Caroline Glick: 2 Things Left For Bush To Do In The Middle East
With just six weeks remaining to his tenure in office, much of what Bush will leave behind him has already been determined. But there are two things he can still do that will impact greatly both the world he leaves behind and how he is judged by history: He can take action against Iran’s nuclear program, and he can embrace Israel as an ally by pardoning four men who have been persecuted for assuming the alliance exists.
On the surface, these two agenda items couldn’t be more disparate. By neutralizing Iran’s nuclear installations Bush would save the lives of millions of people. By pardoning Jonathan Pollard, Larry Franklin, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, he would save the lives of four people.
The situation these 4 men find themselves in is due to a large extent not merely what they did, but for whom they did it. As Glick puts it, President Bush now has the opportunity to “embrace Israel as an ally by pardoning four men who have been persecuted for assuming the alliance exists”:
In 1985, when Jonathan Pollard was arrested for transferring classified information to Israel, he was not treated like a man who had transferred secrets to a US ally. He was treated like a man who had transferred secrets to al-Qaida. His sentence of life in prison was meant to serve as a deterrent for anyone who dared question the view that Israel is nothing more than an albatross placed around the US’s neck by a powerful American Jewish lobby and by dimwitted politicians.
Whereas Pollard’s fate was sealed long before Bush entered the White House, Franklin, Rosen and Weissman’s nightmare began under his watch.
In 2006, former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin was sentenced to 12 years in prison for seeking the assistance of two AIPAC lobbyists - Rosen and Weissman - in bringing the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear weapons program to Bush’s attention. By speaking with Rosen and Weissman, Franklin was behaving as countless government employees behave. He was prosecuted not for sharing information with the men, but for mistakenly assuming that his view of Israel as a US ally was shared by the powers-that-be in Washington.
Weissman and Rosen are in the midst of a long, costly, drawn-out trial and stand charged with mishandling classified information under a statute that has not been enforced since World War I. For more than four years they have been treated as criminals for doing nothing more than their job as lobbyists - for a lobby that was founded on the understanding that the US and Israel are strategic allies.
Now we need to speak up for these 4 men. Today saw the launching of the campaign to request a Presidential Pardon for Jonathan Pollard.
by Daled Amos
as Rabbi Meir Kahane ZTZ”L said: america is in nothing different than any other state on earth in regard to us Jews.
IT’S TIME TO GO HOME, TED AND ALL OTHERS!
Comment by Tar Yag — November 25, 2008 @ 7:00 pm
Tar Yag
I think you are addressing the wrong crowd here for most Jewish readers and commenters on Israpundit, Israel is an abstraction and only for a few esoteric. Many if not most Hebrews stayed in Egypt as well as Babylon. What I am sure of and you would agree I am sure, nothing good is in store for those Jews who are unbudging and deaf to your plea. Kahane was also critical of the Dati-Orthodox he wrote:
The Religious Jew
The “religious” Jew? Nay, say rather the Orthodox practitioner of Jewish ritual whose sojourn in an Exile two millennia old has corrupted and perverted the most basic of real Jewish values. Bearded and piously payotic; or cleanshaven and woolly skullcapped, they join with all the others in the ecumenical worship of the Golden Calf of our times:
The Golden Exile. http://www.geocities.com/nkmpa/religiousjew.html
Israel? Go up to the Land of Israel? Go up to the Land to which they turn in prayer three times daily - meticulously; never missing a ritual? Go up to the Land concerning which they shed hot tears every Tisha B’Av, anniversary of the national day of national mourning? Actually uproot themselves from the Exile and go dwell in the Zion and Jerusalem they piously seek every year, “next year?”
But the chandeliers and the expensive shaitel wig and the quicksand that is the good life are far more powerful than commandments.
“For you are to pass over the Jordan to go in to possess the Land which the L-rd your G-d giveth you, and you shall possess it and dwell therein.” (Deuteronomy 11)
“And they scorned the desirable land.” (Psalms 106)
And so they invent all kinds of rationales, all cloaked in a tallit that is all blue. “Israel is also Exile…” “This is not the beginning of the redemption, merely the footsteps of the Messiah…”
Comment by yamit82 — November 26, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
Tar Yag
Kahane said a lot of things even this:
The Religious Jew
The “religious” Jew? Nay, say rather the Orthodox practitioner of Jewish ritual whose sojourn in an Exile two millennia old has corrupted and perverted the most basic of real Jewish values. Bearded and piously payotic; or cleanshaven and woolly skullcapped, they join with all the others in the ecumenical worship of the Golden Calf of our times:
The Golden Exile.
Israel? Go up to the Land of Israel? Go up to the Land to which they turn in prayer three times daily - meticulously; never missing a ritual? Go up to the Land concerning which they shed hot tears every Tisha B’Av, anniversary of the national day of national mourning? Actually uproot themselves from the Exile and go dwell in the Zion and Jerusalem they piously seek every year, “next year?”
But the chandeliers and the expensive shaitel wig and the quicksand that is the good life are far more powerful than commandments.
And so they invent all kinds of rationales, all cloaked in a tallit that is all blue. “Israel is also Exile…” “This is not the beginning of the redemption, merely the footsteps of the Messiah…”
http://www.geocities.com/nkmpa/religiousjew.html
Comment by yamit82 — November 27, 2008 @ 4:54 pm