The news tonight is that Jonathan Pollard will be released in November after being incarcerated for 30 years. Pollards’ release is not early, it’s standard after serving 30 years of a life sentence.
I have always identified with Pollard and felt guilty for not doing more on his behalf. We are close to the same age, the major difference is that when I went back to graduate school I had already been in the Israeli army, so I was of no interest to the recruiters of the CIA NSA and others that tried to recruit my fellow students at Columbia’s School of International Affairs. I have always wondered what would have done if I had been put in Pollards position. Luckily I was never placed in his position.
It’s hard to contemplate the 30 wasted years, the children he never had all the wonderful things that I did over these past 30 years and he did not.
I hope thousands of Israelis greet him, and I expect the Israeli government to give him 30 years of back pay and a pension that a military officer would get. But I hope none of the current and past Israeli politicians have the chutzpah to do anything but apologize to him. For we have failed him, he has sat in jail for 30 years and we could never find a way to free him. History will not be kind to the Israeli politicians, American Jewish leaders and others could do nothing but let him waste his life away in jail.
I can only hope that he lives a long life and gets to enjoy the rest of it as a free man in the State he gave up so much for.
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