On the Tuesday before Christmas, Jonathan Pollard, former U.S. Navy analyst and convicted spy flew with his wife from Newark to Tel Aviv, on a private plane provided by Sheldon Adelson and received a hero’s welcome from Prime Minister Netanyahu.
By Eileen Fleming
US taxpayers provide Israel more ‘benjamin’s’ than to any other country. Adjusted for inflation, the publicly known amount since 1967 is $300 Billion.
Every president since Nixon has also signed onto a “secret letter” affirming the American government will ignore Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
The Trump administration has also bestowed other parting gifts to Israel, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent visit to an Israeli winery in the West Bank. As icing for that cake Pompeo then opined that the BDS movement – a nonviolent resistance campaign against apartheid – is an “anti-Semitic cancer”.
Pompeo also announced a policy shift that would require products made in the West Bank to be labeled “Made in Israel,” despite the simple truth that the goods are originating from the occupied state of Palestine.
Brief History of Jonathan Pollard:
On 7 March 2014, M.E. “Spike” Bowman, a former intelligence officer and specialist in national security affairs spoke at the National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel “Special Relationship” stating:
Jonathan Pollard had a top secret SCI [Sensitive Compartmented Information] clearance, and he had a courier pass. So he could take classified information out and anything he wanted. And he started giving information to the Israelis, and one of their comments was, don’t give us any secret information, we don’t need that level. Only top secret and SCI information…
And because of his credentials and his courier pass, he could go to the various intelligence libraries and get anything he wanted. And pretty soon the Israelis started tasking him with specific documents they wanted…He didn’t start out to give information to the Israelis; he started out trying to sell anything he could, including classified information. He approached the Pakistanis, he approached the South Africans, and he approached the Australians. He turned over classified information to a South African attaché just as a show of good faith. So you know, he’s not a person who was trying just to help the Israelis; he was a pretty venal person here…
He took so much information to the Israelis, that they had to install two high-speed copiers in an apartment to take care of everything that he brought them. He would take information out every night in a couple of briefcases, give it to them to copy and then, because they had high speed copiers, they were able to get it back to him quickly. And then he would replace it as soon as he got to work in the morning.
How much did he give them? By his own admission, he said I gave them enough information to occupy a space that would be six feet by six feet by ten feet. That’s his admission. We never got the documents back from the Israelis that he gave them. Now they did give us a few documents back, they gave us a couple of thousand back. But really, you know, we don’t know all that he gave….
Now the information that he turned over, some of it actually was information covered by 18 U.S. Code 194, which is mostly electronics communication information. It carries the death penalty.
But at the time that Jonathan Pollard did his espionage work, there was no death penalty in the United States. That had been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. And at that time, a life sentence was really, in practice, 30 years….
The severity of Pollard’s sentence was based on testimony by the then-Defense Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, who is on the record saying that Pollard was lucky–he should have received three life sentences.
Pollard provided Israeli intelligence with more than 1,000 classified U.S. documents, some consisting of hundreds of pages, comprising overall some 360 cubic feet of paper.
According to American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, Pollard sold information on nuclear targets in the Soviet Union to Israel endangering human agents in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.
U.S. intelligence sources concluded that the Israeli government bartered this information to the Soviet Union.
In March 1987, Pollard pled guilty.
Also in 1987, Moroccan Israeli Mordechai Vanunu, was kidnapped by Mossad from Rome, transported back to Israel for a closed-door trial, convicted of “espionage” and “treason”, sentenced to 18 years behind bars with over eleven of those years in solitary confinement/AKA State Torture:
Although freed from prison in 2004, Vanunu remains captive in Israel under ridiculous and draconian restrictions including he not speak to foreigners.
Vanunu wed a Norwegian in 2015, and was granted asylum under Norway’s family reunification law, but Israel persists in torturing Vanunu by denying his right to realize it.
In April 1999, thirty-six members of the House of Representatives signed a letter calling for Mordechai Vanunu’s release from prison because they believed “we have a duty to stand up for men and women like Mordechai Vanunu who dare to articulate a brighter vision for humanity.”
President Clinton responded with a public statement expressing concern for Vanunu and the need for Israel and other non-parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to adhere to it and accept IAEA safeguards.
The silence from D.C. ever since has been defeaning.
On 1 December 2020 Vanunu tweeted:
I don’t have any news. Not free yet, and don’t know when this freedom is coming. So the waiting will continue, waiting until I am totally free. What they want? They got their Israel spy Pollard, he is now free, so they can also give me my freedom. Nothing left, no nuclear secrets left, and no one care about Israel nuclear secrets…
Obviously true, however movie and television producers are being introduced to the screenplay This American and Israel’s Nuclear Whistleblower VANUNU Mordechai
Which is a TRUE STORY based on this American’s 2005 interviews with Mordechai VANUNU, and details what VANUNU went through to obtain top secret photos during a few harrowing hours while he worked the night shift as a nuclear technician.
On October 5, London’s SUNDAY TIMES runs a front-page story with a three page spread including many of the photos VANUNU shot while in Top Secret locations within Israel’s nuclear facility.
A serendipitous meeting with VANUNU after this American’s gut wrenching day in Hebron begins and wraps up this movie based on stories VANUNU shared about his Orthodox Jewish childhood, adolescence, crisis of faith, army service, university activism, obtaining photos from Top Secret locations, leaving Israel, being kidnapped by Mossad in Rome and transported back to Israel for a closed door trial and 18 years behind bars mostly in solitary confinement.
The screenplay also documents my journey from a naïve American and the realization of my childhood dream of being an author and reporter.
If only the ‘Jewish State’ would listen to their prophets such as Micah and “Be just, love mercy and walk humbly with your God”; Vanunu would be as free as Pollard.
Learn More HERE
Eileen Fleming writes for TADN HERE
Eileen Fleming produced:
We Americans and the USS LIBERTY
And
30 Minutes with Vanunu, which are freely streaming at YouTube.
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" who founded WeAreWideAwake.org in response to her first of 8 trips to both sides of The Wall in Palestine Israel.
In 2012, Eileen ran for US House of Representatives District 5, in Fl.
Read her FREE eBooks and more at:http://www.eileenfleming.org/
- Mordechai Vanunu: Final Annual Update and this Writers Next Steps - June 19, 2021
- US-Israel PTSD Collaboration UPDATE and USS Liberty’s 54 Commemoration - May 28, 2021
- Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif and Vanunu: Israel’s Nuclear Whistleblower - February 21, 2021