Pollard Calls for Release...of Federman

Arutz7 News - April 23, 2004

Jonathan Pollard has written an emotional appeal on behalf of Noam Federman of Hevron, whose administrative detention was recently renewed for a second six-month period. Federman is currently being held in prison without formal charges against him.

In his Op-Ed, written from a U.S. prison cell where he is into the 19th year of a life sentence for "passing classified information to an ally," Pollard declared that the imprisonment of Noam Federman without recourse to due process "calls into question the very raison d'etre of the state of Israel."

According to Pollard's broad condemnation, "The State of Israel came into being upon the ashes of the Holocaust - which witnessed the humiliation, incarceration and murder of 6 million Jews. The new state was conceived as a haven for Jews, a place where we could finally live without fear of being hunted or persecuted for our beliefs. Federman has committed no crime. He was never indicted, never tried. But he has been jailed for two successive terms in administrative detention and subjected to the harshest conditions the Israeli penal system can mete out."

"Are his religious and political convictions now reason to lock him away without charges?" asks Pollard. "To afflict him? To deprive his family of husband and father? To prevent him from earning a livelihood? To cancel all social security benefits for his wife and children - a punishment that even the families of (Israeli) Arab suicide bombers are not subjected to?"

Pollard's complete Op-Ed can be read on the IMRA web site or here.

Justice4JP Adds:

Jonathan's Op-Ed "Noam Federman - The Fight for Israel's Soul" was published first by IMRA, granting permission to reprint with attribution. Full text is available on J4JP and IMRA websites as noted above.