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On July 13 of this year, the municipal government of Jerusalem honored one of Israel’s most popular national heroes, a man who had suffered and sacrificed his all for the Jewish state, and is recognized by practically everyone as not only a hero but a modern exemplar of Zionist virtue. As evening fell, lights illuminating the walls of the Old City were dimmed “as a gesture of solidarity with convicted spy Jonathan Pollard,” reported Ha’aretz. “As part of Tuesday’s event, a special message calling upon US President Barack Obama to release Pollard will be projected onto the darkened city walls.” July 13 marked the 9,000th day of his incarceration.
Yes, in Israel they’re counting the days until this traitor is released, and their message – hand the traitor over – is now being projected by Israeli negotiators, who are pressing the US for Pollard’s release in exchange for yet another temporary halt to their aggressive “settlement” building campaign. The settlements have become a big sticking point obstructing the peace process, with unelected Palestinian “President” Mahmoud Abbas threatening to walk if the Israelis don’t lay off.
This illustrates what I call the Pollard principle: whenever there’s a showdown between the US and Israel, a difficult negotiation involving some concession the hard-headed Israelis refuse to budge on, the Israeli side always raises the Pollard issue. It was raised during the Wye negotiations, and Bill Clinton toyed with the idea until then CIA chief George Tenet and a whole raft of intelligence and military officials threatened to resign in protest.
The enormity of Pollard’s crime is largely forgotten, today, but several former US government officials have testified to it, including Caspar Weinberger, who wrote in a 46-page memorandum detailing the damage done by Pollard’s treason:
“It is difficult for me, even in the so-called ‘year of the spy,’ to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant in the view of the breadth, the critical importance to the U.S., and the high sensitivity of the information he sold to Israel.”
Seymour Hersh got the goods on Pollard in a 1999 New Yorker piece in which he reports two schools of thought within the intelligence community on the Pollard case: those who believe “the Israelis repackaged much of Pollard’s material and provided it to the Soviet Union in exchange for continued Soviet permission for Jews to emigrate to Israel,” and those who “go further,” and point out that a great deal of Pollard’s thievery – directed, as it was, by his Israeli handlers – involved information valuable only to the Soviets.
This suggests active Israeli-Soviet collusion, a case made by CIA director William J. Casey, who, reports Hersh, “stunned one of his station chiefs by suddenly complaining about the Israelis breaking the ‘ground rules.’ The issue arose when Casey urged increased monitoring of the Israelis during an otherwise routine visit, I was told by the station chief, who is now retired. ‘He asked if I knew anything about the Pollard case,’ the station chief recalled, and he said that Casey had added, ‘For your information, the Israelis used Pollard to obtain our attack plan against the U.S.S.R. all of it. The coordinates, the firing locations, the sequences. And for guess who? The Soviets.’ Casey had then explained that the Israelis had traded the Pollard data for Soviet emigres. ‘How’s that for cheating?’ he had asked.”
Cheating – and chutzpah: that just about sums up the Israeli perspective in a phrase, with the latter now coming to the fore as Laura Rozen reports:
“Israeli officials are mulling a possible deal under which Israel would extend a partial West Bank settlement freeze due to expire later this month in exchange for the U.S. releasing Jonathan Pollard, serving a life sentence for spying for Israel, Israel Army Radio News reported, via the English-language Israeli Press Review:
“’Officials in Jerusalem are examining an initiative in which the construction freeze in Judea and Samaria will be extended in exchange for the release of the Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard, from prison in the U.S. The proponents of the initiative assess that this would enable many of the right wing ministers to swallow the bitter pill, as they put it, of extending the freeze.”
“A political source said that this possibility also arose in a discussion held by the Prime Minister’s Bureau, but said that it was one of many ideas. A private source, who has ties with Palestinian and American officials, says that a few days ago an associate of the prime minister asked him to check secretly and unofficially with administration officials whether such an initiative was feasible. The source conveyed the request, but it is not known how, if at all, the Americans responded to the idea. In addition, various sources say that in public opinion polls held recently by the Prime Minister’s Bureau, the respondents were asked whether they would support an extension to the freeze in exchange for Pollard’s release.’”
In a later update, Rozen reported a US official saying: “"Israeli officials have inquired about Jonathan Pollard before and have again.” Yes, and they’ll continue to inquire about Pollard until he’s released, because for them he is a real national hero, a living martyr to the extremist idea that Zionism means putting Israel first, over and above the interests and security of one’s own country. That’s why they lionize him, and continually demand his release: it reinforces the idea of dual loyalty as a political and even a religious duty – a nutty concept overwhelmingly rejected by the vast majority of American Jews, and ironically embraced by anti-Semites.
