Twenty-six years have passed since FBI agents raided Jonathan Pollard's home, and ever since then, his ghost, supposedly caged behind lock and key, has been haunting the heads of America's intelligence agencies. They're so scared of it that on Monday they convinced U.S. President Barack Obama to harden his heart and close his ears to its anguished plea. Kindness retreated in the face of evil, and Pollard was not allowed to pay his last respects to his father and accompany him on his final journey. The Jews know how to respect their dead. The dead are honored when laid out before the living, and they are honored when placed into the earth. America has ignored this. Would America, the great, wealthy, strong and Christian America, behave the same way with any other prisoner? I'm not sure. Perhaps. It would have been acceptable had the U.S. not discriminated against Pollard during all his long, and lengthening, years in prison. Pollard spied for Israel, but did no serious damage to the U.S. Aldrich Ames, who exposed the names of America's agents in Russia to the KGB, was caught just nine years after Pollard. But Pollard was convicted on charges for which he was only partly responsible, and others that were tagged onto him arbitrarily. Pollard has been wrongly discriminated against. His attorneys reached a plea bargain with Joseph DiGenova, the-then U.S. Attorney who prosecuted Pollard, for a 20-year sentence. It was then that Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, whose paternal grandparents had left the Jewish faith, sent an intimidating and baseless memo to Pollard's sentencing judge to impose a life sentence, thereby scuttling the plea bargain. Pollard was sentenced to life. This was a gross violation of the bargain. Had the U.S. stuck to the bargain, Pollard would have been released in 2005, and had former president Bill Clinton stuck to his promise to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Pollard would have walked out of prison in 1998. What is it about Jonathan Pollard that made then CIA chief George Tenet threaten Clinton with the resignation of his security chiefs should Pollard be released? This remains unclear. Pollard's incarceration is out of all proportion to his guilt. He was arrested around the same time as Mordechai Vanunu, a man who set out to damage the security of his country. Betrayal? Espionage? Similarities? Both were born in 1954. Pollard was arrested in 1985, one year before Vanunu, whose betrayal is more serious by degrees. Israel released Vanunu seven years ago. Pollard will see the light of day only in four-and-a-half years. Wherefore are the wicked victorious- And why are the American human rights organizations silent?
