Pressure is mounting rapidly within the government and from the media for a full-scale investigation into the affair of Jonathan Pollard, the U.S. Navy civilian intelligence analyst who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Washington last Wednesday for spying for Israel.
The subject of an inquiry was forcefully raised by several Ministers at Sunday’s Cabinet meeting. Premier Yitzhak Shamir fended off aggressive questioning by pledging that the Inner Cabinet (five Labor and five Likud Ministers, headed by the Premier) would convene in closed session Wednesday to consider the issue in depth.
Until now, calls for a probe met solid resistance from Shamir, Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the so-called “Prime Ministers Club,” as all hold or have held that office.
They were the “crisis managers” beginning on the day in November 1985 when Pollard and his wife, Anne Henderson-Pollard, were arrested by federal agents in the U.S. capital after the Israel Embassy denied them asylum.
U.S. ACCEPTED ISRAEL’S EXPLANATION
The U.S officially accepted Israel’s plea that Pollard’s espionage was a “rogue operation” of which the ministerial level in Israel was completely unaware. But there was a souring of U.S.-Israel relations over the affair. This was made more evident by the severity of the sentence imposed on Pollard–his wife was sentenced to five years as an accessory–and by the unconcealed anger in Washington over the benefits heaped on the two senior Israeli officials most closely involved with Pollard.
One of the Ministers demanding an inquiry was Ezer Weizman, who recently merged his Yahad Party with Labor and is a member of the Inner Cabinet. Another was Communications Minister Amnon Rubinstein of the Shinui Party. He told reporters he was not satisfied with Shamir’s promise because only the full Cabinet should decide policy in a matter as grave as the Pollard affair.
The pressures for a full-scale probe are not confined to the leftwing. Likud-Herut Minister of Labor Moshe Katzav said after Sunday’s Cabinet meeting that some form of inquiry is urgently needed because the damage caused by the affair was “enormous.”
ISRAELIS NERVOUS
Many Israelis are unnerved by what they see as a crisis of confidence in Israel by the U.S. over the recent elevation to a senior post of Col. Aviem Sella, the Israel Air Force officer who recruited and allegedly supervised Pollard. Sella was sworn in as commander of the Tel Nof Air Force base, one of Israel’s largest, on February 28, only a few days before Pollard was sentenced.
The Pentagon has officially informed Israel that it will have nothing to do with Sella or the base he commands. A federal grand jury indicted Sella in absentia last week on espionage charges. Rabin, in belated recognition of American displeasure, withheld Sella’s scheduled promotion to the rank of brigadier general, but the Defense Minister has come under attack at home and abroad for ineptness and insensitivity.
Long before Sella’s elevation, Israel rewarded Rafael Eitan, the intelligence operative who ran Pollard’s now disbanded spy unit, “Lekem,” appointing him chairman of Israel Chemicals, the largest government-owned corporation. This was done despite promises by Shamir, Peres and Rabin that everyone responsible for Pollard’s activities would be “held to account.”
Eitan’s appointment reportedly was engineered by Herut Minister of Commerce and Industry Ariel Sharon, and endorsed, as required by law by the then Finance Minister, Yitzhak Modai, a Likud Liberal. Peres and Rabin maintain they could not interfere in this Likud appointment.
DISCREPANCY ALLEGED
Nevertheless, opposition parties lost no time in pointing to the apparent discrepancies between the leaders’ solemn commitment to the U.S. and the blossoming careers of Sella and Eitan.
Two leading newspapers, Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post, called Sunday for a full-scale judicial commission of inquiry similar to the one appointed in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War.
This is supported by several public figures, notably Isser Harel, who headed Mossad and Shin Bet, Israel’s overseas and domestic secret service agencies in the 1950s and ’60s. In a radio interview over the weekend, Harel said the Pollard affair was the gravest intelligence mishap in Israel’s history.
“We must know how it happened and what happened so that it never happens again,” Harel said.
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