ISRAEL ,THE UNITED STATES AND THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY ALL BETRAYED JONATHAN POLLARD

Previously, I sent you "Pollard Defenders Vindicated--After 25 years, the CIA has declassified documents that show Jonathan Pollard never spied on the U.S. for Israel" by Lee Smith December 20, 2012 

     *Judge Aubrey Eugene Robinson Jr.  illegally conducted back channel communications with the prosecution who inflamed Judge Robinson by telling him (falsely) that Pollard had provided security information to South Africa. 

     *  Judge Robinson sentenced Jonathan Pollard to life in prison in 1987, claiming that information provided by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger showed that Pollard's spying on behalf of Israel had caused significant damage to American security interests.

 

     *Pollard's Defense (regardless of the level of their security clearances ) were never given access to these charges nor afforded an opportunity to rebut them. As individual accusations leaked out they have been all successfully rebutted. 

     *Now,  After 25 years, the CIA has declassified documents that show Jonathan Pollard never spied on the U.S. for Israel. the CIA report reveals that Pollard did not procure secrets about the United States—nor did Israel ask him to. The intelligence he provided his Israeli handlers consisted of the information that the United States had acquired concerning Arab and other Middle Eastern states.

The  multitude of  public leak and sentensing memo accusations against Pollard have proved to be false. He did not compromise agents. He did not compromise means and sources .  He did not compromise any information relating to US  forces.  All the information he transmitted related to Arab equipment, capabilities, etc. In other words, very simply, he compromised “Defense information” but did not spy against the United States.

     *What adds to this outrage is that the Obama administration knows full well the facts and has elected explicitly to continue Jonathan Pollard's imprisonment in order to keep him as Dennis Ross described as a “bargaining chip”.

I have had no connection ever with Jonathan Pollard or with his prosecution. As a matter of fact, I was not a close follower of the case in the media. My original reaction was “he is a traitor, lock him up and throw away the key.” Also, I was extremely  upset at Israeli for utilizing a Jewish agent which gives the anti-Semites and state, CIA, etc. (who are plentiful) to voice the mantra of “dual loyalty”.

{Zionist Spies Against America - Rense    Ukrainian Revisionism - Jewish spies against America: a long tradition Jewish spies against America: a long tradition.
Pentagon: We thought engineer was Israeli spy because he's a Jew ... 

Israeli Spying: The Mother of all Scandals }

I was involved in the Kadish case  for the DOD and DOJ. They assumed that every document he ever read was compromised. Thus I reviewed the 200+ documents that he had requisitioned. Nearly all were at the official use level. All dealt with logistical support details. None were sensitive. The only documents on "nuclear materials” dealt with the mating of the physical missiles with the aircraft systems (which wire was attached to which wire and which hose was attached to which hose.) Any connection to Pollard was far-fetched. Kadish pled guilty in a deal that permitted him to keep all his retirement and benefits and involved no jail time or other civil penalties. At that time I wrote an article which was published on this case

THIS SENSATIONAL (NOT CORRECT) ARTICLE WAS TYPICAL: Ex-U.S. Army engineer Kadish pleads guilty to spying for Israel Kadish charged with slipping classified documents about nuclear weapons to Israeli Consulate employee in 1980s. By The Associated Press | Dec. 30, 2008 

I am also familiar with the AIPAC/Larry Franklin case. Franklin (not Jewish) was accused of providing “top  secret policy materials” to AIPAC (and presumably to Israel). As there was no US policy at that time---we were all circulating drafts attempting to influence US policy--nothing was classified. In fact, I received drafts containing much more “defense materials” from Robert Gates and from Zbigniew  Brzezinski .

 The judge eventually dismissed all charges against Stephen Rosen  and Keith  Weissman.  The judge lashed into the persecution for their underhanded and unethical behavior.  

 Legal experts said the government was wrong in the first place for trying to criminalize the kind of information horse-trading that long has occurred in Washington. 

THE BASIC QUESTIONS RELATING TO THE POLLARD CASE ARE:

 WHAT WAS  HE ACTUALLY INDICTED FOR? WHAT WAS HE ACTUALLY GUILTY OF?

In a recent article appearing on-line Prof. Angelo Codevilla, a staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time Jonathan Pollard was arrested is quoted:“Having been intimately acquainted with the materials that Pollard passed and with the sources and methods by which they were gathered, I would be willing to give expert testimony that Pollard is guilty of neither more nor less than what the indictment alleges.”

The  multitude of  public leak and sentensing memo accusations against Pollard have proved to be false. He did not compromise agents. He did not compromise means and sources .  He did not compromise any information relating to US  forces.  All the information he transmitted related to Arab equipment, capabilities, etc. In other words, very simply, he compromised “Defense information” but did not spy against the United States. 

 U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (long regarded by Israel as antagonistic toward the Jewish state),intimidated to the court that Pollard gave information to the Soviets.  The assumption was  that "means and sources "information was being transmitted to the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union fell we found out that our assumptions that the Soviet Union had penetrated Israeli intelligence and that US intelligence going to Israel was in fact ending up in the Soviet Union WERE FALSE.(Later, we came to learn that this was the doing of Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames.)

WHAT IS THE APPROPRIATE AND COMPARABLE PUNISHMENT FOR HIS ACTUAL TRANSGRESSIONS?During the same time period  a spy caught working for Saudi Arabia (a Navy officer named Schwarz-not Jewish- where the intelligence did in fact go to an enemy power-and was very harmful to US military interests) received a dishonorable discharge and nothing further as punishment 

THE BOTTOM LINE IS: DO YOU FEEL THAT POLLARD  SHOULD BE RELEASED?

 ALSO, DO YOU FEEL THAT IT IS DESPICABLE THAT A PROMINENT JEWISH MEMBER OF THE OBAMA TEAM HAS PUBLICLY ADVOCATED THAT POLLARD  NOT BE RELEASED BUT RATHER THAT HE STILL  BE HELD AS A “BARGAINING CHIP”.One of the major reasons for incarcerating Pollard-and thus holding him as hostage-was the widespread belief (spread by Aldrich Ames to cover his own tracks) that there was a 2nd Israeli mole inside the CIA. U.S. officials  repeatedly, publicly claimed that Pollard was not working alone when he spied for Israel and  the United States therefore  should make Pollard's release conditional on Israel acknowledging this"BASELESS." claim. 

Now follows the 2 articles I mentioned.

 1.     Israel Betrayed Pollard, Too

Sidney Zion - NY Daily News -June 22, 2000

A sensational revelation about the Jonathan Pollard case surfaced this week. When the Israeli government agreed to return the purloined papers obtained through its American spy, the United States government agreed that it would not use the stuff to convict Pollard.

