Rabbi Avraham Weiss, a pro-Israel activist from New York, led a group of about 80 demonstrators Tuesday outside the U.S. Consulate here, demanding the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.
Pollard, a former civilian employee of the U.S. Navy, is serving a life sentence in a U.S. maximum security federal prison for providing classified information to Israel, for which he accepted payment.
Weiss, claiming Pollard was “America’s only political prisoner,” symbolically locked himself in a makeshift cage outside the consulate.
Consul General Philip Wilcox declined to see Weiss.
The rabbi, who is religious leader at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, an Orthodox synagogue in the Bronx, was infuriated when he saw local Palestinian nationalists Faisal Husseini and Hanna Siniora leaving the consulate compound where, presumably, they had met with U.S. officials.
Weiss afterward wrote to the consul general, protesting that the U.S. envoy preferred to confer with “cheerleaders for violence” — his characterization of the Palestinians – rather than with himself, an American citizen.
Weiss said he was considering filing an appeal on behalf of Pollard with Amnesty International, a London-based private agency that champions the cause of political prisoners all over the world.
Demonstrating with Weiss were two Knesset members, Geula Cohen of the Tehiya party and Edna Solodar of Labor.
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