The Invisible Man and the Squeaky Wheel

David Potter - IsraelInsider - June 14, 2006

If it were up to me - I would say let him go. The man has paid the price for his actions. He has done his time. The United States doesn't do anything because the government of Israel doesn't do anything.

It's like the old saying - "the squeaky wheel gets the grease."

Israel isn't squeaking enough. And until it does? Jonathan Pollard won't even be on the radar at the State Department. Not even close. He will be invisible; lost in the system. By all rights, he might as well be the invisible man. The State Department doesn't see him.

The government of Israel can only see him when it is convenient for them to do so; but he disappears again, at the slightest inkling of "pressure" from the United States. That's a code word for "blame it on the Americans, Uncle Sam will take the rap."

It's used every time the Israeli government wants to get out of doing something.

And it covers a variety of sins -- from not giving back AUV's Israel borrowed from China -- to evicting settlers. Jonathan Pollard just happens to be one of the things this excuse has been used on.

Maybe they don't want him back. Maybe Pollard had some embarrassing secrets that Israeli government officials want to hide. Or maybe the secret is that there is no secret. They simply don't care. Likely as not, Pollard supporters don't have enough votes in Israel for Israeli politicians to be concerend.

So he is not on their radar either.

But until he is on somebody's radar - at least at the political level - Jonathan Pollard is condemned to rot away in prison for the rest of his life. The walls that surround him will continue to be the boundaries of his little world; the very existance of which, is marked by borders of concrete and steel.

He will continue to be . . . the invisible man.

But time is a boundary also, as real and concrete as the walls of any prison.

It is the one constraint that confines us all, as we each mark the days of our lives. It is the one thing we all have too little of. And time is running out for Jonathan Pollard. It's running out for all of us. It's the one thing we can never get back again. And like it or not, we are all going to grow old and die.

Prison is no place to leave your ghost.

And neither is it a place to leave Jonathan Pollard.

The invisible man should be let go.

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