Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

White House: No Change in Stance on Pollard

Following a meeting with the top Pentagon officials on Monday and a public event with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday at the Brookings Institute, President Shimon Peres’ visit to Washington will reach its peak on Wednesday with his meeting with President Barack Obama – and an official dinner and reception at the White House, during which Peres will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civic award in the US.

The festive event will be attended by about 140 guests, including Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, former president Bill Clinton, members of Peres family, and also family members of the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, including his daughter Dalia.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak congratulated Peres, calling the award “another expression of the great respect President Peres enjoys among the world’s leaders, at the top of them President Obama. It’s a blessing and a compliment to the State of Israel.”

During their speeches on Wednesday night, both Peres and Obama are expected to ignore the issue that grabbed headlines in the past few days – Peres’ promise to raise the issue of clemency for convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. But White House spokesman Jay Carney explained during the daily briefing at the White House that the public shouldn’t expect any surprises on this issue. “Our position has not changed and will not change today. Mr. Pollard was convicted of extremely serious crimes,”, Carney said.

For more, go to Haaretz.com

The festive event will be attended by about 140 guests, including Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, former president Bill Clinton, members of Peres family, and also family members of the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, including his daughter Dalia.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak congratulated Peres, calling the award “another expression of the great respect President Peres enjoys among the world’s leaders, at the top of them President Obama. It’s a blessing and a compliment to the State of Israel.”

During their speeches on Wednesday night, both Peres and Obama are expected to ignore the issue that grabbed headlines in the past few days – Peres’ promise to raise the issue of clemency for convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. But White House spokesman Jay Carney explained during the daily briefing at the White House that the public shouldn’t expect any surprises on this issue. “Our position has not changed and will not change today. Mr. Pollard was convicted of extremely serious crimes,”, Carney said.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.