But as soon as the documents got to Washington, the FBI slammed them in Pollard's face, forcing a guilty plea that resulted in a life sentence .

Until the other day, Pollard didn't know about the deal brokered by then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Secretary of State George Shultz in 1985, right after Pollard's arrest. But now, a 1987 report by a Knesset committee chaired by Abba Eban has finally seen the light of day. And it shows a dark picture of denial and deceit — a virtual triple-cross — that has doomed Pollard for 15 years, with no end in sight.

Without the documents, our government had no real case against Pollard. When he was caught trying to get into the Israeli Embassy in Washington, he had only those few papers he could hold. The U.S. interest was to retrieve the mass of documents that had been passed, and Israel was more than willing to give them back. Shultz wanted to keep this terribly embarrassing situation between allies as limited as possible.

But Israel needed certain conditions: Pollard's handlers must be granted immunity from prosecution in America, and Pollard would not be convicted based on the purloined papers. Immunity was granted to the three Israeli agents who had brought Pollard, a Navy intelligence officer, into the deal. There would not be immunity for Pollard, but the documents returned to America would not be used against him.

When the FBI, against this agreement, hit Pollard with the papers, which had his fingerprints all over them, he felt he had no choice but to plead guilty.

The Justice Department offered him a "substantial sentence," which was understood to be no more than 10 years in prison. No other spy for an allied government had received more than four years.

But an hour before sentencing, then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger delivered a memo to the trial judge proclaiming Pollard "the worst spy in American history." He accused him of treason, a charge never made by the prosecution because it couldn't be made, since Israel is an ally of America.

Thus, Pollard became the first defendant in history to receive the maximum after pleading guilty. And on a secret affidavit the public has not yet seen. And against an American guarantee that what he stole would not be used against him. If this be due process. ...

Where were the Israelis while this was going on? They never advised Pollard that America had agreed to keep the documents out of the case. He pleaded guilty without knowing this, and when his appeal came up, he still didn't know.

Indeed, until two years ago, the Israeli government refused to confirm that he was their agent. They protected his handlers but left him out in the cold.

And all the while, until this day, the CIA has been spreading stories that make him a danger to America — without a scintilla of evidence to support it. "If you only knew what we know" — that's the mantra.

Well, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) finally got access to these files. "I saw nothing new," Schumer said. "They ought to let him go."

What's new is that they knew it all the time, America and Israel.

2.     The Truth About the Pollard Affair – The Eban Report

By Dr. Aaron Lerner – The Jerusalem Post – June 20, 2000

I would like to share some shocking information that recently came to my attention regarding the Pollard Affair. This new information not only makes the already-powerful arguments for Pollard’s immediate release just that much stronger. It also raises serious questions about US-Israel relations and provides further evidence of Israel’s own role in undermining Pollard’s position.

I recently obtained a copy of the May 26, 1987 Eban Commission Report on the Pollard Affair that was prepared by a subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset.

I was astounded to find the following passage under the heading “The Decision to Cooperate with the US.”

1. Israel agreed to return the American documents it obtained through Pollard, but “conditioned the cooperation on the granting of immunity to the three persons involved in the affair and on the consent of the Americans to the fact that the documents returned would not be used to convict Pollard… ” That’s right. The United States agreed NOT to use the documents in the case against Pollard.

How important were those documents to the case?

Let’s look at what Assistant U.S. Attorney John R. Fisher wrote on page 10 in the June 17, 1987 “Government’s Opposition to Motion to Reduce Sentence”: “Cooperation was not forthcoming in this case until several months after defendant’s arrest. Indeed, defendant agreed to enter a guilty plea and cooperate only after government attorneys and investigators returned from Israel with additional evidence of defendant’s guilt.”

Not only did the Americans break their agreement with Israel and use the documents to prosecute Pollard, the government’s own lawyer states for the record that Pollard pleaded guilty thanks to those documents.

America broke its word and Pollard went to prison.

And what about Israel? In the same section of the Eban Report, which was written just after Pollard was sentenced, three members of the Eban Commission condemned Israel’s return of the documents and concluded,

” …These documents constituted the basis for the conviction and life sentence that Pollard received, in spite of… an American commitment not to use the documents against Pollard.”

When Israel handed over the documents to the US in 1985, it did not advise Jonathan Pollard of the American agreement not to use the documents against him. So he had no way to keep them out of court.

In the summer of 1991, four years after the Eban Report was issued, as Jonathan Pollard prepared to appeal his case, he still did not know that that evidence had no place in the courtroom.

Not only did Israel provide America the gun to shoot Pollard, their silence denied Pollard the opportunity to defend himself against it.

Israel did not stop there.

When Jonathan Pollard signed the plea agreement, he was explicitly defined in the plea agreement as an official agent of the Israeli Government, a status that makes clear Israel’s obligations to him.

After Pollard signed the plea agreement, that passage was crossed out with two different colors of ink by two different representatives – an American and an Israeli.

So, rather than stand by their agent when the US violated an agreement not to use the documents Israel had returned to America, and press for the deal to be honored ex post facto, Israel opted to turn its back on Pollard.

The severity of Jonathan Pollard’s sentence bears no relationship to either the terms of the plea bargain or the crimes he was prosecuted for.

From day one, proponents of the sentence have defended their position by claiming that the damage assessment in Pollard’s classified file is so shocking that it justifies the sentence.

For years this “if you only knew what we know” argument has provided refuge for people who, for whatever reason, did not want to help put an end to this grossly disproportionate punishment.

But now we do know.

New York Senator Charles Schumer did not rely on what others claimed was in the classified Pollard file. He saw it himself. And after reviewing the “if you only knew what we know” file, he revealed the shocking truth – There was nothing to know! That’s right. Schumer, after seeing the file itself, states that there is nothing in it to justify the harsh and unprecedented sentence that Jonathan Pollard is serving.

This revelation raises several questions:

One: Why did the US intelligence community misrepresent the damage caused by the Pollard affair?

Two: What does this tell us about the nature of US – Israel intelligence (and other) relations?

Three: What does this tell us about the senior actors – such as US President Bill Clinton – who most certainly must have been aware that the “if you only knew what we know” line was just that – a line.

Hillary Clinton says that she is “open to learning more (about the Pollard case) and thinking harder about what I think is the right thing to do.” Well the right thing to do today, with the “if you only knew what we know” line excuse demolished, is to set Pollard free. And that’s today – not tomorrow.

Dr. Aaron Lerner is a commentator and Middle East news analyst. He is CEO of IMRA, an independent news service based in Israel.

