Jonathan Jay Pollard -- A Greek Tragedy

I see the Jonathan Jay Pollard story as a classic Greek Tragedy not yet complete.

A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances. (The Free Dictionary)

"Lytras nikiforos antigone polynices" by Nikiphoros Lytras 

I studied "World Drama" as my English requirement in my senior year of high school. I really enjoyed it, especially some of the Greek Drama. My favorite was Antigone. I loved the idea that she was fighting for an important religious principle, the ritual burial of her brother. Considering that at the same time, I was struggling to find ways to be a Torah observant Jew, while living in a very non-observant world, Antigone's struggles and principles seemed very easy to identify with. I wonder if Jonathan Jay Pollard considered his attempts to help the State of Israel as Antigone-like, too.

There are five acts in Greek Tragedy.

StoryboardThat

The Jewish Journal's Jonathan Pollard timeline very eerily fits the bill:

1979 Pollard is hired as a naval intelligence analyst.
1984 Pollard meets an Israeli intelligence officer and soon begins to sell him information.
1985 After attempting to gain asylum through the Israeli embassy in
Washington, D.C., Pollard is arrested.
1987 Pollard pleads guilty to spying and is sentenced to life in prison. and
1998 Israel admits Pollard acted as an agent on its behalf.
2015 A federal panel grants Pollard parole.

I see the timeline, especially as Greek Tragedy a bit differently. What do you think?

• Act I Prologue: Jonathan Jay Pollard, idealistic Jewish American Zionist gets sensitive job as naval intelligence analyst for the United States Government.
• Act II Conflict: Pollard sees data he is convinced should be transferred to the Israeli Government. He contacts the Israeli Government and is paid for his services.
• Act III Rising Action-Climax: The Americans are aware of Pollard's actions; Pollard and his wife Anne flee to Israeli Embassy. Israel allows the Americans to arrest them. The Pollards are both convicted. 
• Act IV Falling Action: Jonathan Jay Pollard is given an unprecedentedly long and difficult jail term for such a crime. He divorces Anne, who after serving her sentence moves to Israel. A woman named Esther aka Elaine Zeitz makes contact with Pollard and convinces him that only she and not his family and original supporters can be relied on. According to her, they are married by Jewish Law. Since then, she has taken control of his case.
• Act V Denouement: After thirty years in prison, Pollard is paroled under severe restrictions. 

Pollard is basically in what can be called a glorified house arrest. Just like serial pedophiles, the prison authorities have set him up with tracking devices and he cannot go far from the home that was found for him. He is also forbidden to give interviews etc. Now, to be perfectly honest, I don't know who's more afraid of him, the Americans or the Israelis. Any sensitive security information he may remember from his work has no real value today. So I can't see what the Americans are so afraid of. And considering how the Israeli authorities rather immorally left him  to the dogs, I'd say that the Prime Minister at the time, Shimon Peres and his handler Rafi Eitan, are the ones who prefer him to be muzzled.

This is a sad and tragic story, which is not yet over.

SPIES!!

For the past few weeks, this has been the view to the east of us in Shiloh.

No, it isn't some hot-air balloon with spectators in a basket touring on high. It's believed to be a spy! My camera couldn't catch it, but I see flashing lights under it.

We all know about the high tech spy satellites the Americans have photographing every garden shed and dog house in Shiloh and other Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley etc. This balloon is low tech and constant. I don't know how many there are nor how powerful its machinery is, but we believe that its controllers are convinced that it can discover the so-called "price tag" Jewish "terrorists" sic.

From sic to sick...

I think it's pretty sick that the government is so convinced that Jews set fire to that house in Duma, which resulted in the death of three Arabs that they haven't been investigating in other directions. Actually, the police haven't been able to pin in on anyone, any Jew, which is why they have the spy camera up there trying to record everything like in the television show, Person of Interest. At least that is the story we've been hearing about that balloon.

If you take a good look at the writing on the scene in Duma, it does not look like it was written by a Jewish Israeli male.

Jaafar Ashtiyeh (AFP)

Actually, it is not a writing font style taught in Jewish schools here at all! Handwriting has styles, like spoken language has accents. And this writing style is more like Arabic than Hebrew.

Another important point is the that the Dawabshe home is well inside the village and the chance that some Jewish youth, unfamiliar with the village, having safely made their way in, burnt the house, wrote the message and then got out safely is impossible. That's as realistic as a James Bond movie.

In addition there have been other fires in homes of that clan, which have been blamed on feuding and "electricity problems" sic.

But the Israeli Government and Police have not given up; they are still looking for Jews to frame.

American CHUTZPAH!

file photo REUTERS/Nir Elias

The State of Israel is an independent country. It has a police and army, the IDF. It has courts and a government. No Israeli Government official gave the United States permission to "inspect" Adei Ad, the Jewish farming community to the east of Shiloh.

"...U.S. diplomatic delegation which came to inspect..."(Reuters) - Jewish settlers threw stones at the cars of a U.S. diplomatic delegation which came to inspect vandalism to nearby Palestinian-owned trees in the occupied West Bank on Friday, Israeli police said....
the delegation arrived at Adei Ad in U.S. diplomatic cars without first having coordinated the visit with Israeli authorities. (emphasis mine)

Not only did the Americans have the nerve to "inspect" what is going on here, disregarding our government, but they came with armed guards who brandished their weapons at the worried Adei Ad residents. They are lucky they weren't shot! They could have been shot for such a thing. Arabs and international anti-Israel anarchists have attacked Adei Ad in the past.

I have no doubt that if an Israeli consular delegation went armed, like the Americans, on an inspection tour in the Untied States the Israeli Ambassador would be sent home packing, and the American one would leave Israel and there would be so many complaints about Israeli "chutzpah."

I hope that instead of our usual wimpy apologies this time our Israeli Government demands that the Americans apologize to us!! Send the American officials home!!!

Snooping on Allies, Yes, Dry Bones Sees the Pollard Connection

Dry Bones got it 100% right!

Snooping on Allies?

The totally disproportionate and unprecedented punishment of Jonathan Pollard by the United States Government is a black mark on the American "justice" system and American society in general.  It's a horrible story.  It shows an underlying anti-Semitism and anti-Israel ideology in American society.  Soviet spies received lesser punishments for more serious security crimes.

• Jonathan Pollard is the only person in the history of the United States to receive a life sentence for spying for an American ally.
• On November 21, 2012, Pollard entered the 28th year of his life sentence, with no end in sight.
• The maximum sentence today for such an offence is 10 years.
• The median sentence for this offence is 2 to 4 years.

Aldrich Ames who spied for an enemy nation (the Soviet Union), committed treason, and was responsible for the deaths of at least 11 American agents, received the same sentence as Jonathan Pollard. Pollard's only indictment was one count of passing classified information to an ally. Pollard spent 7 years in solitary confinement, in the harshest unit of the harshest prison in the Federal system - FCI Marion.
Aldrich Ames' treatment was far more benign, and (except for a relatively short period of time during debriefing) did not include the rigours of long years of solitary; nor was he ever subjected to the harsh conditions of "K" Unit at Marion - even though his offence was far more serious.




"Spying for an ally" isn't really listed in your list of security crimes.  Pollard did break the law by taking highly secret documents and offering them to Israel, an ally of the United States with which there was a treaty promising Israel security information.  For that crime he should have been punished.  If he had been punished for that crime, he would have had been released from jail a very long time ago.  Also he never would have been jailed under such stringent conditions.

The fact that Jay Jonathan Pollard is still jailed by the American Government means that he was punished for something other than his actual crime.  What could that be?



Is it because Jonathan Pollard is a Jew and gave the information to the State of Israel?