LOOKING BACK Jonathan Pollard, the American Jew arrested in November, 1985, and later sentenced to life in prison for spying on Israel's behalf, was seen as a hero in Israel but his case raised the specter of dual loyalty among American Jews. Pollard Arrested For Spying I n November, 1985, Jonathan Jay Pollard, a 32 year old American Jew working in Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C., was arrested, charged with spying for Israel, set- ting off a complex chain of events, and emotions, in the U.S. and the Jewish state. "I was not intending to hurt the United States," said Pollard, "but to help an ally. What I did may benefit this country in the long run." Jewish hero or American traitor? Even as Jews in this country debated the Pollard case — a debate that inten- sified when Pollard was sentenced to life in prison 15 months after his arrest — many in Israel took up his cause and col- lected funds on his behalf. American and Israeli Jewish leaders staged a fierce public debate that called into question the very nature of the Israel- Diaspora relationship. Israeli scholar Shlomo Avineri charged American Jewish leaders with "cringing" for fear of charges of dual loyalty; American Jewish leader 1d Mann responded that the Jewish reac- tion in the U.S. "emanates from anger at Israelis, and not from fear for their own securities." The discord reached the highest levels of Jerusalem and Washington, with the ad- ministration particularly angered over Israel's seemingly cavalier attitude in pro- moting the two men responsible for Pollard's spying. Observers said the cause of Israel suf- fered a steep decline as a result of the case, in which Pollard's wife, Anne, was also jailed. She was released last month after suffering from a serious stomach ail- ment throughout her imprisonment. 50 FRIDAVRELEKIEB29, Natan Sharansky went from a prison cell in the Soviet Union to the Western Wall in Jerusalem in February 1986, and helped rekindle the Soviet Jewry movement in America, marked by a huge rally in Washington in December 1987. Sharansky Freed, Arrives In Israel 11) efiant to the last, he zig-zagged across a snow covered Berlin bridge that cold morning in February, 1986, because his cap- tors had told him to walk in a straight line. As he crossed over between the two Ger- manys, between slavery and freedom, the world was watching, caught up in the drama of one man's ten year struggle for human dignity. Balding, thin, pale and small, Anatoly Shcharansky (soon to call himself Natan Sharansky) had become a genuine Jewish hero and he was about to receive a fitting welcome in the eternal homeland of his dreams, in Israel. His arrival sparked a spontaneous out- pouring of affection for a man who had defied the might of the USSR for the right to live in the Jewish homeland. His subsequent writings and lectures, in the U.S. and Israel, helped rekindle protest ef- forts on behalf of Soviet Jews, culminating in one of American Jewry's proudest moments: the huge rally in Washington of more than 250,000 people in December, 1987, urging Soviet leader Gorbachev to open the gates of emigration. Less than two years later, for reasons based more on economics and politics than heightened morality, Gorbachev had indeed opened the gates, causing both great joy and confusion among Jews in Israel and America. More than 60,000 Soviet Jews have emigrated this year — a record — but the story of the 1990s may very well be the effort to resettle the hun- dreds of thousands of Soviet Jews ex- pected to come to Israel in the next five years. President Reagan was accused of insensitivity, and worse, when he visited an SS officer cemetery in Bit- burg, Germany in May, 1985, despite protests from Jews and others. Reagan Visits Bitburg Cemetery merican Jews expressed anger, disappointment and disbelief when, in May, 1985, President Reagan decided to lay a wreath at the Bitburg cemetery during his visit to Germany. Even after Reagan gave in to intense pressure and announced that he would visit a Nazi concentration camp as well, the outcry continued unabated. Elie Wiesel, the writer and survivor who the following year was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, spoke for millions when, in a dramatic nationally televised Holocaust ceremony from Washington, he pleaded face to face with the President prior to the trip not to visit Bitburg. "It is not your place, Mr. President," he said. Most disturbing was the President's seeming failure to distinguish between the millions of Jewish men, women and children — martyrs reduced to ashes — and the SS soldiers buried at Bitburg. He equated them all as "victims" and seemed, in so doing, to attempt to undo history.