Pollard hopes to see Ariel Sharon one more time – Gil Hoffman – The Jerusalem Post

1. The associate said Pollard’s interest in Sharon was connected to the 1987 Eban Commission Report, which was the Knesset’s official investigation of the Pollard Case. The report revealed Sharon’s role right after Pollard’s arrest.
   “Sharon was the only one who fought tooth and nail with then-prime minister Shimon Peres and the rest of the cabinet, arguing with them not to return the US documents that Pollard had provided to Israel,” the associate said. “Sharon warned that doing so would endanger the agent’s life.”
   According to the Eban Report, Sharon argued that Israel must first rescue Pollard and then do whatever else was deemed necessary.
   He was adamant that Israel do nothing until the safe return of its agent was first assured.
   The Eban Report indicated that two other ministers supported Sharon’s position, but he was out-voted and Peres’s promise to then-US secretary of state George Schultz to return the documents was ratified. The report also confirmed that the documents were the only evidence the US had on Pollard.
   Without them, they would not have had enough of a case against him.
   When the cabinet voted to return the documents, the report said Sharon declared: “You have just killed the agent!”

Israel and the death of pan-Arabism

Friday, January 10th, 2014

By CAROLINE GLICK

The so-called Arab Spring unleashed forces that have been dormant for a century. Like their counterparts throughout the region, Israel’s Arabic-speaking minorities are changing in profound ways. But our leaders fail to grasp the implications of what is happening.

Consider the Christian community.

Father Gabriel Nadaf, a Greek Orthodox priest from Nazareth, has become the symbol of this new period. Nadaf is the spiritual leader of an Israeli Christian movement calling for Israeli Christian youth to serve in the IDF. He is responsible for the 300 percent rise in Christian Arab enlistment in the IDF in the past year.

Nadaf does not hide his goal or his motivation. His seeks the full integration of Israel’s 130,000 Christians into Israeli society. He views military service as the key to that integration.

Nadaf is motivated to act by the massive persecution of Christians throughout the Arab world since the onset of the Arab revolutionary wave in December 2010.

As he explained in a recent interview with Channel 1, it is “in light of what we see happening to Christians in Arab countries, how they are slaughtered and persecuted on a daily basis, killed and raped just because they are Christians. Does this happen in the State of Israel? No, it doesn’t.”

Shahdi Halul, a reserve captain in the Paratroopers who works with Nadaf, declared, “Every Christian in the State of Israel should join the army and defend this country so it will exist forever. Because if, God forbid, the government is overthrown here, as it was in other places, we will be the first to suffer.”

These men, and their supporters, are the natural result of the most significant revolutionary development of the so-called Arab Spring: the demise of Arab nationalism.

As Ofir Haivry, vice president of the Herzl Institute, explained in an important article in the Mosaic online magazine, Arab nationalism was born in pan-Arabism – an invention of European powers during World War I that sought to endow the post-Ottoman Middle East with a new identity.

The core of the new identity was the Arabic language. The religious, tribal, ethnic and nationalist aspirations of the peoples of the Arabic- speaking region were to be smothered and replaced by a new pan-Arab identity.

For the Christians of the former Ottoman Empire, pan-Arabism was a welcome means of getting out from under the jackboot of the Islamic Laws of Omar, which reduce non-Muslims living under Muslim rule to the status of powerless dhimmis, who survive at the pleasure of their Islamic rulers.

But now pan-Arabism lies in ruins from North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. The people of the region have gone back to identifying themselves by tribe, religion, ethnicity, and in the case of the Kurds and the Berbers, non-Arab national identity. In this new era, Christians find themselves imperiled, with few if any protectors or allies to be found.

As Haivry notes, Israel’s central strategic challenge has always been contending with pan-Arabism, which was invented at the same time that the nations of the world embraced modern Zionism.

Since its inception, pan-Arab leaders always saw Israel as the scapegoat on which to pin their failure to deliver on pan-Arabism’s promise of global Arab power and influence.

Israel changed its position on pan-Arabism drastically over the years. Once, Israel could see the dangers in pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism.

But since 1993, says Haivri, Israel’s national strategy has been based on appeasing the secular authoritarian pan-Arab leaders by offering land for peace to Syria and the PLO.

Haivry notes that Shimon Peres is the political godfather of Israel’s accommodationist strategy, which is rooted in a mix of perceived powerlessness on the one hand, and utopianism on the other.

The sense of powerlessness owes to the conviction that Israel cannot influence its environment. That the Arabs will never change. Israel’s neighbors will always see themselves primarily as Arabs, and they will always want, more than anything else, Arab states.

At the same time, the accommodationists hold the utopian belief that Israeli appeasement of Palestinian Arab nationalism will break through the wall of pan-Arab rejection, end hatred for the Jewish state, and even lead the Arabs to invite Israel to join the Arab League.

The so-called Arab Spring has put paid to every one of the accommodationists’ beliefs. From Egypt to Tunisia to Iraq to Syria, Israel’s neighbors are fighting each other as Sunnis, Shi’ites and Salafists, or as members of clans and tribes, without a thought for the alleged primacy of their Arab identity. What Israel’s Palestinian-state-obsessed Left has failed to realize is that many of Israel’s neighbors do not share the pan-Arab scapegoating of the Jewish state. So bribing the now largely irrelevant Arabs nationalists with another Arab state may do little more than create the newest victim of the Arab revolutions.

It is because they see what is happening to their co-religionists in the post-pan-Arab Middle East that more and more Israeli Christians realize they will lead safer, more prosperous and more fulfilling lives as Christian citizens in the Middle East’s only democracy than as pan-Arabs battling the Zionist menace.

But old habits die hard. Most of Israel’s elected Arab leaders owe their positions to their embrace of pan-Arabism. This embrace has brought them the support of the PLO and Europe, and since 1993, of the Israeli Left.

And so, since he first appeared on the scene, Father Nadaf’s life has been constantly threatened. Everyone from Arab members of Knesset to the Communist head of the Greek Orthodox Council has incited against him, calling him and his followers traitors to the Palestinian Arab nation.

He also threatens the Israeli Left. For its view of Israel’s strategic powerlessness and consequent need to appease its neighbors to remain relevant, the pan-Arab forces in the Arab world must be perceived as still dominant, even invincible. And so, the Israeli Left refuses to consider the larger strategic implications of the regional upheaval from which Nadaf’s initiative emerged.

Even worse, the official policy of the Netanyahu government appears based on this irrelevant Leftist view of the region. This is the implication of Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman’s defeatist speech at the Foreign Ministry’s annual conference of ambassadors on Sunday.

Liberman’s speech has been rightly viewed as the supposedly right-wing politician’s formal break with his ideological camp and his embrace of the Left. In his remarks Liberman let it be known, that like the Left, he now bases his positions on a complete denial or avoidance of reality. For this, he was congratulated for his “maturity” by Peres who was sitting on the stage with him.