I don’t think President Obama is going to be so foolish as to even consider releasing Pollard or otherwise ameliorating his current status as a lifer: this White House is in enough trouble with the military, what with don’t-ask-don’t-tell, and releasing Pollard runs the risk of an open rift – although I’m sure Leon Panetta wouldn’t even consider resigning over it.
What’s interesting about this latest wrinkle in the Pollard saga is the reality it drives home to us: how the rise of a virulent Israeli nationalism has made an American traitor into a national hero. Here, after all, is a man whose actions cost the lives of American agents inside the Soviet Union. By all rights, he should have been executed, but there he is today, a living breathing example of Israel’s transformation from unpredictable ally to rogue state.
That they are using Pollard to hold the peace process hostage points to the utter contempt the Israelis have for the whole procedure. It dramatizes not only the intransigence and rising ultra-nationalism of the Israeli body politic, but also underscores its militant anti-Americanism. – and flatly contradicts the Israel lobby’s fanciful picture of the US and Israel as brothers joined at the hip.
What I want to know is this: how did Pollard, a relatively low-level cog in the US national security bureaucracy, even gain access to the crown jewels of the US intelligence apparatus, without having access to information that was well above his pay grade? Some theorize he was being directed by an administration insider with access to the coding system that was key to fulfilling the Israelis’ very specific intelligence needs. Somehow, Pollard always knew just where to look to find what his Israeli paymasters wanted, a fact that convinced US intelligence officials he must have had an insider accomplice, and the hunt for “Mr. X” seems to be a project ongoing even to this day.
Which raises an interesting possibility. We should offer to let Pollard go – on the condition they deliver “Mr. X” to our tender mercies. And, if not, who knows, we might even re-start the quashed investigation into this aspect of the Pollard affair, and make the results public. I wonder what that would do to Israel’s approval ratings: probably nothing good.
What the Israelis are depending on, as they spy on us, and otherwise abuse our generosity and naivete, is the power of their American lobby to bring pressure to bear where and when it’s needed. In the past, the success of what amounts to an Israeli fifth column in Washington – made possible, in large part, by the enormous flow of practically unregulated money that the lobby has been able to legally direct to its favored candidates – has been virtually unchallenged. Today, however, there is growing awareness of the distorting effects the Israel lobby has had on the American political process, and the tide is beginning to turn.
The turning of that tide can in large part be credited to – or blamed on – the tin ear of the Israeli government and its US cheering section when it comes to influencing American opinion. At a time when the memory of the Gaza aid flotilla is barely faded from memory, and the ongoing victimization of the Palestinians is daily dramatized in the headlines, do they really want to re-open the Pollard case? Is that really the smart thing to do?
In Israel, they’re equating Pollard’s continued incarceration with the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. From the perspective of the crazed radicalism that is increasingly a power in the land of Israel, they are equivalent, because the US is considered as much an enemy as Hamas and the Palestinians. Anyone and everyone who stands in the way of Greater Israel is considered the enemy: their extremist worldview, rooted in ultra-nationalism and religious fundamentalism, pits Israel against the whole world. In this sense, the campaign to free Pollard is an extreme expression of the general principle underlying Israeli foreign policy and the official ideology of the regime, which has increasingly taken on the characteristics of what US policymakers would normally call a “rogue state.”
The “free Pollard” campaign also raises another question, and it is this: if the Israelis have valorized Pollard, a convicted spy and a traitor to his own country, to this extent, and made such a diplomatic and domestic issue out of his fate, then what does this say about the current extent of Israeli spying on and in the US? How many more such “heroes” are doing their dirty work on US soil?
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Excellent column Justin: indeed how many more Israeli spys are there in the US government? I don't think Obama will let Polard go. It would be a political diaster for him. The political turmoil in this country is just beginning to boil. The Right is in revolt against the Neocons. You should go see the hated many consevatives are showing to Tyoko Rove, Krauthammer, Kristol etc. i think the love affair with Israel is about over. The freeing of Pollard would be the last straw. Conservatives see how they have been sold out and they are reacting in way that isn't liked by the elites of the Republican party. That's why Rove and Krauthammer blew their stack last week. These guys don't like Populist movements.
The minute Pollard were to land in Israel, he'd be spirited away by the IDF or Mossad and within a few days the advance of Israeli settlements would continue. The US would be made to look like even more the fool in the world's eyes. Trade him for "Mr X"? I think not. The Israeli leadership is no better than a den of jackals and I trust not a single one of them.
