Apparently, official Washington is still not over the Jonathan Pollard affair, which it considers a betrayal by its most favorite client state. And in an appearance on Monday on Kol Israel radio, Itamar Rabinovich, Israeli ambassador to the United States from 1993 to 1996, said that the Americans never accepted the claim that Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. citizen working for the Navy, acted on his own.
“The Americans suspect that Jonathan Pollard was not alone, that there were other Pollards and that Israel, despite all its promises, did not reveal all its cards,” Rabinovich said.
The former ambassador said he was convinced Washington is punishing Israel “on the back of Pollard,” expressing their anger “more with Israel than with Pollard.”
Rabinovich confirmed the suspicion that today there are other “Pollards” operating inside the American system. “I fear so,” he said.
But he also described a complicated relationship between Israel and its big brother. “At all the meetings I attended, no American complaint against Israeli officials was raised,” he told Kol Israel. “But malicious rumors were something else again.”
Rabinovich also confessed that Israel is even now refusing to reveal the extent of the Pollard operation. “To my knowledge, Israel hasn’t said everything,” he said.
Israel’s President Shimon Peres said he would raise clemency for Jonathan Pollard when he meets President Obama prior to receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“I will speak one-on-one with the president about Pollard,” Peres told reporters after arriving Monday ahead of the Medal of Freedom ceremony on Wednesday.
“The Israeli president also has the power of clemency – I understand all the problems associated with clemency,” Peres added. “Clemency is not an extension of the judicial process, it includes considerations beyond and outside this area, and I’ll explain this to the president.”
Speaking about the chances that Pollard would actually benefit from his efforts, President Peres said, “I expect that I will explain my position, beyond that I can’t say – I don’t know what [Obama’s] considerations are. I intend on focusing on the humanitarian aspect.”
Back in April, just a few hours after President Shimon Peres made a personal appeal on behalf of Pollard, Obama said his administration’s position had not changed, and it would not release the jailed spy.
Efforts to persuade Obama to extend clemency to Pollard, sentenced to life in 1987 for spying for Israel, have intensified in recent months. Pollard is said to be in poor physical condition.
Incidentally, the prosecutor in Jonathan Pollard’s case, in compliance with a plea agreement, only asked for “a substantial number of years in prison.” It was Judge Aubrey Robinson, Jr. who chose to im
pose a life sentence, after hearing a “damage-assessment memorandum” from then Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger.
Pollard was sentenced to life in prison on one count of espionage on March 4, 1987.
As many as 70,000 Israelis, including a number of left- and right-wing intellectuals, signed a petition asking Peres to pressure President Obama to grant clemency to Pollard.
JTA content was used in this report.