In his speech, Liberman acknowledged that the Obama administration’s peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians is horrible for Israel. But, he said, it is better than the European Union’s peace plan.

Never considering the possibility of saying no to both, Liberman said he thinks we should accept the bad American deal. His only condition is that he insists that the PLO accept towns in the Galilee and their 300,000 Israeli Arab residents.

Liberman’s surrender of the Galilee is a key component to his population swap plan. Under his plan, Israel would retain control over the fraction of Judea and Samaria in which large numbers of Israeli Jews live, in exchange for the area of the Galilee that is home to 300,000 Israeli Arabs. This plan has reportedly been presented to US Secretary of State John Kerry as an official Israeli position.

In other words, the Netanyahu government has failed to recognize the implications of the death of pan-Arabism. In maintaining their slavish devotion to the two-state formula, and viewing the Arabs in the Galilee, Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and surrounding states as an impenetrable bloc, they are placing Israel’s future in the hands of actors who have already disappeared or will soon disappear. Instead of building alliances with non-Jewish citizens of Israel, such as Druse and Christians, who are more than happy to defend Israel against Islamists and other regional fanatics, the Netanyahu government insists on placing the state’s future in the hands of pan-Arabs whose grip on power is slipping and who would never willingly coexist with Israel anyway.

Nadaf and his followers respond to the allegation – uttered by MKs like Haneen Zoabi and Basel Ghattas, among others – that they are traitors to the Palestinian Arab nation, with contempt.

“When someone tells me, ‘We’re all Arabs,’ I tell him, ‘No, we’re not all Arabs. You’re an Arab. I’m not,’” Halul told Channel 1.

Samer Jozin, whose daughter Jennifer opted for IDF service instead of medical school, agrees.

“Telling me I’m a Palestinian is a curse. I’m, thank God, an Israeli Christian and proud of it. And I thank God I was born in the Land of Israel,” he said.

The message couldn’t be clearer. We are basing our national strategy on a world that no longer exists.

Today our longtime allies the Kurds have carved out virtually independent states for themselves in Iraq and Syria.

Christians throughout the region are on the run. The Druse of Syria and Lebanon are exposed, without protection, and looking for help.

As for the Muslims, as Haivry notes, they are fragmented along sectarian and political lines, and at war with one another in battlefields throughout the region. While so engaged, they have little time to devote to blaming Israel for their failures.

This state of affairs has implications for Israel’s Arab Muslim minority. None of the regional warring Muslim camps are natural homes for Israel’s Muslim community. A community that has lived in an open, free society for 65 years does not naturally turn to Salafism. Israel is a much easier fit for most Israeli Muslims.

At a minimum, no one is better off if Israel forces them to cast their lot with any of the warring factions in Syria or Lebanon, or the increasingly irrelevant forces in the Palestinian Authority. There may very well be hundreds of Muslim versions of Father Nadaf just waiting for a signal from our government that we want them to lead their community into our society.

The post-pan-Arab Middle East exposes the truth that has been obscured for a century. The Jews and their Jewish state are a natural component of our diverse neighborhood, just like the Kurds, the Christians, the Druse, the various Muslim sects, and the Arabs. The demise of pan-Arabism is our great opportunity, at home and regionally, to build the alliances we need to survive and prosper. But so long as our leaders insist on clinging to the now irrelevant dream of appeasing the defunct pan-Arabists, we will lose these opportunities and convince our allies that we are treacherous, disloyal and temporary.

Caroline Glick’s new book, The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, is due out on March 4, 2014

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YORAM ETTINGER ( some of his notes on the Middle East and US failed policies ) 1-14

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is preoccupied with the attempt to establish a Palestinian state, as a means to advance peace and American interests. However, Congress — which is charged by the constitution with supervising the administration — has yet to conduct hearings on the impact of the proposed Palestinian state upon vital U.S. interests. Congress cannot relinquish its constitutional responsibility to probe, independently, the critical implications of a Palestinian state upon the U.S. economy, core values, and homeland and national security, as well as upon the stability of pro-U.S. Arab regimes in particular, and the Middle East in general.

Independent congressional scrutiny of this Palestinian state-driven policy is doubly essential against the backdrop of the systematic U.S. Middle East policy failures since 1947.

The U.S. administration track record

In 1948, the U.S. State Department opposed the establishment of a Jewish state. Assuming that Israel would be an ally of the Communist Bloc, and expecting Israel to be devastated by the invading Arab armies, the administration imposed a regional military embargo, while the British supplied arms to Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.

During the 1950s, the U.S. administration courted the Egyptian dictator, President Gamal Abdel Nasser, in an attempt to remove him from Soviet influence, offering financial aid and pressuring Israel to “end the occupation of the Negev,” internationalize Western Jerusalem and evacuate the whole of Sinai. Instead, Nasser intensified his pro-USSR policy, subversion of pro-U.S. Arab regimes and support of Palestinian terrorism.

During the 1970s and 1980s, until the invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. administration supported Iraqi President Saddam Hussein through an intelligence-sharing agreement, the transfer of sensitive dual-use U.S. technologies and approval of five billion dollar loan guarantees.

In 1977, the administration, initially, opposed the Begin-Sadat peace initiative, lobbied for an international conference, and finally jumped on the peace bandwagon.

In 1979, the administration abandoned the Shah of Iran, facilitating the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which transformed Iran from a top ally of the U.S. to its sworn enemy.

From 1993 to 2000, the administration embraced Arafat as the harbinger of peace and democracy, elevating him to Most Frequent Visitor status in the White House.

In 2005 and 2006, the administration encouraged the uprooting of Jewish communities from Gaza and the participation of Hamas in the Palestinian election, deluding itself that both would advance the cause of moderation, stability and peace.

In 2009, the administration turned its back on pro-U.S. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, facilitating the rise to power of the anti-U.S., transnational-terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. In 2011, the administration participated in the toppling of Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi’s regime of terror, intensifying chaos in Libya, which has become an exporter of military systems to Muslim terrorist organizations. In 2013, the administration handed Russia an unexpected Syrian bonus. In 2014, the administration has managed to instill panic in Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, which are concerned about the U.S. potentially transforming Tehran from a controllable tactical — to an uncontrollable strategic — threat.

Mahmoud Abbas’ track record

The background of Palestinian Authority President and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas — ostensibly a moderate compared with Hamas — sheds light on the likely nature of the proposed Palestinian state.

