Israel Hayom revealed an extremely long, fawning interview on Friday with convicted American traitor and Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. It made for startling studying.
The newspaper is owned by Miriam Adelson, Israel’s richest individual and the widow of the late on line casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. The couple had been main funders of the pro-Israel foyer within the US.
Adelson’s paper is little greater than a pro-Netanyahu propaganda sheet, given away at no cost to affect Israeli elections in an more and more right-wing, anti-Palestinian path. In her vanity column within the paper earlier this yr, Miriam Adelson went on document praising Pollard as a “hero” who deserves to be honoured by Israel. Pollard had simply spent 30 years in a US jail and on parole for treason, after being convicted of spying on the US for Israel.
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The previous US naval intelligence analyst bought a whole lot of top-secret US paperwork to Israel and different nations, in change for wads of money stuffed into brown paper envelopes. At the moment, following his release, he lives in Israel and is attempting to rewrite historical past.
In his interview with Israel Hayom – whose journalists have plumbed to new depths within the historical past of hagiographic puff items with this simpering effort – Pollard claimed, unchallenged, that: “I made it very clear I did not need any cash. Very clear, proper off the bat, that this was not about cash. I did not need any items.”
That is merely unfaithful.
US investigators discovered that Pollard had been paid $1,500 a month, rising to $2,500 a month, by the Israeli spy company, Mossad. In today’s money, that will be about $6,000 a month, on high of his regular wage from US Naval Intelligence.
Later within the interview, Pollard conceded that he was actually paid for promoting the secrets and techniques he stole to Israel. On the insistence of his Mossad handlers, he mentioned. Much more extremely, he claimed, “that the cash he acquired went to cowl bills incurred by the mission.”
That is one other lie.
In actual fact, as Territory of Lies, Wolf Blitzer’s 1989 ebook about Pollard, relates, one of many issues that tipped US counter-intelligence officers off to Pollard’s treachery was the lavish new life-style he was all of the sudden main, shopping for costly items and consuming out at fancy eating places. On one event, he was even rewarded by Israel with a $10,000 diamond and sapphire engagement ring for his first spouse. He later dumped her for Esther, the lady who ran the “Free Jonathan Pollard” marketing campaign in Israel.
Nonetheless, Pollard’s chutzpah and bare-faced mendacity was not probably the most alarming facet of the turgid Israel Hayom interview. He additionally agitated overtly in opposition to American Jews, selling anti-Semitic myths within the course of.
The truth that somebody spying for Israel may also be anti-Semitic shouldn’t be as uncommon as it might sound to these not accustomed to the true historical past of Israeli intelligence businesses. Calling for Jews to depart their native nations and transfer to Israel, Pollard instructed the interviewers, “We’re Jews, and if we’re Jews, we’ll at all times have twin loyalty.”
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Pollard was selling the anti-Semitic lie that every one Jews are secretly loyal to Israel — with the implication that they’re disloyal to their nations of delivery — irrespective of the place they had been born or reside. Or not less than they need to be, he claimed. This can be a sickening, harmful, and false cost which performs straight into the palms and propaganda of the anti-Semites of this world.
Criticisms of Israel labelled as antisemitism – Cartoon [Carlos Latuff/Twitter]
The irony, in fact, is that journalists like myself who expose the actions of Israel’s actual brokers, partisans, lobbyists, and anti-Palestinian campaigners within the West are accused of “anti-Semitism”, at the same time as we exit of our approach to clarify the necessary distinctions between Jews with distinct non secular, ethnic or cultural identities on one hand, and Zionism as a violent, racist, political ideology on the opposite.
But right here was Jonathan Pollard – a convicted American traitor, spy for Israel and nationwide hero to many Israelis – blatantly inciting in opposition to American Jews as having a “main drawback – they think about themselves extra American than they do Jews.”
There was yet another a part of Pollard’s interview that was maybe of most concern; or not less than it is going to be to the US counter-intelligence officers who’ve, little question, learn it intently.
Requested by the interviewers what his recommendation could be for any younger American who was recruited by Mossad at this time, Pollard was openly unapologetic. Regardless of a thinly veiled try to be cryptic, he clearly appeared to be encouraging extra US intelligence officers — and maybe others — to betray their nation and swap allegiance to Israel.
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“I might inform him, not doing something is unacceptable,” he mentioned. He claimed that merely shifting to Israel is “not acceptable” and that he ought to do extra, seemingly by staying within the US to spy for Israel.
“It’s important to decide whether or not your concern for Israel… is extra necessary than your life,” mentioned Pollard.
“So that you suggest that he ought to do what you probably did, and pay the value?” requested the interviewer.
“I want him to go in along with his eyes open,” was Pollard’s reply.
The views expressed on this article belong to the writer and don’t essentially mirror the editorial coverage of Center East Monitor.
