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| By Israel Insider staff July 15, 2007 |
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The case of Jonathan Pollard, the American citizen who pled guilty to passing information to Israel and has served more than 22 years of a life sentence, has just become more complicated, with an unsubstantiated claim by one of the few remaining darlings of the secular Israeli right.
MK Aryeh Eldad, of the right wing National Union party, alleges that America believes there was another spy working alongside Pollard. "Israel is not ready to pay the price demanded by the Americans and disclose a name of another agent," he said.
Eldad's claim came in response to a scathing letter from Jonathan Pollard's wife published on her website. In her letter, Esther Pollard accused the member of Knesset of "failing the Polllard litmus test" by giving "imaginative excuses for being unwilling to help Jonathan," accusing him of fabricating the phantasm of a second alleged spy as an excuse not to take action.
She continued to berate him for his supposed inactivity in the struggle to free Pollard, who was given Israeli citizenship in 1998. Mrs. Pollard claimed that the member of Knesset said "Jonathan Pollard is not willing to pay the price the US is asking of him," implying that Mr. Pollard refuses to identify the second agent. Eldad, however, stated that "it was very clear that Jonathan does not know" any information about the alleged "other spy."
Eldad in his letter expressed regret that "that (his) words are systematically distorted by Mrs. Pollard."
For her part, Esther Pollard wholly rejected Eldad's claim, saying that such claims have been discredited long ago and are simply being used by the Knesset Member to rationalize his own inaction on an issue of deep emotional concern to his right wing supporters.
Pollard's sentence is widely considered draconian and disproportionate. His supporters claim that passing information to a friendly country generally warrants no more than two to four years in prison, and believe that the Israeli government has abandoned an agent in the field by not pressing its US ally for a pardon. |
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