Ally

by Michael B. Oren

  From those mutually accepted facts, though, the story splits into two, irreconcilable, narratives. The first portrays Pollard as delusional, dishonest, corrupted by drug abuse and monetary greed. Accordingly, he attempted to sell U.S. secrets to other countries besides Israel, cost the lives of American agents, and caused long-term damage to the United States. Given the enormity of his crimes—so this school concludes—Pollard’s punishment was just.

  The second account asserts that Pollard, though misguided, acted nobly to provide Israel with intelligence vital to its security. As he told Blitzer, “I simply got sick and tired of standing idly by and observing Jews die.” He did not offer his services to other countries or hurt American interests. Indeed, the harm ascribed to his actions was in fact caused by another double agent who actually helped frame Pollard. Charged with conveying classified information to a foreign government—a lesser offense than spying—Pollard received a life sentence rather than the standard six to eight years. His plea bargain went ignored. Pollard was singled out as a Jew working for the Jewish State, an ally. Had he acted for France or Italy, the second school maintains, he would have been freed years go.

  Over the course of Pollard’s quarter-century incarceration, the gulf between these two versions deepened. After initially disassociating itself from Pollard, Israel granted him citizenship in 1995. Israelis increasingly viewed him as a principled Jew who sacrificed his freedom for his people, a soldier who must not be abandoned in the field. His image—bearded, bespectacled, his kippa-crowned pate hemmed by ringlets—gazed from Israeli billboards and kiosks. At the intersection near my Jerusalem neighborhood, young demonstrators displayed banners demanding “Bring Jonathan Home!” And addressing Israeli audiences, someone invariably asked me, “If America is such a friend, why doesn’t it liberate Pollard?”

  In America, though, sentiments about Pollard were split. While U.S. intelligence circles still rejected any reduction of his sentence, a number of former senior officials—among them Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz and CIA director James Woolsey—called for clemency. The most divided on the issue, though, were American Jews. While many community members, especially the more politically conservative and religiously observant, rallied for Pollard’s freedom, others upheld the verdict. “Pollard is no hero of Israel,” Martin Peretz, the avidly pro-Israel editor emeritus of The New Republic, blogged. “He was paid for his filthy work…[and] his moral profile is truly disgusting.”

  Such revulsion reflected, at least in part, American Jewry’s lingering fear that the Pollard affair exposed it to accusations of dual loyalty. “Pollard[’s]…hope that he will yet be able to immigrate to Israel…clearly indicates that his loyalty to Israel transcends his loyalty to the United States,” Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger testified in 1987. Many American Jews still cringed at the memory of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, both Jews and the only Americans to be executed for espionage after World War II, who were prosecuted and sentenced by American Jews. Indeed, Pollard’s supporters accused the half-Jewish Weinberger of seeking the harshest possible punishment in order to deflect charges of conflicted loyalty from himself. The issue remained so sensitive that, more than two decades later, the liberal online Jewish magazine Tablet still grappled with it. “Pollard’s continued incarceration appears…to be intended as a statement that dual loyalty on the part of American Jews is a real threat to America,” Tablet editorialized, “and a warning to the American Jewish community as a whole.”

  For me, as an Israeli and as a Jew raised in America, the Pollard issue aroused potent emotions. On the one hand, I had little sympathy for the dual-loyalty fears—my twin identities, rather, complemented each other—and even less for the “friends don’t spy on friends” mantra sounded by Pollard’s detractors. America’s aerial surveillance of Israel since the 1950s was well-known, along with its eavesdropping of IDF communications during the Six-Day War. A former IDF intelligence officer, Yosef Amit, spent seven years in an Israeli prison after reportedly being recruited by American agents. The Israeli press even alleged that Israel offered to exchange Amit for Pollard.

  On the other hand, Pollard, roughly my age, was disconcertingly familiar. Like me, he suffered anti-Semitism as a youth, bore the burden of the Holocaust, and exulted in Israel’s rebirth. “There was no difference between being a good American and a good Zionist,” he explained to Blitzer. “American Jews should hold themselves personally accountable for Israel’s security.” But Pollard’s life choices, unlike mine, had led him down unlawful paths. If not for those choices, he, too, might have been a free man in the Land of Zion. Instead, he became federal inmate number 09185-016.

