Thursday, October 3.1991 — THE BULLETIN ^ 5
Court i^seives^^d^^^
HOLTfighting on behalf of Jonathan Pollard.
By SIMMA HOLT
Holtattended the Sept 10 hearing for Jonathan Pollard, held at the U.S. Court of Ajppeals for the District of Columbia. The following is her report and commentary on the proceedings.
WASHINGTON— The life sentence imposed on Jonathan Pollard could be attributed to "wink and nod** justice within a court in which the judge and district attorney are old buddies.
Though Pollard knew he could get a stiff sentence as a spy for Israel, the plea agreement was clean the government would not seek, or even use the words "life sentence.**
However, trial judge Aubrey M. Robinson admitted he was so incensed by secret information from the then secretary of
defence Caspar Weinberger that he sentenced Pollard to life.
Weinberger claimed documents Pollard stole benefitted South Afnca.Tt was untrue.
The Pollard case was reopened by Amicus Ci/riae application, heard Sept. 10 by three judges — presiding Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Laurence H. Silverman and Stephen F. Williams completing the quorum.
It was set for 50 minutes — 25 minutes for each side in District of Columbia circuit Court of Appeals. It lasted 85, with the extra time taken by the judges* intense questioning of U.S. Attorney John Fisher.
The court reserved decision. It could be two to three months' before Pollard will know whether his plea will be wiped out or new sentencing ordered.
When the judges.asked how the plea agreement (not to seek a life sentence) could be violated as it was. Fisher said Judge Robinson had discretion to impose whatever sentence he chose. Judge Silberman called it "troubling.** "We have all been there (in the lower courts where judges arid
Collusion 'through winks and nods'
DA*s all know each other),** he said. "We have seen the language of winks and nods** telling the presiding judge, in effect, "go aheadi lay it on himr**
This is the first hearing since Pollard was sentenced to life on March4,1987, in which the sentencing judge has not reviewed his own decision.
A year earlier almost to the day — Sept. 11,1990 — Judge Robinson refused an application for withdrawal of Pollard's guilty plea. He also refused to disqualify himself, as requested by Harvard University law professor, Alan Dershowitz.
Robinson wrote 25 pages of reasons for his judgment. His anger against Pollard was as apparent as on the day he sentenced him, on the basis of Weinberger's 42-page ^.^ parte statement, including accusations of "treason.**
Robinson, an Afro-American, admitted to Judge Arthur Goldberg, shortly before Goldberg's death in 1990, that Wein-berger*s claim that Pollard sold U.S. spy satellite photos to South Africa "weighed heavily** in his decision.
Nonetheless, Robinson refused to correct his excessive sent-- en«L_even when he learned the information was false.
"Most of the AmicU including two leading civil liberties professors, Alan Dershowitz and Erwin Cbtler, were not present. Pollard's lawyer, Theodore Olson, said that they and most of the other >4mirf could not attend because it was Rosh Hashana.
Pollard was not there. He remains imprisoned in his underground Gulag in Marion, Illinois, in his sixth year of solitary confinement.
His ailing mother Molly, his microbiologist father Dr. Morris Pollard of Notre Dame University, his sister Carol and her mate, Harry Levy, were present.
Olson accused the government of breaching their "contract" in "every critical particular.** He said Pollard assisted the government "in good faith.** Though he expected to be punished for his crime, the government's agents inflamed the court, leading them to total violation of the plea agreement.
They used "the most vituperative language," accusing Pollard of "nefarious motives . . . bad character... arrogance and deception" in defending and excusing what he had done.
The government's most indefensible violation of the agreement, said Olson, was not only using the secret document from Weinberger, without any test of truth, but accepting an inflammatory public stateihent made by Weinberger in which he stated, in part:
SentiBnce called 'troubling'
"It is difficult for me, even in the so-called * Year of the Spy,' to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant... The punishment imposed should reflect the perfidy of the individual's actions, the magnitude of the treason committed .. ."
Remarkably, this "hyperbole," as Olson described it, was never applied to John Walker who committed treason for the USSR, for almost 20 years, drawing his family into the multi-million dollar operation.
^ POLLARD - Page 12
but measures missing
JERUSALEM—There is not another deniocratic nation in the world that would permit a civil insurrection on its soil to threaten any of its citizenry for days on end much less for almost four years: .■.,„,■■. .
In Canada alone, who remembers the War Measures Act of 1970? And most recently, the way the Canadian Army moved in at the Kahnawake Reserve near Oka, Quebec?
Yet it is not possil^re to travel everywhere in Israel today. Those who inadvertently walk or drive through Arab area¥in East Jerusalem, run the risk of becoming the victim of a rock or even a molotov cocktail. Nor can you drive into the Territories except in a protected car or a specially secured bus — with the windows closed. As well, a gun could be a distinct contingency asset there, one that could save your life.
