Republican party presidential hopeful Ban Carson is the only leading candidate of either party to have spoken out on the release of Jonathan Pollard, according to a Daily Beast report after it requested reactions from candidates.
Carson was favorable, but no one else had the guts to say a word, one way or the other, not even Mike Huckabee, who still is running for the nomination although he has no chance of winning. He formerly has stated Pollard should have been released.
A vast majority of Americans, including Jews, are not excited about Pollard’s being out of jail. Virtually every news outlet describes him as a “spy” and some reports called him a traitor although he never was convicted for treason. He was charged with one count of passing classified information to Israel.
Most Jews, with the except for many from the Orthodox sector, feel they are threatened by their status as a “Jewish American” being stained, in their view, by a Jew being a “traitor” to the United States of America.
Reform Jewish leader Eric Yoffie wrote in Haaretz Thursday:
The key is to deal with it in a way that reflects what most American Jews are now feeling: unequivocal condemnation of Pollard’s crimes and compassion for the broken man who committed them.
He added that wrote that Pollard should not receive a “hero’s welcome.”
The Daily Beast pointed out that while “Republicans don’t often see any conflict between the goals of the Israeli government and the United States’ national security interests,” the party’s major presidential candidates, except for Carson, placed a self-impose gag order on the subject.
Carson was the only major candidate to answer the Daily Beast’s request to comment on whether they support Pollard’s freedom and whether Pollard should be allowed to leave Israel. His parole bans him from doing so for five years.
Carson’s communications director Doug Watts e-mailed an answer, which was only somewhat supportive:
Jonathan Pollard has done his time and therefore Dr Carson has no objection or concern with his release. As for his travel restriction, Dr Carson defers to the judgment of the Parole Board.
Donald Trump did not respond, although that does not necessarily mean anything because it is impossible to know what his mood was when he was asked.
Jeb Bush was silent.
Marco Rubio was silent. Ditto for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, assuming the Daily Best asked them. A quick look at major American media’s coverage of Pollard’s release reveals why no one, except for big brave Carson, was willing to comment.
The New York Times’ coverage of Pollard’s release described him as “one of most notorious spies of the late Cold War.”
Slate.com reported:
Spies for the U.S. in the Soviet Union were discovered and probably killed because of Pollard’s actions. ‘It is my belief, and the intelligence community was of the nearly certain belief, that assets [agents working for the U.S. overseas] were compromised,’ said Joseph diGenova, who prosecuted Pollard. But his former prosecutor argued that Pollard should have remained behind bars.
The Department of Justice decided not to oppose his release. diGenova said. ‘They own it. President Obama owns his release.’
The former U.S. Naval Intelligence employee, who sold a year’s worth of state secrets to Israel in the 1980s, was released on parole after serving 30 years of a life sentence. As Fred Kaplan documented in Slate this past summer when the then-forthcoming release was made public, Pollard’s spying likely did untold damage to U.S. security near the height of the Cold War.
Financial media were even harsher on Pollard. Investors Business Daily wrote:
National Security: America’s most anti-Israel president sets a convicted traitor free in the hopes of appearing pro-Israeli….
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