I just read Pollard’s wikipedia page. Stink Fish Pot you are right on. Pollard is scum. I hope he never sees the light of day as a free man. He sold out his country for money. He is a shanda for the goyim, and I do not understand how anyone can hold him up as a hero.
Is it normal for visiting leaders of foreign countries to swing by our prisons to say hi to their spies? It seems like the sort of thing that would be ridiculous for any other country to be allowed, but I really don’t know.
Israel’s continued efforts to get Pollard released and the Israeli government’s view of him as some sort of unjustly imprisoned war hero is (to me) a very clear demarcation of how Israel sees their relationship with the US.
Specifically it is the Israeli government’s notion that virtually anything is permissible for Israel if it has a realpolitik benefit for Israel. This is combined with an almost sneering disregard for American sensibilities about the damage he did. This level of arrogance and shamelessness about conducting espionage in the US, and then having a head of state pushing constantly for his release is stunning. The attitude is almost a pure “fuck you”, and when coming from someone who we consider an ally it’s kind of telling.
Not really. That’s pretty much the norm for every country. America sure doesn’t give the most token of fucks about non-American sensibilities when they run covert ops, and do consider anything permissible if it furthers Amercian interests. Up to an including torture <whistles innocently>.
Get real. In the real world, and as long as there will be competing nations, “fuck you got mine” is the default. Any alliance is dicatated not by “friendship” or “loyalty” but purely out of self interest, and framed in that context exclusively.
And everyone spies on everyone. No exceptions. It’s a matter of survival. Play a game of *Diplomacy *if you don’t quite get it.
I agree. And as far as Israel’s attitude toward Pollard, I suspect it’s something along the lines of, “He may be a shitheel, but he’s our shitheel!”
So all these romantic notions about a “special relationship” with Israel which, on balance, inures enormously to Israel’s benefit are just kind of self deluding fantasy on the part of the US that is part of an ongoing realpolitik con game. Got it.
Yes. They are.
Or rather, the public seems to believe they matter, so the politicians pretend they do. But the intelligence community is nothing if not the Vortex of Absolute Cynicism. And if you think the US is not spying the shit out of Israel, I don’t know what to tell you. The US was caught spying on fucking Denmark, for Chrissakes.
Dangerous people, those Danes. Need to keep an eye on them.
Especially Dane Cook.
Well, they *have *been known to raid and plunder 
You know, it really does shows how different Israelis are from Americans. That is to say, Israelis are not just American Jews, they are foreigners. This is quite obvious of course, but sometimes understanding the obvious is both difficult and important.
Didn’t the US just plead with Cuba or Venezuela recently to go easy on one of their spies? That dude sure got my sympathy.
Linking a criminal to a politician is a shady smear tactic. It’s no better than linking Obama and Ayers.
Here it is- not the same thing but still breaking federal laws in another country.
If I recall Pollards case, he was caught spying when the US and Israel had bad relations, right? Of course some Israelis love him. He’s no more scum than the next spy. Hell, Mossad takes non Israelis (well…i guess no one knows that for sure) and the US government uses non American informants.
Perspective.
No wonder the IDF has such a successful history. How can any adversary shoot to kill these wonderful wholesome young ladies.
Not even close to the same thing. Gross wasn’t a spy, his illegal activities were
You misrecall. The Pollard incident caused a souring of relations, but they were quite fine before he was caught. The perspective is that this occurred at a time when the US was providing Israel with billions of dollars of military aid annually, and the information stolen by Pollard and given to Israel somehow found its way into Soviet hands, either traded by Israel or stolen from them.
This is a nonsensical comparison. It’s not a smear tactic, Netanyahu linked himself to Pollard with his audacity to present Obama with a formal letter requesting clemency. He made getting Pollard released a campaign issue he ran on in 1999.
We did?
Not that I’m surprised (I’d guess that, as a matter of policy, the US spied on everyone), but when did that happen?
Err, to be more clear, when did we get caught, not when did we spy on them.
It’s like I don’t even have to post here anymore.
Yes, it is hard for someone raised in a country that has paid much more than lip service to the ideals of humanity and democracy, including the rule of law, to understand how people of another country with whom we have such a close history can so quickly and casually put mere tribalism above those ideals.
Absolutely. I mean, the concept of nationalistic flag-waving exceptionalism is *completely *foreign to American culture.
Also, if Wikileaks is to be believed, we apparently spied on NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.