Pollard and Israel

Prof. Paul Eidelberg - The Jewish Press (NY) - December 30, 1999

"Jonathan Pollard may be regarded as the personification of Israel insofar as concerns the injustice to which this country has been subjected to by the Clinton Administration."

Why hasn't President Bill Clinton released Jonathan Pollard? The answer, although pathetically simple, has been obscured by many of Mr. Pollard's ardent supporters.

Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew, spied for Israel by supplying confidential military data about certain hostile Arab states, data which the US government was obliged to provide under a strategic cooperation agreement with the Jewish state. So much is fairly well-known. But having served more than fourteen years in jail, far more than other Americans who spied even for hostile states, one cannot but wonder what underlies the cruel and inhuman punishment to which Mr. Pollard has been subjected.

Jonathan Pollard may be regarded as the personification of Israel

insofar as concerns the injustice to which this country has been subjected to by the Clinton Administration.

I contend that, from an objective point of view, President Clinton is anti-Jewish. I say "objective" because, whatever be the character of Clinton's

subjective

existentially irrelevant

his actions

anti-Jewish consequences.

Let us bear in mind that Clinton has aligned his Administration with Yasir Arafat against Israel, has lionized this bloody villain, and has even hosted spokesmen of Hamas terrorists at the White House. These are objective facts from which only one solid conclusion can be drawn, that Clinton behaves like a Jew-hater. That he employs Jewish lickspittles to serve his interests is but an indication of his Machiavellian cunning.

It may be objected that Clinton's attitude toward Israel is simply amoral. He merely wants to leave office with a legacy of having brought peace to the Middle East. He hungers for a Nobel Peace Prize to obscure his nefarious deeds in the White House. But to characterize Clinton as amoral is tacitly to admit he is not on the side of justice, and it is precisely justice that has been violated by Clinton vis-a-vis Israel and Jonathan Pollard.

While it would be simply unjust to treat Israel and Arab despots on the same moral level, it is utterly wicked to side with those despots. Similarly, it is wicked to treat Jonathan Pollard, who spied for Israel, a strategic ally, more onerously than those who have spied for states like China, a potential enemy. And yet, such behavior is not only wicked. The victims of this wickedness are Jews, which makes this wickedness, objectively speaking, anti-Jewish.

I will go further. I dare say that, objectively speaking, Bill Clinton has dedicated himself to Israel's truncation and inevitable oblivion. This is the inevitable consequence of his aligning himself with evil, with Yasir Arafat and Hafez Assad. And by not releasing Jonathan Pollard, Mr. Clinton has consigned this Jewish lover of Israel to a similar fate.

The issue here is quite simple.

It is the perennial issue of good versus evil.

All the facts about the Yasir Arafat's brazen violations of the Israel-PLO Agreements are of no avail. That his cohorts teach Arab children to hate Jews and to emulate Arab suicide bombers means nothing to Mr. Clinton. This man is possessed by evil. Similarly, all the facts related to the Pollard affair, his broken plea agreement, his solitary confinement, the excessive length of his incarceration, etc., are also of no avail, not only because of the timidity of American Jewish leaders, but because evil dominates the White House.

Unfortunately, it is not "politically correct" in this era of moral relativism to speak of evil, let alone to describe the President of the United States as evil.

But it is precisely because of this silence about evil that the Jews of Israel and Jonathan Pollard have become the victims not only of moral indifference but of hatred.