Abbas speaks fluent Russian as a result of his KGB training and his studies at Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University, where he wrote a Holocaust-denying doctoral thesis. He was the architect of PLO ties with the USSR and other ruthless communist regimes. In 1972, he oversaw the logistics of the Munich massacre of eleven Israeli athletes. In the late 1950s, 1966 and 1970, he fled Egypt, Syria and Jordan because of subversion. During the 1970s and 1980s he participated in the Palestinian plundering of southern Lebanon and the attempts to topple the central regime in Beirut, which triggered the 1976 Syrian invasion of Lebanon and a series of civil wars, causing some 200,000 fatalities and hundreds of thousands of refugees. In 1990, Abbas collaborated with Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, despite Kuwait’s unique hospitality to 300,000 PLO-affiliated Palestinians. In 1993, he established the Palestinian Authority hate education system — a most effective production line of terrorists.

The impact on the Middle East

During the October 1994 signing of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, top Jordanian military commanders urged their Israeli counterparts to refrain from establishing a Palestinian state, “lest it destroy the [pro-U.S.] Hashemite regime.” Coupled with a terror-dominated Iraq, it would initiate a domino scenario, sweeping Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other oil-producing Arab regimes, causing havoc to the supply and price of oil and devastating the U.S. economy.

Abbas’ PLO was an early ally of Khomeini. Moreover, following his 2005 replacement of Arafat, Abbas’ first visits were to Tehran and Damascus. A Palestinian state — whether controlled by the PLO or (most probably) Hamas — would provide Iran, as well as Russia, China and North Korea, improved access to the eastern flank of the Mediterranean, at the expense of the U.S.

In 1994, the Palestinian Authority was established by PLO graduates of terrorist bases in the Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Tunisia, generating a robust tailwind to global Islamic terrorism. It has become a major terror academy, exporting terrorists to Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America, Africa and Europe. Thus, the Palestinian Authority has sustained the legacy of Abbas’ PLO, which has been the role model of international and Islamic terrorism, training worldwide terrorists in Jordan (1968-1970) and Lebanon (1970-1982). The PLO introduced commercial aircraft hijacking, carried out the 1973 murder of the U.S. ambassador to Sudan, and participated in the 1983 murder of 300 U.S. Marines in Lebanon.

A Palestinian state would reward a regime which is referred to by much of its population as “modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah,” and has driven Christians away from Bethlehem. It would add another anti-U.S. vote at the U.N.

Both Hamas and the PLO follow in the footsteps of Palestinian leaders, who collaborated with Nazi Germany, the Communist Bloc, Khomeini, Saddam and bin Laden, and currently with Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and other rogue regimes.

Hence, the proposal to establish a Palestinian state proves that policymakers are determined to learn from history by repeating — rather than avoiding — past dramatic blunders.

Thorough congressional supervision could spare the U.S. a blow to its economic and national security interests.

 WHY JONATHAN POLLARD WILL DIE IN PRISON...

           David Turner's article is 100% accurate and very well written.  I endorse it fully and I urge that you  read it in its entirety and then speak out to make up for the Jewish communities' craven lack of integrity and courage  .  LTGJC 

From: LT COL HOWARD January 5, 2014 

Subject: Why Jonathan Pollard will die in prison

.For a long time I have been on the public record as urging the immediate release of Jonathan Pollard.

As a Christian and as an American military officer I have often wondered why  the American Jewish community, particularly its very vocal and outspoken liberal Jewish rabbis, have not risen up in anger over this very obvious campaign to demonize American Jews who support Israel as being “subversive”.

Others who have publicly also urged Pollards's release are former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Schultz and former head of the CIA James Woolsley. A much more complete list of government officials (many of us holding the highest level of security clearance) can be found in the article in Wikipedia and/or on the “free Jonathan Pollard" website.

“Based on my first-hand knowledge," wrote Korb, "I can say with confidence that the severity of Pollard’s sentence is a result of an almost visceral dislike of Israel and the special place it occupies in our foreign policy on the part of my boss at the time, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (long regarded by Israel as antagonistic toward the Jewish state),intimidated to the court that Pollard gave information to the Soviets. (Later, we came to learn that this was the doing of Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames.)

One of the major reasons for incarcerating Pollard-and thus holding him as hostage-was the widespread belief (spread by Aldrich Ames to cover his own tracks) that there was a 2nd Israeli mole inside the CIA -and that Israel would release this mole's identity in exchange for the release of Pollard.

U.S. officials  repeatedly, publicly claimed that Pollard was not working alone when he spied for Israel and  the United States therefore  should make Pollard's release conditional on Israel acknowledging this"BASELESS." claim. 

 The 2nd major reason (AND I CAN TESTIFY FIRSTHAND THAT THIS WAS BASELESS) was the assumption that "means and sources "information was being transmitted to the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union fell we found out that our assumptions that the Soviet Union had penetrated Israeli intelligence and that US intelligence going to Israel was in fact ending up in the Soviet Union WERE FALSE.

 A 3rd area that I addressed was  that during the same time period  a spy caught working for Saudi Arabia (a Navy officer named Schwarz-not Jewish- where the intelligence did in fact go to an enemy power-and was very harmful to US military interests) received a dishonorable discharge and nothing further as punishment 

.

David Turner's article is 100% accurate and very well written.

I endorse it fully and I urge that you  read it in its entirety and then speak out to make up for the Jewish communities' craven lack of integrity and courage 

.

Begin forwarded message:

From: "David Turner, LCSW" <dt.lcsw@gmail.com>

Date: January 5, 2014 2:01:57 PM PST

To: "David Turner, LCSW" <vapto@globalweb.net>

Subject: 131226 - RR - Why Jonathan Pollard will die in prison

I have chosen a provocative title for this article because nearing his fourth decade in prison for a crime all others similarly charged see freedom within four years, Jonathan Pollard is no more likely to be freed under Barak Obama than under George W. Bush before him or Bill Clinton before him. From today it seems no exaggeration that, barring a miracle, a young and idealistic American Jew who chose to spy for Israel will be forced to pay the ultimate price for his decision. 

Jonathan Pollard had serious medical conditions at the time of his arrest in his twenties. He remains seriously ill in his fifties. And, as I suggested above, barring Divine Intervention or Israel agreeing to some extreme presidential demands bordering on extortion, Jonathan Pollard will die in prison.

Why Jonathan Pollard will die in prison

“The punishment imposed,” wrote Weinberger, “should reflect the perfidy of the individual’s actions, the magnitude of the treason committed...”

"As I say, the Pollard matter was comparatively minor. It was made far bigger than its actual importance." Pressed on why the case was made far bigger than its actual importance, Weinberger replied, "I don't know why-it just was." (Weinberger interview with Edwin Black, 2002)

I. The Legend begins

In a recent article appearing on-line Prof. Angelo Codevilla, a staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time Jonathan Pollard was arrested is quoted:

“Having been intimately acquainted with the materials that Pollard passed and with the sources and methods by which they were gathered, I would be willing to give expert testimony that Pollard is guilty of neither more nor less than what the indictment alleges.”

