FL)
Eliot L. Engel (D-NY)
John J. Hall (D-NY)
James A. Himes (D-CT)
Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY)
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)
Patrick J. Kennedy (D-RI)
John Lewis (D-GA)
Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY)
Michael E. McMahon (D-NY)
Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY)
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC)
John W. Olver (D-MA)
Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ)
Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ)
Donald M. Payne (D-NJ)
Charles B. Rangel (D-NY)
Laura Richardson (D-CA)
Janice D. Schakowsky (D-IL)
Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D-VA)
Brad Sherman (D-CA)
Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS)
Edolphus Towns (D-NY)
Niki Tsongas (D-MA)
Henry A. Waxman (D-CA)
Anthony Weiner (D-NY)
Youtube @ http://www.youtube.com/user/vanunuvmjc?feature=mhum
His site is http://www.vanunu.com/
Learn even more BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu's FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker @ http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Pollard should not be released.
Ever....
(Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-korb-pollard-20101028,0,4270309.story
DREAM ON, Tzipora..if you prefer to support Israel over the US then why are you living here?....the damage that Pollard did CONTINUES to keep the US security in jeopardy...
The stolen 1 MILLION of TOP SECRET docs & manuals then so enraged the SecDef that he wrote a 46 page letter to the JUDGE. That doc remains classified as well. No spy, let alone dual citizen TRAITOR has ever stolen so many critical documents...he did it by stealth since Pollard had been denied CIA clearance & never achieved TS clearance. He did it for MONEY...What would make you comprehend what Loyalty to one's country means?
The former U.S. naval intelligence analyst has already served far too long for giving classified information to Israel.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-korb-pollard-20101028,0,4270309.story
2) Listen to former CIA chief James Wollsey:
http://www.freepollard.org/5767/shvat/pollard-woolsy.mp3
3) see Comparative Sentences:
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/sentences.htm
Now talk!
2) enjoy your stay in israel
3) vanunu and pollard should be released after spending 2 weeks in confinement together hopefully the peaceful one will prevail
Anyway, You must agree that Pollard should be free because he served enough for the crime he did. Others who did the sam thing for other contries had only 2-4 years in jail!
Over 100 Mossad spies busted posing as art students penetrated the DOD. We need to dump these guys and fast
"It has been more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with passing secrets to Israel. Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and is serving a life sentence. At first, Israeli leaders claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but later took responsibility for his work. Now Fox News has learned some U.S. investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the U.S., who may have known things they didn't tell us before September 11. Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron has details in the first of a four-part series."
Cameron reported, "Since September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States. There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are 'tie-ins'..."
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1420&Itemid=224
Unless you happen to be in the US Navy, I supppose.
What about the USS Liberty did that ot happen ?
During Vanunu's closed door trial, Defense witness and the Sunday Times journalist who broke Vanunu's story, Peter Hounam, testified that "We did not pay him money, but only covered his expenses... Money did not motivate him."
Sunday Times journalist Wendy Robbins wrote, "Mordechai never asked for nor received a single penny for his information... he blurted out the whole tale without first setting out any financial preconditions. Mordechai got nothing out of the whole episode. He never `sold' Israel's secrets -- he told them."
Vanunu told me, "All the secrets I had were published in 1989 in an important book, by [Nuclear Physicist] Frank Barnaby, The Invisible Bomb: Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East."
Barnaby testified, "I found Vanunu very straightforward about his motives for violating Israel's secrecy laws he explained to me that he believed that both the Israeli and the world public had the right to know about the information he passed on. He seemed to me to be acting ideologically.
"Israel's political leaders have, he said, consistently lied about Israel's nuclear-weapons programme and he found this unacceptable in a democracy. The knowledge that Vanunu had about Isreal's nuclear weapons, about the operations at Dimona, and about security at Dimona could not be of any use to anyone today. He left Dimona in October 1985..."
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1517&Itemid=227
I began a series of interviews with him in 2005. Vanunu told me then:
“When I became the spy for the world, I did it all for the people of the world. If governments do not report the truth, and if the media does not report the truth, then all we can do is follow our consciences. Daniel Ellsberg did, the woman from Enron did, and I did..."
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=940&Itemid=201
President Clinton responded with a public statement expressing concern for Vanunu and the need for Israel and other non-parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to adhere to it and accept IAEA safeguards, but ever since the silence has been deafening.
On 24 April 2004-3 days after Vanunu was released from 18 years in a windowless tomb sized cell jail for telling the truth about Israel's clandestine seven story underground WMD Program in the Negev, Uri Avnery wrote:
"Everybody understands that he has no more secrets. What can a technician know after 18 years in jail, during which technology has advanced with giant steps?
"But gradually it becomes clear what the security establishment is really afraid of. Vanunu is in a position to expose the close partnership with the United States in the development of Israel's nuclear armaments.
"This worries Washington so much, that the man responsible in the State Department for 'arms control', Under-Secretary John Bolton, has come to Israel in person for the occasion. Vanunu, it appears, can cause severe damage to the mighty super-power.
"Americans are full partners in Israel's nuclear arms program..."
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1733&Itemid=233
how do you think we got to this place? apologist aren't worthy?