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July 12, 2002/Av 3 5762, Vol. 54, No. 43
A reflection of our insecuritiesPollard case marred by Jewish ambivalence of place in American societyJAMES D. BESSER
The first produced sensational headlines in a few major newspapers: Jonathan Jay Pollard, a young civilian intelligence analyst for the Navy, was arrested on charges of spying for Israel. The date signaled the start of Pollard's personal descent into a seemingly bottomless pit of confinement, abandonment and bitterness. But something else happened that produced no headlines. When Jonathan Pollard went to jail, the American Jewry began a traumatic odyssey that revealed much about the lingering insecurities and divisions that continue to shadow the community. "The reaction reflects deep ambivalence about the Jewish place in American life," says Jerome Chanes, a New York sociologist who once headed a Jewish interagency task force on Pollard. A loose-knit movement to win Pollard's release slowly pushed mainstream Jewish groups to soften their positions - if not on Pollard's deeds, then at least on what many saw as his excessive punishment. But the leaders of those groups, in some cases resentful about the pressure on them to take on the case, didn't try very hard, according to most accounts. Many argue that the movement has nourished the seeds of its own failure. One Jewish activist who agrees Pollard should be freed calls the pro-Pollard movement a "cult" that speaks to an ever-narrowing segment of the Jewish community. "Pollard has become a cause that is picked up by other people and used for their own purposes," says David Luchins, once a top aide to former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY). Even strong supporters of commutation concede that efforts on Pollard's behalf have produced progress but no results. Many claim the Pollard movement defeated itself by embracing activists who regarded Pollard as a Hero of Zion and the U.S. government as a betrayer of Israel. But in the end, it may have been doomed from the outset by the early decision to wage a public campaign for commutation, and to press a deeply unsure, resentful Jewish leadership to use their influence to win his release. Family in distress At the beginning, the Jonathan Pollard movement wasn't movement at all, just a family in distress reaching out to fellow Jews around the country. Within hours of the first news bulletins about his arrest, Jewish and pro-Israel groups were holding frantic meetings - not about the young spy's fate, but about how to limit the damage to the community and to U.S.-Israel relations. "Many reacted with shock and even fear. Charges of dual loyalty were nothing new, but seemingly in one stroke Pollard had legitimized all those who had long suggested that when push came to shove American Jews were primarily loyal to Israel and only later to the United States," according to a 1998 analysis by the World Jewish Congress. Hyman Bookbinder, who represented the American Jewish Committee in Washington during the 1980s, said there was also widespread anger at his Israeli handlers for their "irresponsibility," and deep concern that the incident would "have a very damaging effect on the U.S.-Israel relationship." That reaction was widespread in Jewish circles; it remains a powerful undertow to efforts to win his release almost two decades later. Bookbinder says his own views have not softened. Some of the earliest support for Pollard came from the Orthodox community, with its emotional and ideological connections to Israel and belief in the redemption of captives. But a more potent factor was a family that wouldn't give up. Morris Pollard is a quiet, unassuming scientist at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana. The senior Pollard credits his daughter Carol, who left her job in a New Haven hospital to launch Citizens For Justice, with starting the move to free Jonathan. Carol Pollard, who now works in the bioethics program at Yale, traveled all over the country, speaking to Jewish groups and anybody else who would listen, Morris Pollard says. So did he and his wife. But Jewish groups resisted their efforts, he says, especially the national "defense agencies" such as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee. "They accepted the word of Caspar Weinberger (the former Defense Secretary whose secret memo is said to have played a key role in Judge Aubrey Robinson's decision to impose a life sentence) that Jonathan had committed treason," he says. Despite such opposition, he adds, the family-driven movement made a decision not to directly confront a balky Jewish leadership, or to attack the government officials who were unrelenting in their insistence that Pollard's release would jeopardize national security. "We never burned bridges; we tried never to antagonize people, unless there was a real cause for it. As a result, people took us very seriously," Morris Pollard says Observers say that two issues in particular seemed to generate a positive