The allegation of “treason” which is represented as having influenced DC Circuit Judge Robinson to impose the life sentence was included in Weinberger’s unclassified “supplemental” memo:

“The punishment imposed should reflect the perfidy of the individual’s actions, the magnitude of the treason committed...” (emphasis added)

Prior to entering “government service” the defense secretary was a lawyer which suggest he might have known that he was using hyperbole and not “law” in describing Pollard guilty of “treason.” Just to make sure the slur would do maximal damage Weinberger repeated the charge to the press immediately leaving the judge’s chambers. Even a decade later, in a 1999 interview with Middle East Quarterly:

MEQ: You have been quoted saying that Jonathan Pollard "should have been shot." Is this accurate?

Weinberger: Any traitor who did what he did should be shot.

Not Weinberger or any other high ranking Reagan Administration official involved in Irangate was ever called to answer for their crimes against the United States. And today as the consequence of a matter even its principle perpetrator Weinberger called, “comparatively minor,” Pollard’s “perfidy” appearing occasionally in the press the work of “unnamed administration officials” a tool distancing American Jews from Israel. And, after nearly thirty years in prison Jonathan Pollard, sentenced to life seems increasingly likely to serve out his life sentence in full.

II. Pollard violated the plea agreement

One week before the CIA released those documents described by Professor Codevilla the Agency asserted that Pollard was solely responsible for his harsh sentence:

“Pollard’s willingness to grant an interview to journalist Wolf Blitzer for The Jerusalem Post without obtaining advance approval of the resulting text from the Justice Department violated the terms of his plea bargain.”

At the time of the Blitzer interview Pollard was in a high security federal prison in Petersburg, Virginia. The only way Blitzer could possibly have met with the prisoner was with Justice Department approval! Certainly no lowly federal warden would have taken it upon himself to allow a journalist for an Israeli publication access to a high profile prisoner charged with espionage on behalf of Israel!

Put directly the meeting would have had to be accepted by the prisoner. But in order for the reporter actually enter the prison and meet with Pollard he would have first required the approval of the US Government. I, for example, might want to visit Pollard, and he might agree to the meeting. But only the prison could approve me for his visitor’s list. In simple words, Pollard’s “violation of the terms of his plea agreement” was a red herring, a setup to justify the “violation.” As the CIA statement makes clear, without a technical excuse, and without foreknowledge of the staged and dramatic “last minute” appearance in the courtroom by Weinberger, the judge would likely have had to go along with the government’s assurances to Pollard.

III. A spy in Naval Intelligence

Of all the military services the US Navy was reputed, still is considered, “least friendly” to minorities. So it is interesting that, having first been turned down by the CIA that Pollard the Zionist would find employment with Naval Intelligence. According to the Blitzer interviews Pollard raised red flags to co-workers and superiors almost immediately, and within months sought to have him fired. In an interview with the Washington Post then directory of Naval Intelligence Admiral Sumner Shapiro,

“dismissed Pollard as a "kook" and reduced his clearance. Later Pollard's clearance was reinstated… ‘I wish the hell I'd fired him.’"

Inexplicably the rear admiral head of NIS was unable to fire or even enforce his own order reducing Pollard’s security clearance.

Not only did Pollard keep his job and his security clearance but he was serially increased in responsibilities and clearance, coincidentally finding himself responsible for intelligence regarding Israel’s enemy Arab states and terrorist organizations: precisely the information that the young romantic Zionist placed in a position to evaluate danger to Israel, would see was being withheld from Israel.

IV. The strange co-incidence of Irangate and the Pollard Affair

An interesting and overlooked piece of the Pollard “spy scandal” is that it hit the headlines at about the same time the Reagan Administration’s Iran-Contra Affair was coming unraveled.

In brief, Irangate was a Reagan Administration initiative involving the sale of arms to Iran (banned by Congress), and transferring funds to right-wing death squads attempting to overthrow Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government (also banned by Congress). The administration had attempted to cover its involvement by using the Saudis and Israelis as cutouts. The Saudis served as administration bankers by launder monies involved in the transactions. At Reagan’s personal request Israel served as gun dealer intermediary between the administration and the Iranians. When the operation began to unravel administration insiders scrambled to provide a cover of deniability. At first the operation was described as an Israeli arms deal and the US as innocently involved. But in the end that was not credible. In a private note of December, 1985 Weinberger wrote:

"The disastrous November HAWK shipment prompted US officials to take direct control of the arms deals with Iran. Until then, Israel had been responsible for making the deliveries, for which the US agreed to replenish their stocks of American weapons."

With Israel still in the crosshairs the Pollard Affair exploded in the media and eclipsing Irangate for the next two years, Congressional investigations and all.

V. The mysterious “Mr. X”

For a period of one and a half years, from the time of his arrest until his conviction, the Pollard Affair was daily front page, television news. Pollard was accused of an array of “harms” committed against the United States from selling information to China and South Africa, to exposing CIA agents to the Soviets. In fact American spies really were disappearing and turning up dead across East Europe and Russia. Since Pollard was recognized as an “amateur” he must have been directed in his espionage by someone higher up in US intelligence. That person was designated “Mr. X.”

“U.S. prosecutors and investigators believed that Pollard and his Israeli handlers were helped by another American, referred to as Mr. X, who probably was a senior administration official. Mr. X provided the reference numbers that helped Pollard pull out requested files from America's most-secret intelligence computers.”

Since Pollard failed to name his US “handler” the Justice Department hinted he was obstructing the investigation, another “violation” of his “plea agreement” (over the entire pre-trial phase prosecutors repeatedly and publicly warned that Pollard was non-compliant one way or another and that this endangered his plea agreement). In the end there was no “Mr. X,” at least no mysterious “senior administration official” aiding Pollard’s activities. But there was in fact a Mr. X, a senior CIA officer feeding information to the administration in order to cover his own espionage for Russia. The Soviet Union’s mole in the CIA was Aldrich Ames, thirty-one year veteran and head of the clandestine operations in Eastern Europe. According to the FBI report on Ames,

“During the summer of 1985, Ames met several times with a Russian diplomat to whom he passed classified information about CIA and FBI human sources, as well as technical operations targeting the Soviet Union.”

Once Pollard was sentenced no amount of evidence contradicting the charges would move the administration to admit its error and reconsider the sentence. In 2010 Rafi Eitan, head of the Israeli spy agency that ran the Pollard said,

“at the time of Pollard’s sentencing in 1987, secret charges were laid against Pollard blaming him for the crimes of a Russian mole within American intelligence, Aldrich Ames. Pollard was neither informed of these charges nor given a chance to challenge them in a court of law.

“Eitan said the US steadfastly refused to release Pollard even after Ames was exposed and arrested in 1994, “for their own reasons.”

