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You can email President Obama from http://www.whitehouse.gov (look under Contact Us)and ask him to pardon Pollard as one of his first changes we can believe in!
yaelaldrich: on behalf of the coffee room board, welcome to the coffee room!!! wow you joined to make this thread, so nice of ya!!!
If even the gadol hador President Bush didn’t pardon him, perhaps there is more to the case.
BTW, Pollard himself ruined his chance. He violated his plea agreement all the way in the beginning, by doing an interview (I think with 60 minutes).
ames: like what???
Lev melachim biyad Hashem. Just because President Bush didn’t pardon him doesn’t mean President Obama won’t. Please continue calling and emailing the White House daily to give President Obama the message.
yael i actually think it’s a great idea to start now rather than in the end of the presidency.Maybe we could get a list of ppl to call once a month that way we could have a rotation for every day he’s in the white house!
ames: g’luck with sending them!!!
That’s right, ames. They are Arabs. Their homeland is Saudi Arabia.
Hurry, before the President takes away our freedom of speech with the fairness doctrine and all that…
squeak,
I think some are Jordanian as well. Obviously neither SA nor Jordan want them back though.
good to know we all agree regarding the arab/palestinian identity (or lack thereof). I wonder what Charles Darwin has to say on the matter
ames- you remind me of my neighbor that writes letters to the president all day. I’m surprised he was never invited to Oval office yet
everyone: when Hashem wants pollard free, THATS when he’ll be free!!!!!
Please explain something to me, Jonathan Pollard is in jail because he broke the law. Why are we trying to get him out? I don’t see anyone trying to get Berny Madoff off the hook. What about Pidyon Shvuyim? The answer is he broke the law and he deserves to go to jail. To Rosh Yeshiva, I think that it’s about time to start a rotation to call President Obama every day to ask him to pardon Madoff AND Pollard there both in the same boat.
YU – Pidyun Shvuyim applies even if a Yid broke secular law.
aldrich ames, oh no! We’ve been infiltrated again! How did I miss it this time?
Joseph, according to R’ SZA you are incorrect.
Furthermore, R’ Elyashiv says you can call the police on a child abuser. Does that mean once the police have him, you now have pidyun sh’vuyim?
Obviously there are exceptions.
1994. I was commenting since you and yael aldrich both commented in the same thread. I put one and one together, and realized that I am not as good a FBI agent as I thought I was.
🙂
ames, Aldrich Ames was one of the biggest (if not the) traitors in the US Intelligence Community.
love this xtra trivia on the intelligence community!
re pardoning Pollard: another reason, besides pidyon shvuyim, is that Pollard is sitting for giving over secrets to a FRIENDLY country. In comparison, those that have given over secrets to an ENEMY country have all sat for just a few years. Pollard has paid his dues time and a half by now and should be pardoned. And their crimes were twice as bad.
For all those members that always demand “sources”- I apologize. I’ve read so many articles about this I can not possibly recall which one contained the info comparing similar crimes and their punishments.
There are several problems regarding Pollard’s situation.
The first and perhaps most important is that no one here — not I, not you, nor anyone else, knows exactly what was handed over and how far afield the information went. Just because it went to his Israeli handlers does not mean that the information did not go any further to other possibly unfriendly countries. Of course, no one here also knows that it didn’t. As a result, none of us are qualified to say that he got a sentence that is too harsh, or too lenient. None of us know if he really should be a free man or sitting in jail for the rest of his life. None of us know the true magnitude of his crime. It could be that his sentence was disproportionate, but none of us *really* know.
The second issue that has to be made is that there is a difference between a pardon and a commutation. While I might be able to support a commutation (you *can* make the case that he was railroaded at the sentencing), I don’t think you can plausibly make the case for a pardon. When all is said and done, no one denies the fact that he *did* commit a felony and pleaded guilty to the same. Even if he’s allowed to walk out of prison today, he should still have a criminal record.
The Wolf
I heard from a friend who his brother is in politics that sen. lieberman told him not to boter trying to get him out because he will never be freed This friend also dated a former CIA agent who told him the same thing.what he did (or found out?)is so serious that they want him to stay in prison forever. The only thing we can do is keep davening and doing hishtadlus for a neis.Or wait till moshiach comes bimheira biyameinu.
doing hishtadlus for a neis
Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?
The Wolf
BS”D
The rumor about Pollard is that the E”Y intelligence service then traded what they got from Pollard with the USSR in exchange for a few Soviet Jews (which of course was worthless as soon afterward the USSR collapsed – but if EY intelligence could not figure out that the USSR was dying back then it shows us how much of a ness the collapse of the USSR really was). I don’t know if that is true or not. What I do know is that at the time Pollard was married to a non-Jew (hardly the pattern for someone who cares about E”Y) and received cash and a ring for his services. That makes me think that he would have sold the secrets to anyone but E”Y was the easiest party to deal with.
Still, there are many questions – and I agree with Wolf that pidyon shevuim means a commutation and not a pardon in this case. Indeed he and Madoff are both as deserving of a pardon – but Madoff should live out his natural life in prison and be forced to disgorge all of his ill gotten profits so as to make restitution whereas Pollard’s sentence does seem excessive. And, if he really did sell secrets directly to others, I think we would have concrete information about this, or even an article from a credible journalist, and not just rumors.
I would have no trouble with the US making a deal where Pollard would be freed and immediately stripped of his citizenship and rights to even visit the US again and for EY to take him in.
So why should Pollard be different??
What I do know is that at the time Pollard was married to a non-Jew
Do you have something to back this up? My understanding is that Anne Pollard is Jewish. She identified herself as a Jew in the 60 Minutes interview.
The Wolf
You obviously didn’t read what I wrote. The problem is that neither you, nor I, truly know what the extent of Pollard’s crime was. Neither of us (nor, I suspect does anyone on this board) know what truly passed to other parties, to what other parties that information ended up being passed to, or what the damage was to U.S. interests and the intelligence community. You can’t say that his sentence was too long (or too short, for that matter) because you don’t know what the consequences of his actions were. Neither do I.
It’s easy to say that other people who passed information to allies got shorter sentences. But that could also be because the damage they caused to the intelligence community was far less. It could also be that you’re right and that his sentence is disproportionate to the crime and the damage — but none of know that — and we’re not likely to find out anytime soon either.
The Wolf
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