response: the question of the comparative severity of Pollard's sentence and a simple humanitarian appeal for a young man who, through misguided idealism, had committed a tragic mistake. Broadening support It was the issue of fairness and proportionality in sentencing, Lasson says, that began to open the hearts and minds of Jews and some prominent non-Jews around the country. Gradually, the movement began to use that grass-roots interest to nudge the big Jewish organizations in the direction of supporting commutation. As president of B'nai B'rith at the time of Pollard's sentencing, New York lawyer Seymour Reich convinced that group to weigh in for clemency on humanitarian grounds. In 1988 he became chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, but said he was unable to convince other Conference leaders to reexamine the Pollard matter. When his term ended in 1990, Reich ratcheted up his activism on behalf of Pollard. One big organization to take a stand, he says, was Hadassah. "Then it sort of mushroomed. Different organizations began to speak out on (Pollard's) behalf." A landmark in that effort was the 1993 plenum of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC), an umbrella group of more than 100 local Jewish community relations groups and big national agencies. Reich and other backers of commutation had been pressing delegates to take a stand for Pollard's release. After a fierce battle at the convention, delegates rejected a proposal to send a letter to President Bill Clinton asking for a review of Pollard's sentence. But in the end, it was only because the national Jewish agencies opposed the resolution, defeating it by a 162 to 147 margin. It was a loss for the Pollard movement, but also a sign of growing strength, and of the increasing gap between the grassroots and the major Jewish organizations. Yet there were other forces that were starting to play a more prominent role in the movement, says Jerome Chanes, who served as NJCRAC's director of domestic concerns and as staffer responsible for the interagency Ad-Hoc Committee on the Pollard Case. "We made an absolutely critical decision early on that the matter should be treated as a purely domestic issue, that it would be a terrible mistake to put it on the Israel agenda," he says. Instead, he says, the only issue the major groups would consider was whether there was evidence of anti-Semitism in his treatment. "The committee scrupulously and doggedly investigated every single allegation of anti-Semitism in this matter," Chanes says. "And the bottom line is that there was none." Two-pronged approach That set the stage for what Chanes describes as a two-pronged approach by many Pollard advocates. "First, they tried to recast this as an issue of U.S. unfairness to Israel," Chanes says. "And they tried to counter the evidence that anti-Semitism was not a factor." Pollard's case, he says, resonated among a "small but vocal proportion of Jews who felt that anti-Semitism in this country is widespread and that Jewish security is a myth." There was also the complex question of Pollard's remorse. Pollard, although he expressed remorse a number of times, sometimes seemed to say that what he did could be explained, if not legally justified, by a failure of U.S. authorities to hand over to Israel vital intelligence information they were obligated to provide. If Pollard seemed to flirt with the idea of justifying his crime, some supporters enthusiastically embraced it. An early Pollard supporter was Rabbi Avi Weiss, spiritual leader of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, N.Y., and a Jewish activist known for his aggressive and sometimes flamboyant tactics. Rabbi Weiss became Pollard's "personal rabbi" in 1987. He gave the movement added visibility, but his high-profile involvement also increased the discomfort mainstream leaders felt with the Pollard effort. Rabbi Weiss figured into one of the most controversial episodes in the Pollard campaign: the 1993 attempt by Rabbi Aaron Soloveichek, a revered Orthodox leader, to broker a clemency deal. According to Luchins, a deal had been worked out: The White House, with newly inaugurated President Bill Clinton at the helm, was ready to commute his sentence to time served if Pollard wrote a letter expressing clear remorse. But then, Luchins says, "the Pollard people, the more intense members of the cult, heard about it. Jonathan was put under pressure to repudiate the statement. Avi Weiss went public with a statement saying that Jonathan didn't read the letter, that the things that he did may have been legally wrong but morally heroic." The result, according to Luchins: "The president ordered a full review, and walked the cat back." The result, Luchins says, was that once again, the issue of Pollard's personal remorse was blurred, an obstacle to broadening the movement and convincing mainstream Jewish leaders to vigorously work for Pollard's release. Pollard, contrary to charges by critics, has repeatedly expressed remorse. But his attempts to