Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard’s wife Esther expressed a deep sense of hurt and
bewilderment on Wednesday at the lack of response by US President Barack Obama
to a personal request from President Shimon Peres to release her husband ahead
of Pessah, the festival of freedom.
Esther Pollard revealed for the first
time that Peres had hand-delivered to Obama a personal letter from her husband,
the first personal letter Jonathan Pollard had ever written a to a US
president.
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Editorial: A plea for PollardShe said she was disappointed by Obama’s lack of a response
when Peres brought up her husband’s fate.
“Obama’s utter indifference to
Peres’s request was very puzzling, but it has to be seen in context of the
president’s indifference to all of the requests he has received to release
Jonathan Pollard after 26 years in prison, not only from Peres and [Prime
Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu but also from ranking senior American officials,”
she said.
“The president’s resounding silence in the face of all of these
requests leaves no room for any doubt. Clearly it is nothing personal against
Jonathan, but it is, without a doubt, a devastating slap in the face to Israel
and Jews worldwide.”
Esther Pollard noted that Netanyahu made a formal
request for Jonathan’s release from the podium of the Knesset in January, after
her husband had served more than 25 years in prison, but Obama did not respond
then either.
“To be met with total silence and indifference by Israel’s
supposed best ally is tantamount to having the president of the US personally
spit in [Netanyahu’s] face, publicly and unapologetically,” she
said.
“Even if the prime minister wants to try to ignore the insult,
Israel’s neighbors know exactly what it means in terms of the USIsrael special
relationship.”
When asked how she felt to see pictures of Obama’s Pessah
Seder that were publicized in the media, she said she stared at the photos and
questioned why her husband’s fate was apparently not considered at Obama’s
Seder.
“All I could think of was the irony that upstairs in the White
House they were celebrating the Jewish national holiday of freedom, totally
oblivious to the cries of a Jewish captive, painfully chained to the dungeon
walls beneath their feet,” she said. “With a mere stroke of the president’s pen,
the captive could be free.”
Asked why this Seder was different than
others, Pollard noted that unlike past years, all the factors were in place not
only to facilitate Jonathan’s release, but even to compel it, as a matter of
justice, including requests to Obama from Israel’s president and prime minister
and many top American officials.
She said Peres’s request was
particularly important, because of the sense recently expressed by American
officials that Obama might not want to take a step that could benefit Netanyahu
politically, due to the tension between the two.
“Shimon Peres is the
voice of consensus for the people of Israel,” she said. “He is perceived
worldwide as a man of peace and as a super diplomat. A positive response to
Peres’s request would entail no insult to Netanyahu, and would solve Obama’s
dilemma about perceived benefit to the prime minister.”
Contrary to the
views of American officials in past administrations who had used the Pollard
issue as a bargaining chip against Israel in the peace process, Esther Pollard
said Obama needed to release Pollard to show the Arab world that he is close to
Israel.
“It is the personal relationship between Obama and Netanyahu that
is perceived both by Israel and its neighbors as the key factor to success and
security in the region,” she said.
“By blatantly ignoring official
Israeli requests for Pollard’s release, Obama has turned the issue into a deeply
personal and obstructive obstacle between himself and the prime minister of
Israel and by extension between the two countries. As long as Jonathan remains
in a dungeon in America, an American-brokered peace process can’t move
forward.”
Esther Pollard said she celebrated Seder night by crying and
praying a lot and trying to make sense of her husband’s situation. She said she
spoke to Jonathan and that he, too, was devastated that yet another year had
gone by and he is still in prison. But she said that instead of lamenting, he
comforted her and encouraged her not to give up the effort for his
release.
Asked what she hoped would happen next, she answered, “A
miracle. Jonathan home. Now.”