We are only here to serve……… [them]
I don't seem to get in my thick skull the logic behind the israeli reasoning: Free the criminal Pollard, who spied on "his country", and, we, the israelis will take a brake from stealing palestinian land for a little while.
What does the US get out of this deal besides one less prisoner to feed?
I thought these so called negotiations were between the palestinos and the israelis?
OK, Give them Pollard against an israeli "promise" to give the american people their congress back over a period of say 12 years. I would sign the deal on the spot and would even hug joe and avigdor!
I don't know if it would make any difference to let Pollard go; there must be hundreds of others where this one came from! The way administration officials have been genuflecting before AIPAC and Zionists, it shouldn't be too big a surprise if Pollard transforms into a peace negotiator. The only question then would be whether he gets to represent the US or Israel? Assuming there is a difference….
I am absolutely floored by this Pollard thing. Let me attempt an analogy: a man and wife come up in front of a judge to discuss who gets custody of the kids (who the husband has been beating up). Then the man takes the judge aside and says, you know your house was broken into last week and someone stole your TV? Who the police arrested? Well, that was my brother; if you drop the charges I'll let my wife keep the children.
The US is a mediator in this thing; why would Israel think the US would want to pay- in the form of releasing a traitor- for a benefit for Palestinians? Isn't this appealing to the US interest in seeing a just outcome- to which end Americans keep the peace process going against all logic- which the Israelis are going to milk for all it's worth, with this- just another piece of moral blackmail?
Why don't they just propose to shoot one Palestinian a day until the Americans release Pollard? Would that be so different from what they are offering?
This is the way Israel negotiates: everyone is a target. Everyone is a patsy. Everyone pays.
In the meantime the USG has given Zionists Israel $10's of billions in aid, $1000 per year for each Israeli since Pollard's incarceration.This subsidizes Israel's' socialized medicine which includes massages with snakes and/or chocolate lotion, assuming the snakes like it I guess. The USG is the world's greatest sucker and if anyone knows how to spot a sucker it's Israel and the USG top their sucker list.Jewish chutzpah, why is this a mystery to the USG?
Do you thunk?
I wonder what the 'dual loyalty' crowd thinks about releasing Bradley Manning. Never mind.
Despite the author's over-the-top rhetoric, there's something subtle at work here. Let's call it "The Raimondo Rule."
It's really very simple. The Raimondo Rule is heeded whenever a virulently anti-Israel author takes a moment away from his otherwise relentless characterization of Israel as a force of pure Satanic evil to pretend that the Hebrews who live among us shouldn't be singled out because they're perfectly OK, for the most part. Example:
"the idea of dual loyalty as a political and even a religious duty – a nutty concept overwhelmingly rejected by the vast majority of American Jews"
The author knows that the specific Israel-centric hatred and paranoia he's helping to inspire could easily morph into a more generalized hatred of its dominant ethnic group. Thus he inevitably trots out an obligatory disclaimer that puts a nice veneer of even-handedness on his otherwise hyper-partisan vitriol. That way, he can't be blamed for the predictable consequences of the ongoing campaign of portraying Zionism as the wickedest, most inhuman ideology of all time.
Despite the author's over-the-top rhetoric, there's something subtle at work here. Let's call it "The Raimondo Rule."
It's really very simple. The Raimondo Rule is heeded whenever a virulently anti-Israel author takes a moment away from his otherwise relentless characterization of Israel as a force of pure Satanic evil to pretend that the Hebrews who live among us shouldn't be singled out because they're perfectly OK, for the most part. Example:
"the idea of dual loyalty as a political and even a religious duty – a nutty concept overwhelmingly rejected by the vast majority of American J–s"
The author knows that the specific Israel-centric hatred and paranoia he's helping to inspire could easily morph into a more generalized hatred of its dominant ethnic group. Thus he inevitably trots out an obligatory disclaimer that puts a nice veneer of even-handedness on his otherwise hyper-partisan vitriol. That way, he can't be blamed for the predictable consequences of the ongoing campaign of portraying Zionism as the wickedest, most inhuman ideology of all time.
If enough disingenuous, rabble-rousing scribes put The Raimondo Rule into effect, often enough and artfully enough, they may achieve their dream of precipitating a serious backlash against a certain community of people while appearing to have delegitimized such a backlash all along.
If you're a writer who hates Israel–and if your hatred extends far beyond her borders–just be patient and follow The Raimondo Rule.
No shame whatsoever! But your an anti-Semite if you dare mention or even think about it. It will be interesting and very telling to see the media whores and pundits grovel before their true masters.
