points of view

>> Send letters to: letters@thejewishnews.corn

Contributing Editor

Editorial

Pollard's Plifik4

Mideast trip provides Obama opportunity

to address nagging clemency question.

Palm Beach, Fla.

p

resident Obama's March stop in
Israel during a Middle East visit
would be a great time to announce
he'll consider clemency for Israeli agent
Jonathan Pollard — completing his 28th
year of a life sentence in a U.S. federal pris-
on following a deserved conviction for spy-
ing on Israel's behalf. It's well known the
U.S. Department of Justice is hearing the
crescendo within and outside the Jewish
community for Pollard's release.
Humanitarian grounds should play a
part given Pollard, 58, is frail, in deterio-
rating health and hardly a danger. More
significantly, by sentencing standards, he
has more than repaid his debt to society
for espionage — selling classified informa-
tion to an American ally. Obama is presi-
dent No. 5 since Pollard was convicted,
but the one peppered most with clemency
calls.
Just last week, the Jewish Agency for
Israel urged clemency. JAFI is yet another
spoke in the wheel of Jewish support,
which includes Orthodox, Conservative
and Reform groups, the Israeli gov-
ernment as well as the Conference of
Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations, Zionist
Organization of America and
European Jewish Congress.

Setting The Stage

On Feb. 18, Yair Lapid, head of
Israel's Yesh Atid party, talked to
Pollard during a meeting at the
Knesset with the prisoner's wife,
Esther. She was there to urge
Lapid to ask Obama about clem-
ency. Her husband called during
the meeting and she handed the
phone to Lapid, according to the Jerusalem

Post.
The call wasn't planned, she said.
"I was in tears?' she told the press. "He is
in poor shape. He is desperate and broken.
We will do everything we can to help him."
During his Middle East visit, Obama
will receive the Presidential Medal of
Distinction from Israeli President Shimon
Peres. The honor lauds the American presi-
dent's "unique contribution to the security
of the State of Israel, both through further
strengthening the strategic cooperation
between the countries and through the
joint development of technology to defend
against rockets and terrorism?'

44

February 28 • 2013

The clemency
groundswell
focuses hard on
the sentence's
Jonathan
unprecedented Pollard
length while
affirming Pollard's guilt in
the glare of the law.

Last June, Peres visited Washington to
receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom
from Obama.
Israel's security must never be compro-
mised. But neither should U.S. diplomacy
toward the Jewish state when such action
is merited.

What's At Issue?
Pollard, a former naval civilian intelligence
analyst, was first jailed in 1985 and was
sentenced two years later. His
guilt is evident; it's unsettling
a U.S. official would spy for
anyone, even a nation friendly
to America.
But that's not the issue now;
Pollard's sentence is. The
clemency groundswell focuses
hard on the sentence's unprec-
edented length while affirm-
ing Pollard's guilt in the glare
of the law.
Pollard deserved to be
punished for his crime, but
it's time to commute his sentence to time
served, a 2012 bipartisan U.S. House let-
ter calling for clemency declared. A 2010
House letter argued that Pollard has served
longer than "many others who were found
guilty of similar activity on behalf of
nations adversarial to us, unlike Israel:'
Time served often is measured against
the established timeline for conviction of a
specific kind of crime. Pollard took money
while committing a felony, was found
guilty, expressed remorse and has served a
stiff price. The median sentence for such a
crime is 2-4 years in prison.

Benedict Strengthened
Catholic-Jewish Bonds

D

ivergent and irreconcilable differences aside, Israel-Vatican
relations continue to be warm and inviting despite bumps on
the interfaith highway. The positive conversation between
the Catholic Church and the Jewish people spotlights the Church's
desire to talk, build and cooperate.
On Feb.11, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world
by announcing he would step down at the end
of February after nearly eight years of service
because of frail health at age 85, the first papal
resignation since the 15th century. "Under his
leadership," Israeli President Shimon Peres said,
"the Vatican has been a clear voice against rac-
ism and anti-Semitism – and a clear voice for
Pope Benedict
peace."
XVI
Benedict transcended his quiet demeanor to
succeed the charismatic John Paul II, who, over
26 years, promoted stronger Jewish-Christian ties. As pope, the
former German-born Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger not only confronted
the ghosts of the Vatican's long-dark corridors to the Jewish com-
munity, but also was instrumental in Israel and the Vatican pursuing
a new Fundamental Agreement governing relations between them.
Benedict twice visited a synagogue; only John Paul II had visited
even one. In 2006, Benedict visited Auschwitz in Poland to con-
front his conflicted past as a forced member of Hitler's Youth; he
proclaimed himself "a son of Germany" and prayed for Holocaust
victims. On a 2009 Holy Land pilgrimage, he visited Yad Vashem,
Israel's Holocaust memorial, and met with survivors.
In 2011, Benedict showed his mettle in theologically repudiating
Jewish guilt for Jesus' death. He gave Catholics scriptural evidence,
affirming a position the Church took 46 years before, that the
Jewish people could not be held forever responsible for the crime
of deicide – a charge that caused millions of Jews to suffer through
the ages. The pope denied the Gospel of St. John claim that the
Jewish people collaborated with the Roman authorities in Jesus'
execution. In a then-new volume of his book Jesus of Nazareth-
Holy Week, Benedict argued that John, ethnically a Jew like Jesus,
referred to the priestly "Temple aristocracy" in using the term "the
Jews."
The pontiff's bold absolving of Jews collectively for the
Crucifixion no doubt helped stem the rise in global Jew-hatred. Still,
it took him six years to right that 2,000-year-old wrong. In 1965,
the Second Vatican Council's Nostra Aetate (In Our Age) declared
to be a false teaching the common belief that the Jewish people as
a collective criminally killed Jesus. That landmark document, which
Benedict immediately supported as a young theologian, revived
Catholic-Jewish dialogue.
Benedict sent off sparks in 2008 when he sought to restore a
conversion-of-Jews prayer to Easter Week services featuring the old
Latin mass. The Vatican later offered a "tempered" version of the
prayer, which still suggested salvation was only possible for Jews
who converted to Christianity.
Further, Benedict should have apologized for the relative silence
of the Church during the Holocaust. The Vatican maintains Pope
Pius XII worked outside the limelight to intervene on the Jews'
behalf where he could. If true, Benedict and the Church should have
opened private archives to validate that Pius was fully fit to be a
saint before seeking beatification.
Pope Benedict XVI's legacy isn't one of dramatically advancing
the historic change in the relationship between Catholics and Jews
begun by John Paul II. But he did much to affirm and embrace it.

❑

Plight on page 45