  None of my personal feelings was relevant, though, nor was either of the versions of Pollard’s story. As ambassador, the only pertinent facts were that Pollard was an Israeli citizen for whom the State took responsibility. The episode also gave rise to repeated claims by “anonymous U.S. intelligence sources” that Israelis still spied on America—allegations that the White House knew to be utterly untrue but never refuted. Those reasons alone bound me to work for Pollard’s release. His case, I knew, weakened the claim of closer-than-ever security cooperation between the United States and Israel. As long as Pollard remained a prisoner, a pall hung over the alliance.

  Paradoxically, my ill-informed response to a Washington radio interviewer helped spur the Israeli government to review its position on Pollard and redouble its efforts on his behalf. Equipped with new instructions, I took to the Hill, where Senators Chuck Schumer and Arlen Specter and Congressman Barney Frank and thirty-nine of his colleagues had already come out in favor of freeing Pollard. In addition to legislators, I met with former intelligence heads, with community leaders, and journalists. I never asked for a pardon—Pollard was guilty of his crimes and Israel remained culpable—but rather for clemency based on humanitarian grounds. Having served many times the usual sentence for someone who committed similar offenses, Pollard was suffering from serious illnesses and deteriorating physically.

  Many individuals and organizations mobilized to secure Pollard’s freedom and, in the first week of 2011, their determination bore fruit. Five hundred leading American clergymen, Christians and Jews, wrote to President Obama exhorting him to follow the biblical injunction to seek justice and end Pollard’s imprisonment. Professor Charles Ogletree—“Tree”—the Harvard Law School professor who mentored Barack and Michelle Obama during their student days, also asked the president to show leniency. I had met with Tree several times to explore ways of strengthening Israel’s ties with African-Americans, and was delighted by his principled stance.

  Finally, on Wednesday, January 5, I entered the West Wing carrying a manila envelope, blank except for Israel’s blue menorah seal. Inside, was a personal letter from Netanyahu to Obama. This recalled the long record of requests from Israeli leaders regarding Pollard, their commitment to never repeat his wrongful actions, and their concern for the prisoner’s health. “I know that the United States is a country based on fairness, justice and mercy,” Netanyahu wrote, again asking for clemency. “The people of Israel will be eternally grateful.”

  The earnestness of these entreaties might have well yielded results, yet the American position stayed fixed. Though eligible to appear before a parole board in 2015, Pollard would remain incarcerated in Butner. At no point did I receive the slightest indication of any U.S. government willingness to even consider letting him go. Speculating on the reasons why became one of my thornier tasks in speaking to incredulous Israelis back home.

  The primary reason, I told them, was the persistent opposition of the American intelligence community. Though most of its officials were too young to have served at the time of Pollard’s arrest, they retained their predecessors’ resentment of a security-cleared analyst who had taken the oath and violated it. “Deal with whatever you want to—the peace process, Iran,” an American once close to intelligence circles advised me. “But stay away from Pollard.”<
br />
  I further described to Israelis the dissonance between the American and Israeli perceptions of Pollard. The person whom Israel viewed as a hero was, for the United States, a traitor. Why, many Americans asked, should Pollard go free while more than two million of their countrymen, many of them blacks and Hispanics convicted of drug crimes, remained jailed? The Pollard issue also continued to divide American Jews. Especially sensitive were those in government, even congressmen who voted consistently in support of Israel. Some believed that Pollard should be let go but hesitated to say so publicly. Others remained unflinchingly opposed. One senior member of the National Security Council told me over breakfast, “As an American Jew, I believe Jonathan Pollard should get out of prison….” He paused to take a bite of his bacon. “In a coffin.”

