Terror Victims’ Families to Obama: Let Pollard Go

Lazar Berman; AP; Times of Israel staff

Terror Victims’ Families to Obama: Let Pollard Go

In emotional letter, relatives of victims of freed Palestinian prisoners call for release of Israeli spy

The Times of Israel

2014-04-06


Israelis demonstrate at the Western Wall for the release of Jonathan Pollard in 2005. (photo credit: Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Families of victims of terrorists released by Israel in the context of peace talks with the Palestinians called on US President Barack Obama Sunday to release convicted spy Jonathan Pollard from his imprisonment in the United States.

“Mr. President, with a broken heart we are turning to you and asking you—please release Pollard, in the name of justice, compassion and humanity,” read the emotional letter, signed by 22 relatives of victims of Palestinian prisoners already released over the past nine months. The letter was publicized by Almagor, a terror victims’ advocacy organization.

Calling the release of terrorists “an absurd nightmare” for the families, the letter emphasizes the pain the relatives feel every day as a result of the loss of their loved ones and the failure of their campaign to prevent the release of the terrorists.

“Sadly, we did not succeed in our struggle. Close to 80 cold-blooded murderers were freed in the last three releases, and were received with massive celebrations by Abu Mazen [PA President Mahmoud Abbas] while being portrayed as heroes. We felt our hearts explode at the sight of killers of children being carried on peoples’ shoulders, we trembled seeing them sitting in television studios, dressed for a celebration and explaining with pride how they slaughtered our relatives, inciting the young generation to follow in their footsteps…”

“Mr. President,” the letter continued, “the entire Jewish nation, and we perhaps more than anyone else, felt in the past week that one good thing was about to happen here. After close to 30 years, the open wound of the Pollard episode stood ready to conclude.”

The letter concluded with a very personal plea from the victims’ families. “If all the requests and considerations weren’t enough, please do this as a gesture to the families who lost those most dear to them, who were forced to see the murderers of their precious ones freed, so that the end of the Pollard tragedy will offer them at least a tiny sliver of consolation.”


Palestinians celebrate the third installment of the prisoner release by Israel at the presidential compound in Ramallah, December 31, 2013. (photo credit: Issam Rimawi/Flash90)

Last week, Israeli officials asserted that Jerusalem had been ready to approve a complex, three-way deal under which Israel would have freed a fourth and final batch of 26-30 long-term Palestinian terror convicts and also released 400 more Palestinian security prisoners not guilty of violent crimes. Peace talks would have extended beyond the current April 29 deadline, and the US would have released Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.

Israeli officials accused Abbas of torpedoing the deal.

While the PA says Israel breached its commitments by failing to free the fourth and final group of 26 long-term terrorist convicts last week, Israeli officials say that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was on the verge of approving a more far-reaching prisoner deal—which would also have provided for Pollard’s release—when Abbas shocked Netanyahu by signing on live TV applications for the PA to join 15 UN and other international treaties.

The US-born Pollard, 59, has spent 28 years behind bars, and is up for parole next year.

The former naval intelligence analyst who turned over suitcases stuffed with US Cold War-era secrets to the Israelis in the mid-1980s is a cause celebre among some segments of the Jewish community worldwide.

The American intelligence and defense community for years dug in its heels over keeping Pollard imprisoned, on the grounds that he was a US native son who took foreign cash to betray his country.
The letter from the victims’ families will be passed to the White House through US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro.