Edelstein Confirms Pollard Release Discussions Underway

By GIL HOFFMAN
10/18/2010 01:32

There have recently been high-level discussions in Israel on how to get clemency in the US for Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard, who has served nearly 25 years of a life sentence, Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein revealed on Sunday night.

The Jerusalem Post reported exclusively on Sunday that Pollard’s American attorneys, Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, had filed a new petition for clemency on Friday, asking that US President Barack Obama commute Pollard’s life sentence to the time he has already served.

The petition came amid a wave of calls for the release of the Israeli agent and following new revelations of apparent US government malfeasance made public by senior officials with firsthand involvement in the case – former minister Rafi Eitan and former US assistant secretary of defense Lawrence J. Korb.

Pollard complained to the Post last week that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had not asked Obama to grant him clemency.

But Edelstein suggested that active efforts are indeed under way.

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http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=191756

Pollard PLED GUILTY. He is no hero. He is just a guy who would sell state secrets to WHOMEVER wanted to buy them - the highest bidder.

There is no good reason for Israel to ask clemency for him. And allot of bad ones.

Thank you .....
IMHO traitors can have 2 choices .... Life w/o parole ..... or execution
if by their actions they cost the lives of any American ... LWOP is not allowed ...
to my knowledge this does not fit Pollard ..... as stated above ... he pled GUILTY ...
let him stay in prison ...

He should have been shot out of hand.

They don't know what to make of this at all...

If Pollard actually WAS an Israeli agent at the time he sold our nuclear secrets and Soviet spy networks to Israel, then Israel sold them to the USSR and indirectly killed a bunch of US assets and put the US in the nuclear crosshairs in exchange for the USSR honoring the right of return (which they would have done in a few years anyway). In that case Israel's intel community was acting directly against the US, which is odd behavior for a so-called "ally". At least in this context pressing for Pollard's release would make a kind of perverted sense, if you are an Israeli.

On the other hand, if he was an independent person and only became an Israeli agent when they agreed to purchase his information, then their pressing for his release can only be based on his jailhouse "conversion" to Judaism. Which makes the Israelis pressing for his release among the biggest dupes in the history of espionage. (and of course no ally to the US, as they sold the information to the USSR)

Or the other alternative, that he sold the intel directly to the USSR without Israel's involvement, makes their pressing for his release pretty inscrutable...

Of course, if he is actually released (and what an amazing act of stupidity and cowardice that would be), Israel's promise to stop settlement expansion in exchange will prove just as illusory as every other promise they have made.

To recap: Pollard sold US nuclear secrets, which were then passed on to the Russians. Many US assets (and nobody will say exactly how many) were then killed based on this information. Our nuclear deterrence capability was severely degraded temporarily at the height of the cold war. The secrets he sold could have led to a nuclear exchange. The secrets he sold most definitely led to the killing of spies in Russia. He sold them for money, not out of loyalty.

He should have been put against a wall, shot, then put up against the wall and shot a few more times as a warning to spies.

What kind of "ally" presses for the release of a piece of crap like this guy???