BS"D Dated June 29, 1990 Marion, IL

Dear B,

I can't even begin to tell you how deeply touched I was by your kind words of encouragement and solidarity. At this point in time, such sentiments are literally worth their weight in gold to me. I can only hope that when this nightmare is finally over I'll be able to thank you personally for your uncommon decency and compassion.

Although the past 5 years have been a living hell for me, I have nevertheless been able to draw strength from the realization that there are indeed Jews like you, who are simply not prepared to write me off as "expendable." True, the response of the so-called Jewish establishment has been less than sympathetic to our plight. But as long as there are individuals such as yourself within the local Jewish community I know that I will not be forgotten. And it is that fact,
perhaps more than anything else, which confirms our indissoluble unity as a people. So you see, even amidst the tragedy of this affair there is still some solace from which we can take comfort.

For the record, I want to state quite clearly that I love this country very much and would never do anything to jeopardize its security. But I also feel that, as a Jew, I have an additional responsibility to safeguard our ancestral homeland. After all, if Israel were to fall, G*d forbid, none of us would escape the consequences. Perhaps Leon Uris put it best when he declared that "every generation of Jews since the fall of the Second Temple has been both blessed and cursed with the commission of doing what is necessary in its lifetime for the survival of our people." This is why, when I saw what Caspar Weinberger was trying to do to Israel by withholding all that crucial information from her, I felt compelled to act. Certainly, I was scared and greatly troubled over the legal implications of my decision. But when it came right down to it, I just felt that I had no other choice but to accept a level of personal risk commensurate with what was at stake. And if the truth be known, I'd rather be rotting in prison than sitting shiva for all the Israelis who could have died because of my cowardice. Granted, I broke the law and deserve to be punished. But I don't believe that one necessarily has to condone what I did in order to recognize the the patently prejudicial nature of my sentence. After all, this is still a country where the courts are expected to dispense proportional justice, not political vengeance. ...

Go read the rest here.

Remarks. No one - not even Pollard himself - disputes that the man committed a crime against the Unite States, and that the US had a right and a duty to punish him for that crime. But he should not be made a scapegoat or a pawn in domestic politics.

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