Why Obama will free Jonathan Pollard

Grant Smith writes: The US Department of Justice has released new files about convicted spy Jonathan Pollard’s bid for presidential clemency. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after passing more than a million highly classified documents to Israel while working as an intelligence analyst for the US Navy. Documents in the Freedom of Information Act response (PDF) reference 32 pages of government agency deliberative communications and 37 pages of new communications between Pardon Attorney Ronald Rogers and Pollard’s legal team — all produced since July of 2011. While the contents have been withheld, their existence signals that the Pollard commutation request may be nearing a conclusion within the Obama administration. June 18 could mark the culmination of a massive lobbying campaign for release. Obama’s dismal record on Israeli accountability suggests Pollard will soon walk free.

Released documents reveal that the Rabbinical Assembly — claiming to represent “1.5 million Jews worldwide” — passed a formal resolution asking Obama to commute Pollard’s sentence. Rabbi David Zwiebel of Agudath Israel of America and Moshe Kantor of the European Jewish Congress also urged Pollard’s release. Letters demanding release also continue to flood in from former and current members of the US Congress. Steve Symms, Matt Salmon, Alan Simpson, Robert Wexler, Barney Frank, and Gary Ackerman joined the ranks of fellow representatives already demanding release. Moshe Kahalon, Israel’s Minister of Communications, gushed to Obama “I have no doubt that your decision to release Jonathan Pollard now as a humanitarian expression of justice and compassion will bring great relief to many, and will remove this impediment to the friendship between our nations.” Former New York City Mayor David Dinkins is also now rooting for Pollard’s release. Upping the ante, Israeli President Shimon Peres has explicitly linked his receipt of a US Presidential Medal of Freedom during a special June 18 White House dinner to Pollard’s freedom gambit — channeling even more intense pressure on Obama to take action in a specific context, place and time.

The linkage to Obama’s reelection bid is obvious. Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger brashly stated that releasing Pollard would be good for Obama’s reelection campaign. But what makes Pollard worth expending such formidable lobbying and political capital? Why have Israel and its Western lobbying organizations made Pollard a key issue, almost on the same footing as massive US taxpayer-funded aid packages and confronting Iran? The Israel lobby effort is trying to achieve much more than simply putting Congress and a sitting president through their paces. [Continue reading…]

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One thought on “Why Obama will free Jonathan Pollard

  1. DE Tedooru

    Obama doubled up in Afghanistan because the Joint Chiefs threatened that if he doesn’t they will quit as a group. Obama did not attack Iran because the Joint Chiefs threatened to quit as a group. The Joint Chiefs AND CIA chiefs all threatened to do the same if Pollard is released. I can, therefore, only imagine Obama letting Pollard go under influence of his puppeteers, the Clintons, in an attempt to get him defeated because the Kennedy crowd has someone other than Hillary in mind for 2016. Obama was totally against it in his gut; only the Clintons– that, since Teddy Kennedy died, own his brain– could make him pardon Pollard.

    Mr. Grant is not only anti-Zionist (for good reasons well articulated in his book) but also a Wall Streeter. Obama did not behave as Wall Street expected him to in his first term, hence Wall Street’s de-funding of his campaign for 2012. Mr. Grant has legitimate outrage over Zionist pressures on the US Gov but may also have Wall Street bias clouding his perspective on Obama that colors his Pollard prediction. But, if Grant is right, and Obama does release Pollard, it will become dangerous to be any Jew in America because certain very rich Zionist individuals will read this as Obama serving the next term as the underling of Netanyahu. I can’t imagine any sane Jew (most Jews are very sane but very many Zionists are not, unfortunately) accepting their American birthright put in danger by this documented coke-head who did what he did for drugs and cash, NOT for Zionism!

    If Obama lets Pollard go it can only be because Obama’s an anti-Semite, as what will follow will extremely endanger American Jews in the backlash. The chutzpah characteristic of the bipolar Zionist Psychosis will then explode into full mania and the “Krystalnacht” I so worried about will become an inevitable concequence. While most Zionists may welcome this as a way of forcing American Jews to stampede in panic to Israel to be fleeced of all their wealth, I’m sure that mass majority of the Jews (America-firsters) will not let it be blamed on them. The issue for Americans– Jew and non-Jew alike– would become, not Pollard, but whether we’re electing Obama as president or Adelson as an “eminence grise” to rule– as in early years of Communist takeover of East European nations when Communist Party operatives were ruling non-Communist Prime Ministers as “eminence grise” puppeteers controlling puppet heads of state– the US as a puppet of Israel. I pray that Grant over-analyzed, as all these pressures for release were always there and mostly pro-forma.

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