Petition: Obama, Bring Pollard

By COLlive reporter

Some 60,000 people have signed an online petition asking that U.S. President Barack Obama pardon and release Jonathan Pollard.

Americans have refused continued calls to release Pollard, a civilian U.S. intelligence analyst, who leaked classified documents to Israel and received a life sentence.

Among those who have signed the petition are former President Yitzchak Navon, several Nobel Prize winners, artists, Knesset members, and public and corporate officials.

Once a niche cause of the Israeli religious right wing, the call for Pollard’s freedom has now become a matter of consensus in Israel, AP points out.

Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau has written a letter which he plans to present to President Obama during his visit, the first as President of the United States of America.

“Following our President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with tens of thousands of Israelis as well as American leaders such as Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, I, too, add my voice to the many asking you to consider pardoning Jonathan Pollard,” he wrote.

Lau, a Holocaust survivor, asks Obama to allow Pollard “to live the rest of his life with his wife Esther in Israel, which has granted him citizenship. This act, Mr. President, will inscribe upon the hearts of those who seek freedom around the world, as a humanitarian gesture that will make a major historical impact.”

White House officials say there is no change in policy and no plans to free Pollard.

Pollard’s lawyer, Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, said he suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney stones.

In other related news, newly elected Knesset member Orit Strook of the Jewish Home party has called President Obama to visit Chevron, one of the four holiest cities to the Jewish people.

“It would be a good idea to take President Obama not just to Mount Herzel and Yad Vashem, but also – actually, mainly – to the Machpelah Cave in Hevron,” Strook said.

“We would explain to him that the Land of Israel is not just a refuge for Holocaust survivors, but it is the Promised Land for the Jewish people, the land of our forefathers, who are buried in the Cave.”