No, you're certainly not "an anti-Semite if you dare mention or even think about it." If someone's guilty of treason, go ahead and criticize him, whatever his ethnic background.
But Pollard's just the soup of the day. My beef is with Raimondo and what he and his equally unbalanced colleagues may be trying to achieve with their Israel obsession.
Israel is a racist, warmongering, landgrabbing, murdering, assasinating, lieing, spying rogue state. Israel has absolutely saturated our government, media and banking system with its fifth column supporters. Dual loyalty…you betcha. For all you loyal american jews out there, quit bitching about Raimondo and help root out the many traiterous Israel firsters who are indeed like Pollard. In the end, they, and the people who tolerate and enable them, are your worst enemies.
Uncritical support for Israel is supposed to provide immunity from being called an 'antisemite'. In a similar vein, this year opposing Obama's Pentagon budget (with its DADT provision) is a signifier of homophobia.
Indianchief wrote about not understandinbg the logic of the Israeli reasoning. It really is very simple. The Zionists do not want peace, they want territory. The Pollard affair serves as a distraction that stops further advance in the so-called 'peace process ' and allows them to say 'it's not our fault' when they break off the current phase of negotiations. The 'process' will be restarted sometime later with even more demands.
"My beef is with Raimondo and what he and his equally unbalanced colleagues may be trying to achieve with their Israel obsession."
Yeah, it's horrible—Raimondo et al. are striving for an evil, anti-Semitic "achievement" : namely, that the US look out for its own strategic interests. How bigoted!
The enormity of Pollard’s crime is largely forgotten'
That is what they want you to believe but if the traitor is release it really will be bad news for Bibi. What is needed is to tell the true story of Pollard. Pollard grew up calling all his class mates antisemtic because they found him to be a fat pig and slob. He was then allowed to go to school in Israel were his classmates found him to be a fat slob and a pig. The fact that the students in israel considered him a fat slob never changes his believe that it was his religion.
pollard arranged to sell USA secrets for lots of money. He was not a hero attempting to help Israel and betraying a nation that he took an oath of loyality. He was a traitor to the nation he lived just as all the original zionist who flooded into the ottoman empire were when they swore to be loyal but came to destroy. That is the big problem for bibi. If a traitor is a national hero to Israel then how should all other nations treat their jewish population. Would it not be better to use the many loyal Americans who helped create the United States over someone who prostituted himself and when caught tried to say he was helping Israel. If Pollard liked Israel then he should have left before he was a traitor. He would have been free and forgotten in Israel because he is and always has been a big fat slob.
Pollard is a pig,to spy the country which gives so much support for him and for israel,and this for money, explains enough who is pollard.But if i were an American i would want to release Vanunu,a honest,courageous man (there are not like him in the entire world) who wasted 18years in an Israeli jail and now is hold in Israel although he wants to leave Israel and lives as a Christian in US or Swede.Briefly, i would release this pig pollard for a great man Vanunu.
I think it is a fairly easy to recognize emotional fallacy. It is obvious, that jews qua religious preference AND genetical naive beliefs meet antagonism in any nation they live into. So to speak defining THEMSELVES as superior to the other citizens. And always RIGHTLY so from own perspective.
Still they are capable of grasping reality, and some are really brilliant minds too! so they see clearly that they could not demand from other citizens a special place or prerogative – making their beliefs a matter of non-general virtue. Like e.g. some pop-star knows at bottom of his heart he is just another human, after all.
It seems, though that the extraction of goodwill some 65 years after the facts of the holocaust really is bizarre! Hardly anyone living today were a part of that, and it seems to me, that the US only upholds that silly notion because it gives them a starting point of reasoning from "indisputable evil" thus defining and washing themselves into becoming at the bottom infinitely benevolent and always the GOOD guys, No matter what killings they make themselves of civilians. Property they destroy. Fugitives they create.
I wonder if even one single theater performance play could engage a modern public into enduring through such an entire performance of a stupid and dumb manuscript. And yet that is, what is served as the basic justification of the American empire. What an insult to the populations that is! An empire of stupidity!
Wait a minute- the Israelis want "territory"? Ohhhhh so that explains their rebranding of 'lebensraum' – they must have learned that from….. somewhere? They continue to wall in Gaza like a large, dry ghetto- where could they have learned that? Palestinians aren't allowed free access to Israel, even though they're still a part of Israel? "I want to see your papers"- where could they have learned that? Funny how it's okay when you do it to others, but it was bad when someone else did it to your grandparents. Instead of "Juden, Raus!" it's now "Gazan, Raus!"