VI. Pollard and “the Jews”

As a regional director for Jewish National Fund in 1988 in Brooklyn and Queens I approached community leaders regarding how best to assist Jonathan Pollard. Uniformly the response was, “it’s being taken care of back-channel;” Pollard was expected to be quietly released to Israel. Reflecting rumor or faith, that response, “sha, shtil” reflects the age-old and realistic fear of our neighbors. And today, twenty-six years later, Pollard remains in prison no closer to release.

As the years, then decades passed it became increasingly obvious that Pollard is the victim of “special” treatment by the US Government.

His sentence is so harsh, so far outside norms that support for his release has come from previous supporters of his conviction. Among these are two men who were directly involved in events surrounding the Affair: Lawrence Korb was assistant defense secretary under Weinberger, and Dennis DeConcini headed the Senate intelligence committee. Other prominent and politically connected persons today supportive of a presidential decision to release Pollard include former CIA director, James Woolsey:

“When I was director, I looked into it carefully, and I opposed clemency then. But now some 20 years have passed and the whole point is to link sentence and comparable sentences. Anyone who thinks what he did is comparable to Ames and Hanssen has no understanding of what they did. If you are hung up on Pollard having spied for Israel, then pretend he is Filipino-American, Korean-American, or Greek-American spy (we have had all three) and the facts are otherwise the same, you’d conclude he ought to be released.”

(Ames and Hanssen both worked for the Soviet Union. Ames provided the names of CIA operatives working behind the Iron Curtain knowing their fate. Ames pointed the finger of blame on Pollard to direct suspicion from himself. That Pollard neither provided Russia with information, was not involved in those deaths; that Ames had diverted attention from himself and onto Pollard has had no impact on his sentence.)

Among political personalities now supporting Pollard’s release are two former Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger and George Schultz. And recently thirty members of Congress signed a petition to President Obama in favor of Pollard’s release.

Over the years American Jews have also grown less threatened and self-conscious by the Pollard Affair and today most major Jewish organizations publicly support Pollard’s release.

VII. “In the opinion of this Italian-American Catholic”

Professor Codevilla introduced this discussion. As I noted he was a staff member of Senator DiConcini’s Intelligence Committee during the period of the Pollard Affair and so was well-positioned to evaluate the case from within.

“Pollard was an analyst. He is alleged to have given away information to which no analyst had any access. All of what has been said about what he did, including the secret memorandum that Caspar Weinberger wrote to the court in order to influence the judge’s sentence, is nonsense... the sentencing of Pollard was conformant with Weinberger’s memorandum to the court. He was sentenced to life on the basis of rumors.”

“The story of the Pollard case is a blot on American justice. It makes you ashamed to be an American.”

Postscript: “Let the sentence fit the crime” (The Mikado)

On March 4, 1987 federal judge Aubrey Robinson chose to ignore the Justice Department plea agreement and, charged with a single count of espionage on behalf of America’s ally, Israel, imposed the harshest sentence allowable even for an Aldrich Ames. That sentence, fully endorsed by the justice department, resulted from Reagan’s defense secretary Weinberger’s dramatic last moment appearance before the judge. Reportedly one charge contained in the “secret memorandum” involved Pollard aiding South Africa, bogus but a red flag for Afro-American judge.

In a 1990 letter to Morris Pollard, Jonathan’s father, Laurence Kolb, deputy defense secretary at the time of the Pollard Affair described his boss:

“Weinberger had an almost visceral dislike of Israel and the special place it occupies in our foreign policy. In my opinion, the severity of the sentence that Jonathan received was out of proportion to his alleged offense.”

Joseph DeGenova, lead Justice Department prosecutor fully supported the sentence, and this would become the mantra for successive generations of government bureaucrats, including the FBI and CIA. Of course no reference was made regarding manipulation of the judge’s political prejudices, all settled on Pollard’s violating the agreement based on the Blitzer interview. But considering the multiplicity of questionable behaviors. But why would Jonathan, otherwise a highly intelligent and aware person, have provided the US prosecutors that rope?

The government expressed concern that a public jury trial would disclose information that could harm US intelligence methods and personnel and asked Pollard to agree to a private, in camera hearing before the judge instead. If Pollard agreed to that, and to fully cooperate with the prosecution that the government, in exchange, would ask for consideration in sentencing. Pollard agreed and fully cooperated.

So why might Pollard have taken the step he did? As Blitzer suggested in his post-interviews book, Territory of Lies, having sat in solitary confinement for a year, himself and his wife demonized in the media, he and Anne concluded the plea agreement was already abandoned.

Abandoned also by Israel not providing refuge in the embassy as promised. And hadn’t Israel also been cooperating with the prosecution leading to his conviction? With nothing to lose they decided to get their side of the story to the public. Perhaps then at least the Jewish community would rally to their support.

As this is written on-line commenters are expressing outrage that Israel is clearly coerced by the US to release Palestinian terrorists convicted of murder as gesture to Palestinian leader abu Mazen. Israel’s weak position, its dependency on the United States may be difficult to accept, but nonetheless is the reason. And to a far greater extent in the 1980’s. Anyone remembering the 1973 Yom Kippur War that Israel might well have lost without the last minute airlift of parts and munitions (what threats were made; what demands accepted) may appreciate just how weak Israel is in her “special relationship” with the superpower.

At bottom the Pollards realized they were damned either way! I have several times been told that Jonathan would have been better served by quietly going along, challenging the government’s plea agreement violation later in court,

“[an] action that should have been subject to litigation and appeals, not unilateral pretext for reneging on a court-approved deal.”

In fact several generations of Pollard pro bono attorneys sought to do so, and ran into the same legal wall: Pollard’s original lawyer and ex DC prosecutor Richard Hibey inexplicably “forgot” to file the routine appeal within the allotted time! It was this “technicality” that foreclosed the possibility of future legal challenges.

With so much evidence of blatant governmental abuse, including suborning the sentencing judge; with so much evidence of presidential “disinterest” most recently evidenced by the Obama White House rejection of Pollards appeal (Bush left the White House without even responding to the request to release Pollard), the inescapable conclusion remains that, barring an unlikely miracle (or Israel caving to some outrageous coercive demand by this or some future president) the title of this article frighteningly conforms to reality: Why Jonathan Pollard will die in prison.

The assault on Resolution 242

 Dore Gold, Israel Hayom Friday November 8, 2013

Dore Gold: 242 does not require land swaps

With unconfirmed rumors appearing in the press about what is likely to happen in the peace process in the months ahead, now is the time to recall exactly what Israel’s rights are in its territorial dispute with the Palestinians over the future of the West Bank.

