Shalits call for Pollard release
ISRAEL’s most famous former prisoner, Gilad Shalit, has thrown his weight behind the campaign to free Jonathan Pollard – and his father has discussed the move with The AJN.
While it has long moved the political echelon, the campaign to free Pollard, who is serving a life sentence in a US prison for spying for Israel when he was in the American navy back in the 1980s, has often failed to catch the imagination of the Israeli public. But the support of Shalit is expected to prove a major boost.
Gilad “can feel the plight and ordeal of Jonathan Pollard, so he is very much in favour of releasing him,” his father Noam Shalit, who has also called for Pollard’s freedom, told The AJN.
He said: “It’s natural that as the family who expected captivity and prison that we think that Jonathan Pollard should be released after so many years.”
However, in contrast to some pro-Pollard activists who justify his actions as essential for Israel’s security, Noam Shalit described them as constituting a “grave crime against the American people and the American law.” Nevertheless, his freedom “has become a humanitarian issue.”
Noam Shalit concluded: “The Israeli people should ask for forgiveness from the American people and ask for a pardon.”
The Shalits’ call came as the Pollard campaign went in to high gear, after it emerged that he has been hospitalised. Pollard reportedly was rushed to a hospital outside of the prison on the eve of Passover suffering from an unspecified emergency condition. He has suffered from a variety of illnesses since being imprisoned in 1986.
The Shalits were among signatories of a petition calling on President Shimon Peres to make a personal request to his American counterpart Barack Obama to grant clemency.
Peres obliged, and sent a letter to Obama. However, shortly afterwards US National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told reporters that there was “no change” in his country’s stance on Pollard.
Benjamin Netanyahu, who became the first Israeli Prime Minister to appeal to America to free Pollard in December 2010, has also renewed his call following the hospitalisation.
Several Israeli politicians, including Kadima’s Ronit Tirosh and Uri Ariel of National Union are calling on Peres to snub Obama if he does not change his position. They want him to refuse the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which Obama is due to give him soon, and refuse to meet him.
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