Campaign To Free Pollard Just Gets Odder
The campaign to free Jonathan Pollard just gets odder, and more disturbing.
Pollard started serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison in 1987 for passing military secrets to Israel while working as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy. The Shmooze reported back in December that his wife Esther Pollard claimed that the enormous forest fire in Northern Israel came to rebuke Israel for not working hard enough to free him. Now we have a religious study project that has seen 250,000 people across Israel take on extra study in the name the release of Pollard and… Gilad Shalit.
The project draws a parallel between Pollard, who was tried and sentenced by a transparent American legal system, and Shalit, who is held by Hamas, his whereabouts and state of health unknown and Red Cross visits denied. “I’m sure our learning will help bring Jonathan Pollard and Gilad Shalit home. They have been in prison too long,” said one of the speakers last Monday when some 700 people gathered in Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue, in the presence if Israel’s Ashkenazi Yona Metzger, to mark the end of the project.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