How come Raimondo is so concerned with 'unregulated' political money sometimes yet other times he ridicules those who claim that sugar daddy funders like the Koch Bros and their millions and millions of dollars supporting Cato/TeaBagger free market dogma has no real effect in the political arena? What explains this inconsistency? Could it be that Justin is blinded by his ideology?
I think the Israelis along with the free marketeer clowns (and everyone else) should have limits on political funding – not just those whom I disagree with.
lol…a hasbara troll. Too bad it's just this one amateur basement dweller.
You're not doing it right Justin. There should be many more of these guys pounding out their gibberish from behind spittle-flecked monitors. Maybe revisiting the decision to twice recall Navy fighter planes enroute to assist the U.S.S. Liberty would spawn some more of them. The dancing Mossad affair might rearrange some undergarments, too. Something like," I hope your chosen people had fun celebrating while thousands of people died violently. It's probably the only joy people like that get from life." might do the trick. Anyway. Thanks for trying.
What we see is one more depressing example of the behavior pattern in which the abused become the abusers….. As man's inhumanity to man replicates itself in a new more virulent pathogenicity of hate.. E.G. Gaza.. Makes me curious about Truman and how it was he decided to incinerate the women and children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki… ((Who!!!)) was it that convinced him..?? Or did Truman himself conceive the monstrous tactic? Why after the strike on Hiroshima did the second strike come before there could be any effective response?? We need clear minded forensic examinations of the pathology of mass murder! In these times of spreading nuclear ability, we ignore these pathogenicities at our peril and our children's peril too….
What Raimondo omits is the fact that Pollard was granted Israeli's citizenship after being convicted in the U.S. ,as a traitor.
With all due respect, I'd say let him go. You are an anarchist libertarian, right Raimondo? It's logically incoherent for you to condemn a traitor; hasn't Spooner established there is no such thing as treason in regards to the US government?
I agree we should extricate ourselves from Israel. But all this worry about Israeli spies is superfluous. I don't think we should subsidize Israel; we should just cut off all diplomatic ties, but not block economic exchange. The main reason the Old Right failed is because it's constant paranoia about Communist spies seemlessly transitions to the more belligerent New Right. Pray you don't repeat their error.
I also second criticisms of your double-standard regarding unregulated political money for everyone else except the Koch brothers. Only difference is that I am against regulation across the board on political money. Either way, one is at least consistent and not hypocritical.
This constant pot stirring is going to kill the antiwar AND libertarian movement. When I criticize my colleagues for mixing it up with "the wrong crowd", it is only because I understand the value of a good reputation.
a few, few, other DOD connected israeli citizen-spies clothed as americans: wolfowitz, perle, zakheim, feith.
Remember the USS Liberty.
Remember Ben-Ami Kadish and Nozette. Force AIPAC to become a 'foreign lobby" as it should have been along.
Israel isn't worth, all costs, no benefits.
All these anti-Zionist comments!
Could Justin be right? Is the tide really turning?
And who screwed up Ahmadinejad's addess to the UN so that it wasnt translated?
A Pollard in the control booth?
Tsk tsk. Dirty pool
The more Ah-mad appears on US TV, the better he looks.
Go ahead and send Pollard back to Israel, in one of two ways:
1. His severed head on a spike (the rest of him cremated and dumped in an undisclosed landfill).
2. In an urn, 100% cremated.
Ah, there's that peace-loving, antiwar sentiment this fair and balanced website is so famous for.
Well, at least there aren't any crackpot conspiracy theorists around here!
"This constant pot stirring"
Finally, somebody with some sense.
"It is obvious, that j–s qua religious preference AND genetical naive beliefs meet antagonism in any nation they live into. So to speak defining THEMSELVES as superior to the other citizens."
Actually, what's "obvious" (and painfully so) is that you have precious little understanding of history or human nature. You aren't familiar with reality, only with a version you find appealing.
Never once in your deep, profound thinking did it occur to you that the hebes have been demonized for 2000 years with a blood libel, envied, slandered, falsely accused, ghettoized, banned from professions, tortured for not converting, murdered in pogroms for their wealth, burned at the stake for hysterical lies (like the one about poisoning the wells with the bubonic plague), and generally hounded and persecuted by ignorant, self-important bigots like yourself.
Your attempts at objective analysis are as self-serving and mean-spirited as they are worthless and laughable. Well done!
Uh oh… Another lunatic with a computer!
I suppose it never occurred to you that Gaza is full of fundamentalist thugs.
Why didn't Egypt grant Gaza autonomy in 19 years of ruling over them?
