This Tuesday, an 84 year-old man was arrested for passing information on the United States military to Israel. Twenty-three years ago.
Ben-Ami Kadish worked in the U.S. Army as a civilian engineer. He engaged in espionage for Israel while working in a military arsenal until 1985. The twist? His control agent was the same as Jonathan Pollard’s.
Pollard’s face has loomed at me from the sides of buses, t-shirts, and stickers, but perhaps you’re less familiar with him. The facts: http://www.jonathanpollard.org/
Pollard was a civilian American Naval intelligence analyst, who found information that was being withheld from Israel despite the 1983 Memorandum of Understanding, which made Israel legally entitled to it. The information included planned attacks against Israel by Syria, Libya, Iraq and Iran. When he approached American officials about it, he was brushed off. Idealistically tied to Eretz Hakadosh, he gave the information directly to Israel.
Pollard was arrested in 1985, entered a plea agreement, and was given a life sentence without parole, though the charge he was indicted on was merely that of passing information to an ally without intent to harm the States. He is the only person in the history of the U.S. to receive a life sentence for spying for a U.S. ally. His sentence is much harsher than even most of those convicted of treason –those who spied for an enemy.
Kadish’s arrest brings up the Pollard case with a vengeance. There are those who worry that it will further delay Pollard’s pardon, which Jews in both America and Israel have been agitating for with increased vehemence recently. The Jewish concept of pidyon shvuyim, a responsibility to release innocent Jewish captives, has assumed great importance. Just as when Jews nationwide protested the incarceration of Natan Sharanksy in the Soviet Union and made him a symbol of human rights, supporters of Jonathan Pollard are hoping that he will be likewise freed if enough publicity and pressure is generated.
Letter-writing campaigns have burgeoned across the States. Everyone pelts their personal congressmen with love notes about the idiocy of keeping Pollard, the agent of a friendly country, locked up forever. When I visited Israel this winter, coinciding with Bush’s (unwelcome) visit, buses had photos of kidnapped Israeli soldiers Ron Arad and Ehud Goldwasser underneath pictures of their captors, and a picture of Bush above Jonathan Pollard. I attended the ceremony changing the name of Paris Square to “Free Jonathan Pollard” Square, where emotions escalated and Israelis cried for Bush to pardon the man who did not hurt America, but was loyal to Israel.
Israel claims that it has not spied in the United States since the Pollard affair. Regardless of whether this is true, it has decided that using the American Jewish community to spy would be a bad idea. But the question remains: where do our loyalties lie? Were we in Pollard’s situation, what would we do? It’s a question that every person must answer individually.
As children, we all asked ourselves whom we would support were America to war with Israel. More mature, we now ask ourselves how we should vote: with Israel’s best interests at heart, or America’s? There is a definite Jewish idea of dina d’malchutah dina –obeying the law of the land— and linked with that is a loyalty to and respect for the country that has given one the right to live and practice Judaism freely. So we can’t dismiss America’s claim on us. At the same time, Israel is and will always be the Jewish homeland, the place we have dreamed of for two thousand years of exile. It doesn’t have to be either/or —enter Soleveitchik. The debate begins…
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