Jonathan Pollard has returned to his jail cell after his brief hospitalization on Friday when he lost consciousness.
He may have to undergo surgery, but for the time being is back where has been for 30 years, sentenced to life for the crime of turning over Pentagon secrets for Israel, an offense that usually carries a sentence of 2-4 years in jail.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, while speaking with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Saturday night, asked that President Barack Obama release Pollard. He said in a statement, “Jonathan is sick, his health in in danger, and after 30 years in prison it’s time he is released. We’ll continue to fight until his release.”
No one really knows how much Israeli officials have been honest in their demands that the United States free Pollard.
Rafi Eitan, his Mossad “handler,” said this past week that Pollard ignored an ”escape plan” that Israel had suggested and instead opted for trying to claim asylum in the Israeli Embassy, to which Eitan vehemently objected.
Rabbi Pesach Lerner, former Executive Vice President National Council of Young Israel and involved in the Pollard case for more than 20 years, wrote on the Hamodeia website Thursday, “He [Pollard] told me the only escape plan he ever received from his Israeli handler, Rafi Eitan, should the operation be compromised, was an emergency phone number to call. He received no special training for emergency evacuation and no instructions for such an event.”
Pollard is in poor health. Unless the United States frees him, we will never know the truth, and that may be why no American president has taken the humanitarian step to release him.
Everyone may be afraid of the truth.