I say just for bringing it up we're gonna execute Pollard. Then that will punish them for having a smart mouth! They'll learn that way. Sometimes you have to put somebody over your knee and give them a spanking. They need to be reigned in. They need to be treated badly. Give them a taste of their own medicine. But that's up to us. It's up to us to throw out the israeli lobby and all it's protectorates.
"The Zionists do not want peace, they want territory"
You have it precisely backwards.
Why did Fayyad storm out of a recent meeting with Ayalon? Ayalon wanted Fayyad to accept the idea of "two states for two peoples". Any "peace negotiator" who would storm out of a meeting like a whining crybaby over such a sensible request is the one representing the side that doesn't want peace.
If they could valorize Pollard,they could worship anybody.
"the many traiterous Israel firsters who are indeed like Pollard"
What's your evidence for such an outrageous claim?
Who are the "many" who are "like Pollard"? And if they really are just like Pollard, why aren't they in prison too?
Are you saying every pro-Israel American is now to be equated with Pollard? Just wondering.
My, what magnificent powers of description you possess.
I humbly defer to your manifest expertise on basement-dwelling spit-spewing malcontents.
Why are so many Israelis arrested over illegal arms deals worldwide?
The U.S. authorities' recent arrest of an Israeli for seeking to sell arms to Somalia raises disturbing questions and answers-
http://www.haaretz.com -http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/why-are-so-many-israelis-arrested-over-illegal-arms-deals-worldwide-1.299308
What happened to these cases?
Israel-Hollywood nuclear connection
Capture of fugitive revives case involving famed producer –SMYTH, A FORMER science adviser to the U.S. Air Force, disappeared in August 1985 after his indictment, leaving federal investigators unable to prove his role in the illegal shipment of 800 nuclear weapons triggers to Israeli companies owned by Arnon Milchan, a Hollywood producer and industrialist with dual citizenship in Israel and Monaco.
( (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3340725/)
In view of this, what can Americans do with those US Congressmen who die to support Israel in every possible way, even against the interests and the security of their own country?
Why do you keep putting words in people's mouths with the sole intent of using the "ant-Semite" insult, at every chance you get?
Are you some sort of super hero, out to rid the world of some terrible scourge?
Keep defending the indifference bub. See where that gets you. I have no way of ascertaining with complete certitude, but I would imagine the inside of your mind is a lonely and pitiful place.
Here in Wisconsin ,where there is no death penalty, we had a Jeffrey Dahlmer who killed many young blacks for pleasure and a Charles Anderson who killed his wife and blamed it on blacks.
In 1994 both of them were beaten to death in prison by a black who was serving life. I think Pollard needs to be put with prisoners who might do likewise.
Wrapping his body in bacon would be a good option as well.
For the average citizen, there shouldn't be a charge of treason. For an employee of the US government, one who has made a contract/oath to the US government, then yes, treason is a legitimate charge.
Maybe raimondo and his unbalanced colleagues and readers (Raimando is the best prose writer in the blogosphere) are trying1) to treat the jewish state like any other state 2) By doing so save a few billion dollars we can use here at home. (Please cumulonimbus Septimus don't tell me that we send money to Egypt. I like the Egyptian regime as much as i like Avigdor Liebermann
Bravo Bogus Man. what you've written stinks to high heaven. Wonder: You Eithr Pulled it from you Anus or your Culus.
who in this site is claiming that Egypt is any better than Israel.( I am talking about the government, not the governed in both)
You should realize that when you start making parallels between israel and say egypt or saudi arabia well………..
+10 for spy clothed as a wolfowitz. Come to think of it : can that also mean a wolf in wolf clothes.
Pollard has hurt US beoyond the wildest imagination of anyi antiUS entity. His supporters at home and in Israel the same who are also rooting for attack on Iran.This is despite the majority of Americans being against an attack on Iran even if it becomes neuclear. The only country in the world looking for a war against Iran is Israel
How more Anti American and ProIsraeli can one get?
"Why does anything these leaches in shittylittlestan must honor has to have a price tag to it? Stopping settlements alltogether is the legal and fair thin to do, so why only freezing the settlements comes with a price.
Then why do the dopey Americans have to foot the bills for all their demands? Where is America's honor? Where are the real Americans?
The final test for the subjucation of the US by shittylittlestan is close, if Pollard walks and arrives to shittylittlestan alife, then there is no hope for America."
This was my post to a similar news item yesterday. It still fits as a comment on Justin's great article
I don't seem to get in my thick skull the logic behind the israeli reasoning: Free the criminal Pollard, who spied on "his country", and, we, the israelis will take a brake from stealing palestinian land for a little while.
