OPINION

Jonathan Pollard: The 'Travesty
Of U.S. Justice Continues

KENNETH LASSON

p

erhaps the most sym-
bolic of all Jewish holi-
days, Passover above
all celebrates redemption.
This is the time to remember
deliverance from Egypt, to ap-
preciate the renewal of spring,
to contemplate the meaning
of freedom.
For Jonathan Pollard, the
American found guilty of
passing classified information
to Israel, Passover is even
more poignant. Still three
years shy of 40, he sits in
solitary confinement in a
maximum-security federal
penitentiary, having been
sentenced to life in prison
with a recommendation that
he never be paroled.
No one, not even Pollard
himself, argues his innocence
— only about the severity and
disparity of his punishment.

Kenneth Lasson is a professor
of law at the University of
Baltimore.

The average term given to
those convicted of spying for
hostile foreign countries is 12
years; for giving secret data to
friendly nations, four.
Last month came a split
decision of the United States
Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia. The two
judges in the majority —
wholly through an analysis of
procedural technicalities that
even law professors will find
hard to fathom — rejected
Pollard's petition to have his
term reduced.
"The issue before us is not
whether a life sentence was
appropriate punishment for
Pollard's crime," they wrote,
"still less whether we
ourselves would have impos-
ed such a sentence." Unfor-
tunately for Pollard, their
cold dissection of legalistic
niceties simply missed the
forest for the trees.
Not so their colleague,
Judge Steven Williams, who
perceived with crystal clarity
the plain injustice of Pollard's

plight. His sharply dissenting
opinion fairly rang with its
determination to avoid ex-
alting form over substance, to
focus instead upon the issue
of fundamental fairness.
Judge Williams found that
the government reneged on
each of the explicit promises
it had made to Pollard in
return for his cooperation —
in particular, that the pro-
secutors broke their promise
to ask the court for something
less than the maximum
sentence. The government
engaged in "a flagrant viola-
tion of the agreement's spirit"
when it presented highly pre-
judicial and inflammatory
memoranda from then-
Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger — documents
that Pollard's attorneys were
not pei-mitted to challenge.
It was Judge Williams
alone who perceived the gross
injustice that should have
been rectified here, even
given the narrow procedural
difficulties in whose web his

Jonathan Pollard: Six years in prison.

fellow judges found them-
selves inextricably bound.
Judge Williams also
recognized that to allow "nig-
gling" interpretations of plea
agreements would render
them virtually useless to
future prosecutors. "If fulfill-
ment of the promise is to
mean anything, it cannot
refer only to the promise
pared to its literal bone." In
other words, the government
will never be trusted if it is
permitted to weasel out of
bargains ostensibly based on
good faith.
We may never know what
went on between Pollard's
prosecutors and the State

Project Achim Reaches Out To Emigres
To Help Them Adjust To Life In America

PHIL JACOBS

Managing Editor

hink for a couple -of
minutes here.
Seriously, step away
from the outside clutter and
set yourself apart. Let's pre-
tend that you and your fami-
ly have made the most im-
portant decision of your
lives. Tomorrow, you'll
begin the paperwork to leave
your country.
When you start the ap-
plication, the clerk at the
bureau of this-and-that will
give you that knowing look.
Some of your friends will call
you crazy. You've got it good
here, for a Jew. You make
$65 a month and live with
your in-laws in a one-
bedroom apartment. So, it's
a roof over your head, and
you have an education to fall
back on.
But enough is enough.
There's got to be something
better than this, you think.
People here would probably
line up for a daily dose of
hope, if there was any left.
We know of a family who
left. The husband was a dec-
orated military pilot, even
though he was a Jew. The
wife was a physician. An-
nouncing their intentions to

