CLINTON READYING TO "RELEASE" POLLARD SO HE CAN GO "HOME"

                          FEW CARE ABOUT VANUNU

MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 5/26:

A once Israeli-citizen languishes in prison for an act of conscience that was important to the world -- telling all he knew about Israel's massive nuclear weapons program which led to the LONDON SUNDAY TIMES expose in the 80s.  He was then lured from London by a femme fatale Mossad Agent, kidnapped illegally from Rome, secretly tried and imprisoned in solitary confinement for a decade.  For many years now people around the world, including European notables and movie stars, have urged and begged the Israelis to finally let him go.  To no avail.

Now a once American-citizen, secretly spying for Israel, is going to be released to go "home"; even while Mordechai Vanunu is left to languish in Israeli imprisonment.  It's a travesty of course; but then, sadly, there are so many travesties of justice when it comes to matters Middle Eastern.

Vanunu himself has told his supporters not to equate him with Pollard and not to suggest a trade.  He's right again in terms of the people involved, what they did, and what their motives were -- there is no moral equivalency here, no comparison of persons and motives and actions.

But even so its hard not to see what's happening here.  One guy will be getting a Presidential pardon and will then return a hero with, by the way, a very sizeable bank account the Israelis have been adding to monthly all these years.  The other fellow stays in prison, gets little notice, and other than the knowledge that he did the right and moral thing in the special circumstances he faced, there's not much waiting for him but for a few handouts from disorganized supporters.  One is a clear traitor, defiantly manifesting the "dual loyalty" Jews collectively are sometimes tarred with.  The other is a man of considerable moral conviction who has been failed by the indifferent world all around him, one which still faces growing proliferation of terrible weapons of mass destruction whose day of reckoning probably lies ahead of us all.

Now Bill Clinton has attempted to project a very different image, but the reality is that when it comes to matters Middle Eastern this American President has been a captive of the Israeli/Jewish lobby as no other before him.  We have detailed this abysmal and unprecedented situation in many articles in recent years.

There is great opposition from within the U.S. intelligence community to the release
of Jonathan Pollard for many reasons, including ongoing Israeli intelligence
operations against the U.S. that no one in official Washington has the guts to pursue.  Clinton tried to release Pollard in the past, but then backed away fearing the backlash from government and media.  The word is, though, that Netanyahu was not wrong, Clinton had indeed promised to let Pollard go if Bibi would just keep the "peace process" going as was done at Wye River in 1998.  Then Clinton backtracked when so many in the bureaucracy got so upset, the CIA director even threatening to resign.

Clinton has now, we have good reason to believe, promised Barak that when he can manage to do it, when the time is right, Pollard will be Presidentially pardoned.  And rest assured, when the Israeli Knesset starts passing such public resolutions calling for Pollard, "an Israeli citizen", to be released, its pretty much a done deal.  Clinton will make this further payoff to the Israelis and their powerful lobby of supporters before he leaves office if he possibly can, more than likely he'll do it at the time of the next signing of whatever deal Arafat can be coerced, bribed, and threatened, to put his name to.  And that may be soon, quite possibly this summer in fact.

Here's the Knesset resolution, unanimously passed earlier this week:

 "The Knesset sends blessings of strength and courage to Israeli citizen
 Jonathan Pollard who has been incarcerated in an American prison for 15
 years now.  The Knesset calls upon the American President to grant clemency
 to Jonathan Pollard at once and to release him from prison.  The Knesset
 calls upon the Prime Minister to place Israel's request for the immediate
 release of Jonathan Pollard at the top of his agenda in his contacts with
 President Clinton."

For more information about Mordechai Vanunu, the "nuclear prisoner of conscience," including a multi-part series of TV programs made by MER-TV about Vanunu, go to: http://www.MiddleEast.Org/search.htm
 
 
 
 
 
 

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