There is not outrage over the fact that Israel was using a spy to gain intelligence in the U.S. - but that it is viewing him as a mistreated hero, and continually pressuring for his release while paying into a fund that’ll make Pollard quite well-off should he ever wind up there.
The only people who legitimately should be petitioning for Pollard’s release are family members and whatever friends he still has. Too bad his other supporters in and out of the U.S. can’t comprehend the highly negative p.r. aspects of their campaign - or are too arrogant to care.
The English language has all kinds of constructions that you could use in your posts to distinguish when you are speaking for yourself and when you are reporting Israeli public opinion.
As pointed out in the very post I was responding to, the US also applies pressure to attempt to obtain the release of its spies, including its spies caught in Israel.
This strikes me as simply good policy on the part of both the US and Israel - if you want to encourage people to spy for you, support them when they get caught, rather than simply leave such matters to “… family members and whatever friends he still has”. Who would you rather spy for - nation A, who will do whatever it takes, however long it takes, to support you, or nation B, who will abandon you to your fate without a qualm?
After some research, I believe this is the law that applied when Pollard was convicted (federal parole was later abolished entirely):
If so, then to deny Pollard parole, would merely require a determination that there is a reasonable probability that he would commit any crime (as Pollard has reportedly not frequently or seriously violated prison rules).
My research shows that even if a spy is captured and disavowed by his government and tortured for 14 months, he will retain a steadfast loyalty.
Purvis, Wade (2002).
There’s a wee bit of difference between a man who supplies information leading to the capture of an internationally wanted murderous criminal, as opposed to someone who sells his country’s secrets for cash. I believe you are capable of understanding that distinction.
I do not feel it necessary to prop up Israel’s ability to recruit spies in the U.S. by making concessions to it on Pollard.
And as no supporters/enablers of Israeli policy in this matter seem willing to acknowledge, the damage caused by its advocacy for Pollard arguably outweighs whatever “benefit” it might obtain by encouraging more American citizens to spy on its behalf against their country.
How did Yosef Amit, the Israeli guy specifically named in the post I was referring to, do that?
According to Wikipedia, he was providing standard spy fare:
Interestingly, unlike Pollard, Amit has been released.
Now, wikipeda is sometimes wrong. I would be facinated to learn what “… internationally wanted murderous criminal” he was informing on, and the “difference” that you so snarkily believe I should be “capable of seeing” between his case and that of Pollard.
And this is responsive to my point how … ?
This may or may not be true, but it is also totally irrelevant to the point I’m making. Given as I’m neither an Israeli nor an American, to my mind this incident is simply an example of American exceptionalism in action.
I’m Ok with releasing Pollard after 30 years. We essentially took his life. He ain’t getting it back. He’s a sick old man now, whether he remains one in jail or in Israel.
I think he was referring to Dr. Shakil Afridi, the guy that helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden. Who, as far as we know, did not believe he was acting as a traitor to his country by helping to identify Osama bin Laden’s location. What reason would a normal guy have to believe he was a traitor when helping to capture an internationally wanted criminal?
As far as Yosef Amit goes … did the USA ever request he be released over and over and over and over and give him American citizenship?
It’s an example of human nature. Canadians would feel the same way in the same situation.
I don’t have a problem with us bartering Pollard for something from Israel. So far Israel has never offered anything of value for him so they can get fucked.
In general I think you’re all assholes who think there needs to be some kind of protocol for Israel’s or any other nation’s requests to another nation or America’s or any other nation’s responses to these requests. You make a request, you might get an agreement, you might get ignored and you might get a “fuck you”. So far, most Americans are opting for “fuck you”. Israel keeps requesting. There’s no appropriate set of behaviors in the situation. Those thinking there is some sort of set of appropriate behaviors sound like a bunch of pansies who can’t handle a little conflict.
Yeah, but referring to him in this context would be stupid, as he never spied on Israel, while the other guy mentioned in the very same post did.
Why yes, to the first. In fact, there were plans afoot to exchange him for Pollard (also mentioned in the very post I was referencing).
As far as I know, there were no announced plans to give him citizenship, but presumably if he was being exchanged to the US, he would become a US citizen. What do you think would happen, that he’d remain an Israeli citizen in the US?
Since when did I mention any such thing? All I said is that it makes sense for any nation, whether that nation be Israel, the US or Canada, to support its spies and to be seen to do so.
By the same token, it makes sense for a nation - any nation - to punish spies and traitors who spy on it harshly. In this, the US has the advantage over Israel so far - it still has Pollard in prision, while Israel released Amit already.
The “bunch of pansies” (your term) here are those acting all outraged and butt-hurt over a totally predictable situation - that a nation would want to support its spies, something every nation tends to do - the US and Israel both. It is of course equally predictable that the nation holding such spies won’t release them without getting some solid advantages in exchange. That’s simply hard realism.
More reasons for Israel to STFU about poor Jonathan Pollard.
