Behind the Headlines; Pollard Becoming Central Cause for Mainstream Jewish Groups

Jonathan Pollard’s hour may be coming round at last.

Advocates for the convicted spy have long targeted two obstacles to clemency or pardon: Apathy from Jewish organizations and malevolence from former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Now those obstacles may be fading away.

Among the Jewish organizations recently calling for clemency for Pollard, or a presidential review of his life sentence, are the American Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, Hadassah, the new American Zionist Movement, community relations councils in New York, San Francisco and Boston, and Chicago’s Jewish federation.

And when the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council — an umbrella group of local and national Jewish bodies dealing with public policy — gathers for its annual plenum this weekend in Washington, it may well call for the review of the sentence.

Meanwhile, Weinberger has passed word that he would not object to Pollard’s release, according to a report published in the Forward, a New York Jewish weekly.

Weinberger’s message was reportedly conveyed amid a number of appeals by prominent Jewish Republicans to then-President Bush, in the final days of his administration.

Weinberger’s views are significant because it was his still-classified presentation before the sentencing judge in 1987 that is considered to have brought about Pollard’s life sentence, despite a plea bargain agreement with the government.

Pollard, a former U.S. Navy analyst, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage after passing 360 cubic feet of top-secret documents to Israel.

Additionally, Weinberger would be in a position to judge whether the information in the documents Pollard provided to Israel — and might still remember — could still jeopardize American national security.

JEWISH REPUBLICANS APPEALED TO BUSH

Among the Republicans who reportedly raised the issue with Bush were party strategists Fred Malek and Robert Teeter, and Jewish leaders Max Fisher and Gordon Zacks.

The adoption of the issue by those Republicans presumably most dismayed by American Jewry’s defections from the Republican ticket in the last election may imply that they see clemency for Pollard as a way Bush could have rebuilt bridges to the Jewish community.

The perception of Pollard’s plight as a Jewish communal concern illustrates how far his supporters have come, from the point not too long ago when his cause was taken up only by his family and individuals working on the fringes of the Jewish community.

Within the mainstream community, two trends have apparently coincided to reverse the position of studious non-involvement in the case adopted by most of the Jewish defense agencies.

One is that Pollard’s legal appeals came to an end in October, when the Supreme Court refused to take up his case. Pollard had argued that the government had improperly coerced his guilty plea, and then failed to fulfill its promise not to seek the harshest possible sentence against him.

The other is the increasing grass-roots support being generated by the campaign of Pollard supporters.

With that has come increasing weariness among mainstream leaders with what is described as a “pattern of vilification of people who do not support intervention,” in the words of one Jewish organizational official who, like most of his colleagues, would not be quoted by name saying anything critical of Pollard supporters.

One of those most vilified has been Philip Baum, associate executive director of the American Jewish Congress and head of a NJCRAC committee concerning Pollard.

Under his direction, NJCRAC took the position that Pollard’s sentence did not reflect any anti-Semitism and was not therefore a matter for Jewish communal concern.

‘WE HAD NO VIEW’

Now, Baum supports calling on President Clinton to review Pollard’s sentence, to determine whether it should be commuted to time served.

“There has been this misunderstanding that we were opposed to commuting his sentence,” said Baum. “That was not our position. We had no view.”

Baum’s new position, which was rejected by the NJCRAC committee last month, was adopted by the AJCongress governing council on Sunday. But the council amended Baum’s proposal into a stronger call, asking that Pollard’s sentence be commuted unless “good cause to the contrary” is found by a presidential review.

Also since the NJCRAC committee meeting, a similar policy was adopted by the American Jewish Committee, which wrote Bush just before he left office, asking him to determine whether the life sentence was appropriate.

“My own sense,” said Samuel Rabinove, director of legal affairs for AJCommittee, “is that since the legal case was finished, more people who used to feel this is not one for us to get into, feel it’s time already, he’s been punished enough, let’s ask the president to let him out.”

The Anti-Defamation League will be reviewing its own position immediately before the NJCRAC plenum.

The carefully worded statements of AJCommittee and AJCongress do not actually ask for Pollard’s release, but only for presidential consideration of the matter.

Such a review of the case was promised by Clinton during the election campaign.

Others organizations are taking a stronger position. Hadassah called on Clinton to commute Jonathan Pollard’s sentence to time already served.”

Also calling directly for commutation was the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco. San Francisco’s council, along with those of Boston, Houston and Flint, Mich., put forward the resolution for consideration at the NJCRAC plenum.

It is likely, though, that a milder resolution calling for a review, rather than outright commutation, will be offered at the NJCRAC floor.

This will enable the AJCommittee and the AJCongress, which along with the ADL have a veto power over NJCRAC policies, to support the measure. It would avoid an implicit judgment into the hazy issues concerning just how damaging Pollard’s espionage was to American security.