In the latest Israeli attempt to get the convicted spy Jonathan Pollard clemency which he does not deserve, Israeli president Shimon Peres has appealed to the White House to release Pollard because Pollard’s health is deteriorating and Pollard’s wife, whom he married after being convicted, does not want to become a widow while he is in prison. As expected, the Obama administration turned down Peres’s request to release Pollard. I wholeheartedly support this decision – Pollard is an unrepentant spy who stole massive amounts of classified intelligence, disgustingly attempted to drag the American Jewish community into his case by turning himself into a cause celebre, and has done an incalculable amount of damage to American Jews by raising concerns about dual loyalty, particularly for those who have deep connections to Israel and want to work for the government in a position that requires security clearance. The entire U.S. security and intelligence establishment is unanimous in its position that Pollard should remain where he is, so much so that George Tenet threatened to resign as CIA director if Pollard was released, and no matter what Pollard’s supporters may claim, this universal hardline position is not motivated by anti-Semitism but by the fact that what Pollard did was unforgivable.

The point of this post is not to go on a rant about Pollard, which I have been known to do at the drop of a hat. Rather, it is to explain why it is that despite the mythical power attributed by some to the pro-Israel lobby, which has made Pollard’s release a priority, there has been and will be no change in Pollard’s status. It is a curious problem for the John Mearsheimers of the world, since if Israel and groups such as AIPAC are able to push the U.S. to take all sorts of actions contrary to its own interests in the Middle East, securing clemency for Pollard should be a relative breeze. Pollard’s cause is not by any means a fringe issue. A list of groups and individuals calling at some point for Pollard’s release includes the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Congress, B’nai B’rith International, the World Zionist Congress, the state assemblies of New York and New Jersey, Arlen Spector, Rudy Giuliani, numerous congressmen and local officials, and both Jewish and Christian religious leaders. It is also notable that despite the high priority assigned by pro-Israel groups to the Pollard case, Congress has never passed a resolution calling for his release, or even calling for his case to be reexamined. Given the conventional wisdom in some quarters that Congress in particular is owned by the pro-Israel lobby, one would at least expect to see Congress pressing for Pollard’s release while successive administrations stand firm on keeping him behind bars.

As I have pointed out in a different venue, the failure of pro-Israel groups to sway politicians in this case is because support for Israel is highly dependent on public opinion rather than on the Israel lobby, and the American public takes a strong position against Pollard and his release. In January 1986, in the aftermath of the Pollard case and a number of other cases involving foreign spies, 75 percent of Americans favored mandatory polygraph tests for government employees handling secret information, 63 percent supported firing any managers who turned out to have spies working under them, and 62 percent were in favor of a mandatory death penalty for anyone caught passing secrets to a foreign government. Clearly, the public was not in a forgiving mood when it came to leniency or clemency for spies, making no distinction between spies for hostile governments or spies for allies.

In addition, the Pollard case affected the way the public viewed Israel in particular. A Harris poll in March 1987 found that while 68 percent of the American people viewed Israel as either a close ally or a friendly nation, versus only 18 percent that considered it to be hostile, it was the second lowest positive score for Israel in the history of the Harris poll to date, and it had dropped 13 points from 1984. There is no public polling data available on the Pollard issue specifically, which is unfortunate because it would make this argument even stronger. It can be assumed though that the general views of the public on how to treat spies are unlikely to have changed, and the sharp dip in positive views of Israel in the aftermath of Pollard’s exposure as a foreign agent is a good indicator that even today Pollard is unlikely to be viewed as a sympathetic figure deserving of clemency. This is a clear case where the weight of pro-Israel groups’ lobbying efforts has run into the wall of public opinion, and politicians have demonstrated that their desire to please voters and guard American national security interests trumps the wishes of the pro-Israel community, no matter how well-organized and well-funded it is.

Keep this in mind the next time you come across the argument that AIPAC controls American foreign policy in the Middle East, or that Netanyahu and other Israeli prime ministers are able to get whatever they want from whichever president occupies the White House at any given point in time. Pollard is a high priority issue, yet there has literally been zero movement on the part of the U.S. to release him despite official requests from respected Israeli leaders such as Peres and Yitzchak Rabin and efforts on Netanyahu’s part to tie peace agreements with the Palestinians to Pollard’s release. Yes, AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups have a lot of sway, but it is because they are pushing on an open door. When public opinion goes the other way on issues of national security, no amount of lobbying, public haranguing, or campaign donations is going to make a difference. What this means is that Jonathan Pollard is going to die in prison, despite the best efforts of many influential and well-connected organizations and individuals to change that basic reality.

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