*"The documents that Pollard turned over to Israel were not focussed exclusively on the product of American intelligence – its analytical reports and estimates. They also revealed how America was able to learn what it did – a most sensitive area of intelligence defined as “sources and methods.” Pollard gave the Israelis vast amounts of data dealing with specific American intelligence systems and how they worked. For example, he betrayed details of an exotic capability that American satellites have of taking off-axis photographs from high in space. While orbiting the earth in one direction, the satellites could photograph areas that were seemingly far out of range. Israeli nuclear-missile sites and the like, which would normally be shielded from American satellites, would thus be left exposed, and could be photographed. “We monitor the Israelis,” one intelligence expert told me, “and there’s no doubt the Israelis want to prevent us from being able to surveil their country.” The data passed along by Pollard included detailed information on the various platforms – in the air, on land, and at sea – used by military components of the National Security Agency to intercept Israeli military, commercial, and diplomatic communications. At the time of Pollard’s spying, select groups of American sailors and soldiers trained in Hebrew were stationed at an N.S.A. listening post near Harrogate, England, and at a specially constructed facility inside the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, where they intercepted and translated Israeli signals. Other interceptions came from an unmanned N.S.A. listening post in Cyprus. Pollard’s handing over of the data had a clear impact, the expert told me, for “we could see the whole process” – of intelligence collection – “slowing down.” It also hindered the United States’ ability to recruit foreign agents. Another senior official commented, with bitterness, “The level of penetration would convince any self-respecting human source to look for other kinds of work.”
A number of officials strongly suspect that 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. Other officials go further, and say there was reason to believe that secret information was exchanged for Jews working in highly sensitive positions in the Soviet Union. A significant percentage of Pollard’s documents, including some that described the techniques the American Navy used to track Soviet submarines around the world, was of practical importance only to the Soviet Union…
A full accounting of the materials provided by Pollard to the Israelis has been impossible to obtain: Pollard himself has estimated that the documents would create a stack six feet wide, six feet long, and ten feet high…
NOT every document handed over by Pollard dealt with signals intelligence. DIAL-COINS is the acronym for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Community On-Line Intelligence System, which was one of the government’s first computerized information-retrieval-network systems. The system, which was comparatively primitive in the mid-nineteen-eighties – it used an 8088 operating chip and thermafax paper – could not be accessed by specific issues or key words but spewed out vast amounts of networked intelligence data by time frame. Nevertheless, DIAL-COINS contained all the intelligence reports filed by Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine attaches in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East. One official who had been involved with it told me recently, "It was full of great stuff, particularly in HUMINT – human intelligence. Many Americans who went to the Middle East for business or political reasons agreed, as loyal citizens, to be debriefed by American defense attaches after their visits. They were promised anonymity – many had close friends inside Israel and the nearby Arab states who would be distressed by their collaboration – and the reports were classified. “It’s who’s talking to whom,” the officer said. “Like handing you the address book of the spooks for a year.”*
The wikipedia article on that strongly implies that Israel made the offer to trade spies. It doesn’t say anything about the US requesting his release. Do you have a cite on the specifics of the United States asking over and over for his release?
All I said was that there were plans afoot to exchange him - I have no idea what those plans were, or who instigated them, not being a member of the intelligence community.
I ignored the “… request he be released over and over and over and over …” as hyperbole.
This would be more like pointing out the location of a Palestinian terrorist that was living in Annapolis to Israel and Israel followed up by sending in their goons to kill the guy without our permission because they didn’t trust us.
I don’t know maybe I missed a post but the analogies from last page started with Captain Amazing’s analogy about our behavior toward Pakistan in regards to the doctor. The analogy of Yosef Amit is clearly better.
So far your cite shows that it was merely an Israeli offer and it suggests it was thwarted by Yosef himself before it could be a serious issue.
I completely agree.
Of course.
It’s also hard realism that you might receive outrage over such an offer. It’s perfectly reasonable to get incensed at a bad offer. It sends a signal. It’s a signal that there is a cost to your request and that perhaps it is wise to shut up.
How is it hyperbole when the analogy (Amit; used to help us understand our hypocrisy regarding Israel and Pollard) does not reflect the fact that Israel has requested Pollard’s release over and over and over again?
It is “hyperbole” because it is irrelevant. Spy swaps happen all the time, and there is nothing particularly unusual or outrageous about them - in fact, the US and Russia pulled off a big spy swap a few years ago.
Russia trumpeted this as a victory because it got 10 of its spies for the “price” of 4; the US obviously thought its 4 guys (not all of which were US spies - it was a British/US co-venture) were ‘bigger game’ and so worth it.
Does it “matter” whether the swap was initiated by Russia or the US? It is the very nature of a deal to be a bargain because both sides agree to it. The side asking “again and again” presumably either (a) has the worse bargain to offer; or (b) the recipient isn’t willing to deal because of domestic concerns - which is odd, because, as shown, it will deal with Russia.
Yes. And why hasn’t he applied for parole? Would he rather stay in jail until the US embarrasses itself by swapping him for (What were we going to get again? Oh yeah…) nothing? Pollard’s not the only one who can be a bitch. Let him rot until he plays nice.
From a link upthread, he apparently gave some serious shit to the Israelis, who gave it to the Russians in exchange for Russian Jews being able to immigrate to Israel.
Allessan, have you any comment on that?