explain why he spied come across to many in the Jewish community as efforts to justify his spying. Cutting ties A major turning point came in 1994, when Pollard, who had divorced his first wife after her release from prison, married Esther Zeitz, a Canadian woman who had taken an interest in his plight. Some of Pollard's supporters say that Zeitz-Pollard was a lifeline for an embittered man who was increasingly frustrated by years worth of ineffective activism on his behalf by others. Morris Pollard, Jonathan's father, has a different view. "The movement began to change when Jonathan took on this woman," Pollard said. "She has become a flashpoint of antagonism." Jonathan and Esther cut ties to longtime supporters and with Pollard's family. Their communiqu‚s took on a harder edge, especially those directed at the Israeli officials they say were more than willing to let Pollard die in prison. A year after his marriage, the increasingly desperate prisoner decided to publicly press for Israeli citizenship, and for Israel to "bring home" the agent it had shamelessly abandoned. Israeli citizenship would "confer upon me the protection of the Israeli government and the rights of an Israeli citizen," he wrote in a letter to his Israeli attorneys. Observers close to Pollard said that the fight for official acknowledgement by Israel, which he eventually won after taking it to that country's Supreme Court, had become a psychological necessity for him. But it also may have had a damaging effort on a movement that always represented a tug of war between those whose motives were strictly humanitarian, and those who wanted at least a degree of vindication for Pollard. "By taking citizenship, he was in effect saying, 'I did it for my country, Israel.' That undermined the remorse argument," says Seymour Reich. "It cut our ability to argue on humanitarian grounds." Public campaign a mistake? One more question nags at the edges of the Pollard effort: Was the first and fatal mistake making this a public movement? Some Jewish leaders insist that in seeking a pardon or commutation, it is best to act quietly rather than going public and arousing controversy and opposition, making it difficult for a president to act. But Pollard never had rich political insiders working on his behalf, others argue. Activists say they had little choice but to take their campaign to the Jewish public, and to try to get politically powerful Jewish groups to weigh in on his behalf. But the evidence suggests that from the beginning, public efforts succeeded mostly in arousing the wrath of the defense and intelligence community, whose leaders remain the most strident opponents of Pollard's release. George Tenet, director of Central Intelligence, threatened to resign when President Clinton seemed about to release Pollard as part of the 1998 Wye River negotiations. At that summit, there were reports Clinton and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reached an agreement to release Pollard as part of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, but that Clinton reneged. Ultimately, other observers say, the movement began to come unglued for a confluence of reasons, starting with the fact that mainstream American Jews who were starting to sympathize with Pollard's plight were simply too ambivalent about his crime and punishment, too afraid of the consequences of more aggressive advocacy. The ambivalence of politically powerful Jewish leaders was conveyed to the only person who could free Pollard, unless he decides to seek parole instead of commutation: the president of the United States. That sense of doubt also kept mainstream Jewish leaders from demanding public release of the secret government documents that reportedly were responsible for Pollard's life sentence, and for the strong opposition to his release in defense and intelligence circles. If the documents contain damning information about how U.S. interests were harmed by Pollard's spying, Jewish leaders fear, it would just put a harsh spotlight on the uncomfortable issues of dual loyalty and Israel's behavior as a U.S. ally. If they point to unfair treatment of the languishing convict, the discomfort could be of a different sort - of Jewish leaders who should have jumped to Pollard's defense. Pollard and his wife seem to recognize the failures of political efforts to win his release. While they continue to periodically issue harsh blasts at those who have not supported their goals, they have refocused much of their energy into legal efforts to reopen his sentencing. That, perhaps more than any public movement, may be Pollard's last best hope for ending his agonizing personal odyssey. For the organized Jewish community - sympathetic to his plight as a fellow Jew in trouble, unsympathetic to many of the arguments that have been made in his name - the controversy will go on. James Besser is Washington correspondent for a number of Jewish newspapers. This article was made possible by a grant from the Jewish Investigative Journalism Fund. |
