An Ambassador Ambushed: Richard Jones and the Pollard Case

The U.S. ambassador in Israel (I wish I could have said, in Jerusalem) fell into a trap last week—one that he could easily have avoided with a modicum of foresight. It was not the type of ambush laid with roadside devices and a hail of bullets, but it did carry explosive implications, and produced a painful embarrassment for both governments—thus serving a reminder that the Pollard case is still not only an irritant but an active issue for many Israelis.

Speaking at a conference (which I attended) on U.S.-Israeli relations at Bar-Ilan University—Israel’s only university under Orthodox auspices, offering, as such, an honorable and respectable diversity of opinion and being a stronghold of the more scholarly elements within the religious right—Ambassador Richard Jones answered a question about Jonathan Pollard. (Someone should have told him that in almost any room with a good number of knitted skullcaps, a discussion of U.S.-Israeli relations would sooner or later lead to the Pollard case.) The question in itself was triggered by the book published by former CIA director George Tenet, in which he reports that he stood up to President Bill Clinton and prevented him from keeping his promise to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as part of the Wye River Agreement of 1998, to release Pollard in return for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.

What Jones now said, in effect, was that Pollard would never be released.

He had been shown enough mercy in that he had not been executed. This was interpreted as if the ambassador had actually said he should have been executed; the embassy hastened to explain that this was not the ambassador’s intent, nor his view—he merely meant to say Pollard could have been executed under U.S. law, given the enormity of his crimes. Even this should never have been said, and led to a storm of protest in Israel, for several reasons:

• To begin with, even in America, spies are rarely executed—the last case having been that of the Rosenbergs (not a happy reference, with a Jewish audience, even if we do know now, for certain, due to the Venona decrypts, that they did indeed spy for the Soviets.) All too often, it is wiser to keep them alive against future contingencies—but Israel, unlike, say, Russia, would never arrest an American agent just to secure a quid pro quo.

• Moreover, loose talk about the death penalty in any country that does not have it, let alone Israel, where the only hanging since 1948 had been that of Adolf Eichmann, is not a wise choice for an American ambassador.

• Finally, this may not be readily understood in Washington, where seething anger about the Pollard affair is still quite real (and quite understandable, in itself), but for many Israelis this is a truly pitiful story of a man crushed, and driven to the edge of dementia, by the merciless treatment meted out to him—despite the fact that he did what he did on behalf of an ally. Americans suspected by France of stealing French secrets were dealt with quite differently. Hence the willingness of some 110 out 120 members of Knesset to support a petition on Pollard’s behalf.

Beyond all this, there was another reason why Ambassador Jones should have been more wary. In effect, he walked into an intellectual trap often laid by people whose political outlook is that of the Israeli religious (and/or nationalist) right. To them, any Israeli withdrawal is an act not of only of betrayal, but of supreme folly. (Indeed, Palestinian conduct since 2005 has helped them make their case.) Thus, if Israeli governments (like Ariel Sharon’s, in 2005) do undertake to hand over parts of the Land of Israel, the only possible reason must be that they are under heavy pressure by foreign powers, i.e., the U.S. All that is left to prove is that Washington is actually motivated by evil designs which it harbors against us—albeit cleverly disguised as aid and support. One such opportunity to peer into the true lair of the beast is to look at the way poor Pollard, a Jewish hero (and a ba’al teshuva, a newly religious person, to boot), is being treated—QED. And if all of this sounds to many of us like convoluted logic, it can be made to look like the plain truth, if you proceed from the first premises which to them seem incontrovertible.

Thus, what Jones did was to play right into these dark, almost irrational, assertions and the fears that lurk behind them. He “proved” the right to be right, and rubbed much of the country wrong. No wonder that even sober and experienced journalists with some notion of the intelligence process, such as Yossi Melman in Ha’aretz and Shimon Schiffer in Yediot Aharonot, were almost livid, calling upon the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to demand not only a full retraction, but the early release of Pollard himself. After all, it was a fully authorized operation, albeit by a minor intelligence agency (Rafi Eitan’s LAKAM, the Hebrew acronym for the “Bureau for Scientific Liaison”), which landed Pollard in jail. It is for the government of Israel to seek closure.

On the positive side, this whole brouhaha may serve as an opportunity to sensitize Americans (and parts of American Jewry) to the intensity of feelings on this issue on this side of the water.