A good reason To FREE POLLARD: He Spied On His Country For His Country. One Bad deed +One Great Deed= 0 Simple arithmetic.
A lot of younger folks read this site. You'll always get a few off the cuff remarks, but never on par with the inundation of trash that you'll witness on stories linked from Drudge etc.
Now rhetoric aside – and you do lay on the rhetoric with a spatula – you have not once explained your fealty to the foreign nation of Israel. Keep it simple. Spare us the history of pogroms and the holocaust; we're well read. Spare us rhetorical deflections to other nations like Egypt etc., as they are foreign nations to us as well.
You're working overtime to declare this site a closeted hive of anti-semitism. What's your motivation?
I came here just to enjoy the Hasbara reactions today. They were a bit slow off the mark yesterday but now Septimus has made up for it, accounting for about 20% of the comments as I write. What surprises me is he's so rude and uncouth that he's actually amusing.
Good one!
Your clarity on this subject shows how Americans have been effectively taught to stand political morality on its head. One lesson we've learned (perhaps too well) has blinded us to seeing another one that's just like it. Ironic.
"You'll always get a few off the cuff remarks"
A few? Give me a break. There's a constant outpouring of not-so-veiled bigotry here.
"and you do lay on the rhetoric with a spatula"
Not nearly to the extent that Raimondo and others do. The demonizing that goes on around here is outrageous.
"your fealty to the foreign nation of Israel"
My "fealty", you say? I'm just a voice in the wilderness. You can't be certain of my nationality or where I'm writing from. Why not just consider the arguments and comments people make rather than focus on their personal details? And since when is expecting some balance an example of expressing "fealty"?
"Spare us the history of pogroms and the holocaust"
You don't have to read a single word I write. When you see my moniker, you can just skip my post. I don't have to "spare" you anything. I refer to historical atrocities when I think they're relevant to whatever point I'm making.
"You're working overtime to declare this site a closeted hive of anti-semitism."
Your colleagues "declare" their true selves daily.
"What's your motivation?"
Well, according to some here, I'm a "hasbara troll" and an "Israeli mole". Or maybe I'm just someone who likes to give ignorant, malicious, self-deluded, self-righteous bigots a poke in the eye.
"we're well read"
Speak for yourself. Others here comment as if they haven't read any authors besides Henry Ford.
"Spare us the history of pogroms and the h0locaust"
You don't have to read a single word I write. When you see my moniker, you can just skip my post. I don't have to "spare" you anything. I refer to historical atrocities when I think they're relevant to whatever point I'm making.
"You're working overtime to declare this site a closeted hive of anti-semitism."
Your colleagues "declare" their true selves daily.
"What's your motivation?"
I'm just someone who likes to give ignorant, malicious, self-deluded, self-righteous bigots a poke in the eye.
"we're well read"
Speak for yourself. Others here comment as if they haven't read any authors besides Henry Ford.
You forgot to ask yourself WHY such antagonism towards jews could be almost universally found. Seems that you uphold the notion, that THEY may always rightly take a one-sided view, why everybody else are supposed to accept that. Sorrry, men are not built like that automatically. The prevalence of CHUTZPAH especially among lower species of jews. Barenboim, Einstein, and so untold many others seemed to be wiser AND also admired and accepted – perhaps not among species on your own one-sided level, which I don't claim does not exist or are no problem.
This site is a balance to the Israel worship that flows from the MSM.
If our "leaders" had any balls, instead of the Israelis telling us they'll temporarily halt building in the West bank if we give them Pollard, we'd be telling them if they don't permanently halt building in the West bank, they'll get no more free American money…
…but this would only happen if our "leaders" had any balls.
At risk of sounding antisemitic (and way past giving a damn if I do), Israel's agents here in the U.S., like Pollard, aren't the only perils facing us. If extreme nationalism so runs the show in Israel, then extreme Zionist nationalism is prime motivator for at least some of Israel's boosters here in this country. And that package undoubtedly contains the whole menu of elements – including virulent anti-Americanism. Many Israel Firsters, like that chronic intellilgence worm Elliott Abrams, hold dangerously important positions in our government and intelligence. We can't discuss this possiblity in the open, since its likelihood wouldn't prevent its condemnation as bigoted canard. Zionist fanatics are well-protected by such deceitful self-censorship.
We should tell them that we'll CONSIDER releasing Pollard as soon as they release Mordechai Vanunu, a true hero for blowing the whistle on Israel's nuclear program.
Yeah. Put him in a cell with Muslim extremists.