  Finally, I related to Israelis the repellent fact that Pollard was a bargaining chip. As early as 1998, during peace talks, President Clinton proposed releasing Pollard to compensate Netanyahu for interim concessions that Netanyahu might make to the Palestinians. Dennis Ross, who favored freeing Pollard on humanitarian grounds, nevertheless advised the president to save the Pollard “chip” for a more comprehensive agreement. “It would be a huge payoff for Bibi,” Dennis said. “You will need it later, don’t use it now.” The deal fell through, but the United States still regarded his release as an incentive for Israeli concessions. Asked if Pollard might be traded for Israeli gestures to the Palestinians, State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley admitted that “[w]e don’t rule out the possibility that this issue will be decided within a wider perspective…of advancing peace in the Middle East.”

  I explained the reasons for Pollard’s continuing imprisonment yet Israelis remained puzzled. Their bewilderment deepened after the FBI uncovered a sleeper cell of ten Russian spies in the United States that, only days later, was exchanged for four American agents held by Moscow. WikiLeaks—the publication of declassified documents by the renegade editor Julian Assange—intimated that the United States spied on a number of friendly countries. Subsequent revelations embarrassingly substantiated that fact. But the disclosures also showed that Washington still believed that it was targeted by Israeli espionage—despite Jerusalem’s adamant denials.

  I, meanwhile, continued to probe American decision makers, present and past, about their attitudes toward Pollard. His plight still stirred many emotions in me—pity, confusion, anger—but, above all, the frustration of my inability to relieve it. Throughout 2010, I remained ready to visit him in Butner, but received no response. His chances for release I feared, were slight, and years might pass before he could replace his prison number, 09185-016, with the citizen’s ID issued to him by Israel. The best hope, I concluded, lay in peace talks in which Pollard’s freedom might be a matter of price, not principle. If only the Palestinians returned to the table.

  Partners for Peace?

  To our frustration, the Palestinians seemed further from that table than ever. Though the end of the ten-month moratorium on new building in the settlements was approaching, Mahmoud Abbas still refused to negotiate with Netanyahu, confining himself to the proximity talks through U.S. envoy George Mitchell. The Palestinian leader also composed a list of preconditions—an end to Israel’s demolition of Palestinian houses, its arrest of terror suspects, and the removal of its checkpoints—that first had to be met. Most critically, Abbas insisted that Israel recognize the June 4, 1967, lines as the borders of the future Palestinian state.

  Netanyahu rejected all of these demands, especially regarding the 1967 lines. According to those boundaries, the Western Wall, part of the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv highway, and the heights above Ben-Gurion Airport, would all be outside of Israel. In discussing possible peace deals, previous prime ministers had agreed to ‘land swaps.’ In exchange for annexing the settlement blocks and parts of East Jerusalem, Israel would concede segments of its pre-1967 territory to the emergent Palestinian state. But no understanding had ever been reached over the size of the swaps—the Israelis wanted significant exchanges, the Palestinians mere adjustments—and the very word swap remained repellent to Netanyahu. Rather, he held that the talks begin immediately, without preconditions. “I’m ready to meet President Abbas, today and tomorrow and the next day, in any place,” he declared. “I’m prepared to go to Ramallah.”

  Ideally, I thought, Abbas and Netanyahu could be confined in some remote Maryland farmhouse, far from the press, and compelled to talk. That was the secret to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, concluded after thirteen intensive days at Camp David in 1978, and twenty years later to the Wye Plantation Memorandum hammered out between Netanyahu and Arafat over the course of a week. In both cases, the parties entered the discussions determined to avoid the concessions they eventually made. Isolated from the public, forced to interact, leaders could accept conditions they once considered unthinkable. I still suspected that Abbas, like Arafat at the 2000 Camp David Summit, would bolt before signing any permanent peace. Yet the possibility existed of forging interim agreements and, if nothing else, demonstrating once again that Israel had exhausted all diplomatic options.

  But the chances of getting Abbas and Netanyahu into that secluded estate seemed distant in the summer of 2010. Rather than pressuring the Palestinians to drop their preconditions, the administration focused on portraying the settlement freeze as fulfilling part—but not all—of the president’s demands of Israel. The White House stated, “We look forward to discussing additional measures with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he next visits Washington.”