Those rights were first enshrined in the most famous and important U.N. resolution in the peace process, U.N. Security Council Resolution 242. This month marks the anniversary of the resolution. The first draft was proposed on Nov. 7, 1967, while the final draft was adopted unanimously by all 15 Security Council members on Nov. 22 that year.

Understanding the significance of Resolution 242 is not an exercise in the study of some obscure aspect of decades old diplomatic history. Over the years the resolution evolved into the basis of the entire peace process, including the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the 1991 Madrid peace conference, the 1993 Oslo Accords, the 1994 Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, and draft agreements with Syria. Back in 1973, on the eve of the Geneva Peace Conference, the U.S. even provided a letter of assurance to Israel that it would prevent any party from tampering with Resolution 242. Israeli diplomacy sought to protect Resolution 242 as though it was a crown jewels of the Jewish state.

Resolution 242 is best known for its famous withdrawal clause, which did not call on Israel to pull back to the pre-war 1967 lines. While the Soviet Union insisted that the resolution specifically call for “a withdrawal from all the territories occupied” by Israel in the Six-Day War, the U.S. and Britain countered with very different phraseology that was reflected in the final draft, that was eventually adopted by all 15 members of the Security Council. It would only state that there had to be a withdrawal “from territories.”

The U.S. and Britain recognized that the pre-1967 line had only been an armistice line from 1949 and was not a final international border. Indeed, Article 2 of the original 1949 Armistice Agreement between Israel and Jordan clearly stipulated that it did not prejudice the territorial “claims and positions” of the parties since its provisions were “dictated exclusively by military considerations.”

The battle over the language of the withdrawal clause was not just conducted by overly legalistic advisers to the British and American missions to the U.N.; everyone understood that these distinctions had enormous significance, for they went all the way to the apex of power in both Washington and Moscow and were settled in direct communications between President Lyndon Johnson and Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin.

The British, under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, were the main drafters of Resolution 242. Their Ambassador to the U.N. in 1967, Lord Caradon, clarified what the language of the withdrawal clause meant in an interview published in 1976 in the Journal of Palestine Studies: “We could have said, ‘Well, you go back to the 1967 line.’ But I know the 1967 line, and it’s a rotten line. You couldn’t have a worse line for a permanent international boundary. It’s where the troops happened to be on a certain night in 1948. It’s got no relation to the needs of the situation. Had we said that you must go back to the 1967 line, which would have resulted if we had specified a retreat from all the occupied territories, we would have been wrong.”

Any Israeli withdrawal had to be to “secure and recognized borders,” as the resolution stated.

Lord Caradon’s American counterpart, Arthur Goldberg, fully supported this interpretation repeatedly over the years, such as in his 1988 statement: “The resolution stipulates withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal.” Goldberg was a legal scholar who served previously on the U.S. Supreme Court, before coming to the U.N.

Others backed his interpretation as well. The senior U.S. figure in the State Department with responsibility for the Middle East, Joseph Sisco, went on NBC’s Meet the Press on July 12, 1970, and also said: “That resolution [242] did not say ‘withdrawal to the pre-June 5 lines.”’ In short, there was no argument about how Resolution 242 should be interpreted. Israel had rights to retain some West Bank territory, so that at the end of the day it could obtain defensible borders in any future political settlement.

By the way, it is notable that according to Resolution 242, Israel was entitled to this territory without having to pay for it with its own pre-1967 territory. There were no land swaps in Resolution 242. Nor was there any corridor crossing Israeli sovereign territory so that the West Bank could be connected to the Gaza Strip (just as there is no land corridor across Canada connecting Alaska to the rest of the U.S.). These diplomatic innovations were thought of by negotiators in the 1990s, but Israel in no way is required to agree to them, according to Resolution 242. In his memoirs, Abba Eban, then Israel’s foreign minister, described the readiness of the U.S. and Britain, in particular, to agree to a revision of the pre-war boundaries as a “major breakthrough” for Israeli diplomacy.

Yet there were also efforts underway over the years to erode this Israeli achievement. Some diplomats argued that the French version of the resolution said “from the territories,” rather than “from territories.” Anglo-American diplomacy had carefully avoided the definite article in the English version. Whether the French version was a translation mistake or a consequence of how French grammar deals with abstract nouns didn’t matter. Resolution 242 was negotiated in English, and 10 out of 15 members of the U.N. Security Council were English-speaking countries. Thus the English version of Resolution 242 was the decisive version to work with.

In 1970, British Prime Minister Wilson had been replaced by Edward Heath. In January 1973, Britain joined the European Economic Community, leading to a major erosion of its position on Resolution 242. On Nov. 6, 1973, in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the EEC issued a joint declaration which reflected its own growing sense of vulnerability to threats of an Arab oil embargo. It was a time when no European state would even allow U.S. cargo aircraft with badly needed spare parts for the IDF to refuel on their way to Israel — only Portugal agreed, but insisted on the U.S. using its airfield in the Azores. Europe as a collective felt it needed to appease the Arab oil-producers. As a result, the EEC declaration, which now included Britain, explicitly stated that Israel had to withdraw to the armistice lines of 1949. Under pressure, the British abandoned the essence of a resolution that they themselves had drafted six years earlier.

One of the intriguing aspects of Resolution 242 was that it said nothing about Jerusalem. In a letter to The New York Times on March 6, 1980, Arthur Goldberg wrote: “Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate.” He explained that he never described Jerusalem as “occupied territory.” Goldberg was reacting to the policy of the Carter administration, which was criticizing Israeli construction practices in east Jerusalem and misrepresenting Israel’s legal rights. Goldberg believed that the status of Jerusalem had to be negotiated, but he insisted that “Jerusalem was not to be divided again.”

Israel itself may have contributed to confusion about its rights in Jerusalem. The 1993 Oslo Accords formally recognized Jerusalem as a subject for future final status negotiations. Yet that did not mean that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was prepared to re-divide Jerusalem. Negotiability was one thing; withdrawal was something else. In his final Knesset address, on Oct. 5, 1995, one month before he was assassinated, Rabin declared: “The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six-Day War. We will not return to the June 4, 1967 lines.” Rabin spoke the language of Resolution 242. He added that Israel would retain “a united Jerusalem.”

The effort to erode Israel’s rights recognized in Resolution 242 has continued. Over the past few years, the Middle East Quartet suggested to Israel that if it would say that the basis of the negotiations would be the 1967 lines, then Mahmoud Abbas would come back to the negotiations. This strategy didn’t work back then and contradicted Resolution 242.

Ultimately, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry succeeded in restarting negotiations without making the 1967 lines the basis of a final settlement. As Israel engages in the current sensitive talks with the Palestinians, it is imperative that it recall its legal rights, especially to those states who voted for Resolution 242 but now demand that Israel withdraw to the 1967 lines, contrary to what the U.N. originally established.