If they shot one Palestinian a day (or 10, or 1000 – it doesn't matter), the US would not release Pollard under those conditions. Only some dirty underhanded deal would get Pollard out. Clinton almost went for such a deal until the Military talked sense into him. The Mossad hopes that Obama is weaker – and he may be.
"Raimando is the best prose writer in the blogosphere"
And who's the best on those days when you disagree with Raimondo?
There was absolutely no argument in your post. Nothing. Not one compelling thought.
Vanunu is a "hero" to you only because he helped make a few million Middle Eastern yids more vulnerable to their enemies.
Earlier you claimed that "such antagonism" towards us exists because of us "defining THEMSELVES as superior to the other citizens."
That's poor analysis. It's self-serving, malicious and ignorant. There are many other reasons for antagonism, such as envy, a desire to pillage and plunder, religious blood libels, and so on. You reject any observation that doesn't fit into your pre-conceived, bigoted world view.
How exactly do ghettoized, demonized scapegoats spend centuries believing themselves to be "superior"? The truth is precisely the opposite. The superiority complex of historical European Christians–violently insisting that theirs was the only path to salvation–was irked by the determination of the little hebrews in their shtetls to maintain their religion. The Inquisition, the pogroms, the Holocaust–these bloodfests were expressions of an arrogant gentile majority, not a j–ish minority.
You want to keep insisting that you're able to look into the minds of yids so you can cling to your scapegoating. And by separating us, classifying us, categorizing some of us as "accepted" and some as inferior "species", you yourself are expressing your own sense of superiority over an entire ethnic community. Your posts are unwittingly condescending.
Einstein was the most gifted yid of all time. If yids have to be as extraordinary as Einstein in order to be “accepted”, then you’ve created an unattainable standard, which in itself is yet another expression of your condescending sense of superiority. You are the pot calling the kettle black.
Like… Pollard made a few hundred million of us more vulnerable to our enemies?
Hey buddy, I don't need to be told. I never defended Pollard.
Let's get this straight:
Pollard and Vanunu are BOTH guilty of treason, but it was VANUNU who was just praised. Hence my objection.
It's hypocritical to condemn Pollard but praise Vanunu. Maid Marian (and many others, I presume) don't care about arguments related to ethics or treason. They care about harming a few million semites far away. No doubt about it.
Gee, sorry, buddy, but there's no comparison between Vanunu and Pollard. Vanunu revealed a secret nuclear program which remains the world's worst-kept secret nuclear program. Pollard sold out this country to an enemy which could actually do us harm. Destroy us. Since the Soviets had our attack plans, thanks to Pollard, there was a window in which that would've been relatively 'doable'. How is the only nuclear power in the Mideast threatened by its enemies? Name one.
"How is the only nuclear power in the Mideast threatened by its enemies?"
You thoughtlessly ask the question as if you're referring to a giant country that could absorb a massive attack, and as if the enemies in question can be counted on to act in their own rational self-interest. The threat comes from the combination of Israel's tiny size and one nuke in the hands of suicidal terrorists willing and eager to detonate it. Or two. Or three.
And then there's always the risk of a regional war. Israel had nukes in 1973, but that didn't stop Egypt and Syria from waging war. It's not unthinkable that a new alliance of powers in the region could threaten Israel, whether they go nuclear or not, such as Iran, Turkey and Syria.
"How is the only nuclear power in the Mideast threatened by its enemies?"
You thoughtlessly ask the question as if you're referring to a giant country that could absorb a massive attack, and as if the enemies in question can be counted on to act in their own rational self-interest. The threat comes from the combination of Israel's tiny size and one nuke in the hands of suicidal terrorists willing and eager to detonate it. Or two. Or three.
And then there's always the risk of a regional war. Israel had nukes in 1973, but that didn't stop Egypt and Syria from waging war. It's not unthinkable that a new alliance of powers in the region could threaten Israel, whether they go nuclear or not, such as Iran, Turkey and Syria.
No policy, anywhere, can be initiated if it's forever constrained by far-fetched scenarios like "a nuke in the hands of a terrorist". This flimsy nonsense has been the goblin excuse for every stupid move this country has made in the last nine years. And there will be no peace unless we consider our opponents sane enough not to hand over a nuclear weapon to ragtag terrorists for the simple reason the weapon is just too perilous in their hands. Arab states in the Mideast are crazy warmongers only to the extent counterintuitive U.S. and Israeli propaganda tell us they are. And, by the way, Israel considered using nukes in '73, but cooler heads in Washington prevailed to stay their hand. At least Egypt and Syria gave Israel the benefit of the doubt, and considered it wasn't crazy enough to use them.