  That stopover was scheduled for July 6, and in preparation for the tête-à-tête, I once again did the rounds—Rahm Emanuel, Dennis Ross, David Axelrod—asking them to describe what a good Obama-Netanyahu meeting might look like. The answers I received were discouraging. The moratorium was insufficient and more concessions were expected. “The onus of proving commitment to peace is on our shoulders,” I updated the prime minister, “not the Palestinians’. We should not expect gratitude for gestures that the White House believes we should have made long ago.”

  My analysis must have upset Netanyahu, for Uzi Arad, the national security advisor, called the next day to convey the dreary mood in Jerusalem. “Iran, Turkey, Hezbollah, Hamas, international delegitimization, and now this, the president,” he moaned. I tried to remind Arad of the gloomier periods in Israeli history—the War of Independence, the eve of the Six-Day War. “Yes,” Arad sighed, “but Israel’s leaders back then could at least see a light ahead.”

  Fortunately, in contrast to these dark predictions, the next Netanyahu-Obama meeting seemed almost dazzling. Obama emerged from the eighty-minute discussion praising the alliance with Israel and extolling his guest as a peacemaker willing to take risks. “I’ve trusted Prime Minister Netanyahu since I met him before I was elected,” he told Israeli TV. Netanyahu similarly gushed. “The reports about the demise of the special U.S.-Israel relationship aren’t just premature,” he said, paraphrasing Mark Twain. “They’re just flat wrong.” Journalists noted the positive body language of the two and how Obama personally escorted Netanyahu to his car. They quoted me saying that, unlike our previous unphotographed visit to the White House, this time “there were more cameras than at the Academy Awards.”

  But the change was more than theatrical. Rather than harping on Israeli concessions, the conversation dealt with the confidence-building measures—CBMs—including large-scale West Bank development projects, with which Israel could induce Abbas to negotiate. Netanyahu pressed for immediate implementation of the CBMs and for the earliest possible resumption of the peace process. “We have real willingness to move forward,” he assured Obama. “We need to overcome skepticism and proceed quickly.”

  If relieved by this sudden improvement of tone, I was surprised the next day when, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Netanyahu said that peace could be achieved within a year. “Were you serious about that?” I asked him when he got back in his car. “One year?” The prime minister s
hrugged. “I could do it in three months, if Abbas would negotiate seriously.”

  That “if” remained cardinal in my mind. I never ceased doubting Abbas’s willingness to engage with us sincerely, just as I never ceased believing in the Obama administration’s quenchless demand for Israeli concessions. Nevertheless, perhaps from lack of sleep, Netanyahu’s stay left me feeling giddy. Suddenly, the White House was no longer talking settlements but embracing the prime minister’s vision of a one-year peace process. “I need a Palestinian partner,” he told Chris Wallace at Fox News. “You can’t be a trapeze artist that wants to connect with the other guy and there’s no one there. Abbas has got to step up to the plate,” Netanyahu said, mixing metaphors if not his meaning. And for once Obama seemed to agree. He invited Abbas to attend a peace summit—to fly through the air, as it were, or enter the batter’s box—convening in Washington on September 1.

  —

  The night before, Hamas terrorists ambushed an Israeli vehicle near Hebron. They approached the car and kept firing their Kalashnikov rifles through the windows until all four of the people inside were dead. One of them was a pregnant woman.

  The Palestinian Authority condemned the murderers and quickly captured the gunmen, then just as swiftly freed them. The State Department praised the condemnation but ignored the release. Anxious to get back to talks, Israel also downplayed Abbas’s action, all the while opposing preconditions.

  Implicitly, at least, all parties agreed that nothing should dull the luster of Obama, Netanyahu, and Abbas seated together on a State Department stage, flanked by Jordan’s King Abdullah and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. To the crackle of hundreds of press cameras, the participants delivered their opening remarks. Obama exulted: “Though each of us holds a title of honor—President, Prime Minister, King—we are bound by the one title we share. We are fathers, blessed with sons and daughters. So we must ask ourselves what kind of world do we want to bequeath to our children?” Abbas, by contrast, was blunt, reiterating his demand for a settlement freeze and for rectifying the “historical injustice” that occurred in 1948. He referred to the Palestinians as victims and Israel’s prime minister—pettily, I thought—as “Mr.” Then it was Netanyahu’s turn.