T

leave the country, they were
deemed automatic "enemies
of the state." The husband
was demoted to bus driver;
the wife cleaned bedpans.
After a year in their new
country, the couple still
worked menial jobs. But the
husband showed us
photographs and told us
what was so remarkable.
The photos were of a vaca-
tion drive to Disney World.
But the great part wasn't
Mickey Mouse or Epcot.
"I was able to get into my
car with my family and drive
wherever I wanted," he said.
"Nobody checked me for pa-
pers; nobody wanted a des-
tination. Nobody looked at
me funny because I was a
Jew. But in the Soviet
Union, I didn't even know
what a Jew did; yet I was
one. Here, I can be Jewish. I
can travel; I can work; I can
be an American Jew."
Soviet emigres are to our
society what many of our
grandparents were to their
time. They are refugees in a
new land with a new lang-
uage, facing new challenges.
We've read many times of
the miracle that brought
them here. It's important
now that we don't ever fall
into a malaise in which we

take that miracle for
granted.
There are programs here
in Detroit that keep the
dream alive for our new
Americans. It's not easy to
put ourselves in their place.
But there is one program
that quietly is doing the job
in a deep, personal way
without getting much fan-
fare.
Project Achim offers a
Jewish identity here in

If a person doesn't
know how freedom
works, it can cost
him his
Jewishness; it can
cost him his life.

Detroit to the new Ameri-
cans. It does so in a quiet,
but urgent way. Urgent, be-
cause there are new Ameri-
cans who are finding that
along with new American
freedoms come dangerous
American forms of self-
destruction. New Americans
aren't sheltered from Detroit
area problems.
Project Achim meets new
Americans and helps them
with their adjustment.
There are programs that

match the emigres with a so-
cial worker, programs that
pair a high school student
with a Jewish American
high school student. Nobody
is asking anyone to become
more religious. Instead, Pro-
ject Achim adds a Jewish
identity to the lives of those
Jews who don't have one or
who are searching for one.
On May 4, Rabbi Shaiall
Zachariash, one of the quiet
workers of the project, will
be honored at a parlor
meeting at the home of Dr.
Philip Friedman.
There is still so much work
to be done helping the
Soviets learn how to become
Jewish Americans. Stage
One was to secure their
freedom and get them here.
For that we are grateful.
Stage Two is helping them
adjust to their new freedoms.
Because as the volunteers
for Project Achim can tell
you, freedom is costly. If a
person doesn't know how
freedom works, it can cost
him his Jewishness; it can
cost him his life.
The idea is to keep one's
eye on the goal and the pur-
pose for coming to this coun-
try. This is what Project
Achim is doing. This is the
help that the emigres now
need.

❑

Department, not among the
judges behind their chamber
doors. But there had to have
been considerable high
drama and heated disputes.
Ordinarily judges in the ma-
jority do not cite (nor defend
themselves against) specific
arguments raised in dissen-
ting opinions. That they did
so here, and on more than one
occasion, indicates the depth
of their disagreement.
As in the book of Exodus,
the biases and fallibility of
human judges are bound up
in dramatic paradoxes. It is
ironic, to say the least, that -
the two majority judges (Ruth
Bader Ginsburg and Charles
Silberman) are Jewish and
that Williams is not, and that
the appeal was heard on Rosh
Hashanah, the Jewish New
Year. It is no less incongruous
that Israel, the prime
beneficiary of Pollard's
classified data about Iraq's
chemical and nuclear
capability, refused him the
asylum of its embassy — nor,
for that matter, that the
Jewish people, whose latest
incarnation as a state can be
dated to the liberation of
Buchenwald 50 years-ago, are
still seeking a secure place in
the community of nations
some 3,000 years after their
deliverance from Egypt.
Such ironies, though, are
the stuff of punditry and
conjecture.
Few Americans, Jewish or
otherwise, would liken
Pollard to Macbeth, but
Judge Williams did. The case
reminded him "of Macbeth's
curse against the witches
whose promises — and their
sophistical interpretations of
them — led him to doom.
`And be these juggling
friends no more believ'd, That
palter with us in a double
sense; That-keep the word of
promise to our ear, And break
it to our hope? "
The sadder, more demon-
strable irony is that Jonathan
Pollard must celebate this
season of hope still waiting
for redemption and
deliverance, still gazing out
upon the flowers of spring
through the iron bars of a
sweltering prison cell.

❑

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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