Carol and Jack: If Jonathan Pollard was spying for any friendly nation other than Israel, let us say Great Britian, Canada, Australia, or Ireland and his name was let's say, Murphy instead of Pollard, I don't think the 2 of you would even be on this thread now.
The fact that a person's father is Jewish does not automaticaly make him Jewish. Jewish law states that the deciding factor is matrilineal descent, not patrilinial. Therefore since his mother was not Jewish, neither is he. If Casper Weinberger was indeed Jewish I am sure that the Saudi Royal family would not have had such lucrative dealings with the Bechtel Corporation that he is such a prominent part of, much like Cheney is with Haliburton. Weinberger is in fact despised as an avowed anti-semite in the Jewish community. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is Jewish was never involved in the case, because it never got higher than the district court level. The fact that Pollard's inept original lawyer never appealed the sentence in the first place is what caused the statute of limitations to kick in and precluded any further appeals. No one is arguing that Pollard was innocent. Everyone, including his own father, agrees that he was guilty of the crime and deserved to be punished. The question is; Should his punishment be more harsh than someone like Walker who spied for the Soviet Union, which at that time was an avowed enemy of the United States? The other question is; Why did the US government renege on a guilty plea deal, based solely on the basis of a secret memorandum by Casper Weinberger that Pollard's attorneys were not allowed to see and defend him against? This is the same Casper Weinberger who a little while later had his own serious legal problems with the Government and had to pay a heavy fine. SOL ZELLER