On the occasion of aiyahnzeit to visita family grave on the Mount of Olives (HarHazeifim)/it'is necessary to travel through this particular Arab area of East Jerusalem by convoy. That's the way 7/rfi?{///(p/i/i senior editors went to a family hascara this July on Har Hazeitim, with an IDF jeep as escort for 15 civilians and a weapon in the hands of accompanying soldiers.
Want to go to the Dead Sea? B&sure to take the special new bypass road that has been built (and ' more such "safer" passages are being constructed). Travelling to Tiberias from Jerusalem? "Go via Israel," advises a policewoman, which means not the direct route by way of Jericho, but by the longer (pre-1967 access) coastal highway and thence to the Galilee.
When a visitor drivinga rental car, unfamiliar with the mazes of streets in East Jerusalem, makes a wrong turn by accident and winds up where he should not be, the most peaceful looking byway can become a menace. Arab women walk on one side of the road and well dressed Arab schoolchildren scan the road from the sidewalk.
REPORTING AN INCIDENT at the Russian Compound police station in Jenisalern: a huge rock shattered a windshield leaving a hole at the centre of the impact, it happened on an Arab street In East Jerusalem.
Senibr Editors of The BuHeiin, Samuel and Mona Kaplan, write about their recent trip to IsraeL
It flashes through the visitor's mihd^A^o, //fa/ well dressed Arab boy surely isn't going to throw a rock! ^at sort of thing happens to someone eise!
But in-^the next instant, from the boy's hand a huge rock
— often it's tied to a shoelace for more effective trajectory
— catapults into the car's windshield, shattering it and spraying a myriad of minute glass fragments. —
Yet a rock thrower is the Arab hero of the moment, receiving money from the powers behind the insurrection for every missile he hurls. What is more, the Israeli government pays for replacing the windshield or for any other damage that is sustained.
In the event that no one was killed or hurt, one4>f the sweetest Arab victories of all, is that a hapless tourist may have been terrorized, adversely affecting tourism to Israel, a prime enemy objective.
All for the cost of a rock in a child's hand. But make no mistake that stones are any more innocent than the children
who heave them against the helpless. These rocks can be lethal.
More than 125,000 rock-throwing incidents since December 1987 represent the kind of typical coward's victory against civiliansfpr which the Arabs have always settled. Only now, the world media have lionized the myth of the poor Arab youths whose only weapon against "occupiers" is stones. This is the scenario that has tarnished Israel's image.
As Tsomet M.K. Yoash Tsiddon-Chatto put it during an interview with The Bulletin (see also yif 5 Sept. 12), "What would have happened if you had color T.V. and reporters on the spot with microphones during the World War 11 Allied bombardments of Germany? Who was killed, for instance, in Dus-seldorf? Woinen and children, of course — able-bodied men were at the front. How would the world have reacted if the bombardment and killing oTGerman civilians had been transmitted into their living rooms via television in lurid coldr?"
Veteran of Israel's military elite during 41 years of service, Tsiddon-Chatto places responsibility for the failure to solve the mri/tfi/a at the door of the government.
"There is no national will in the present state of affairs," he says, claiming this indecision is reflected in the political attitude in defence and foreign affairs.
Tsiddon-Chatto explains that in the (pre-State) Palmach he was taught that war is an imposition of will. "When I fight with someone else, 1 impose my will. If 1 have to kill him for that purpose, 1 do. But the purpose is not to kill. The purpose is to (get him to do what) you want him to do."
He regards ihc intifada as a war and suggests that the absence of a national will in dealing with it is because any wide coalition of people lacks a unified opinion. "There is not a will to be expressed," he believes.
"Now you take the best army in the world — and I vouch for
it that the Israeli Army is the best in the wprld — and you put it there just to be spat at or thrown stones upon. What does it create? It lowers your deterrent power, it's demoralizing, it creates the wrong expectations on the other side. This is very important to understand."
As an example of how the situation should be dealt with, Tsiddon-Chatto cites the way PLO flags have been placed on high-tension wires:"For one reason or other we don't like it," he quips. He describes how the media had a field-day early on when an Arab, told to climb up and take down a PLO flag on a high-tension wire, was electrocuted in front of global T.V. cameras.'
"This is the_biggest stupidity in the world," he exclaims. "Now what 1 say is ciit the wire and take the poles down and tell the ^ople:*lf you want electricity, pay for tearing down the wires, pay forrebuilding the whole thing. And put some of vowrou-fi guards on so tliere are no more PLO flags on the wires. Because ifLsee more flags, hi tear them down again."
Or he gives as a second exainple, when stones are thrown between village A and villageB, "Youtell the people: "Sorry^ chums, no Arab moves between village A and B unless you set up your own guards to see toHt that ho stones are, thrown.'-
He realizes that this method of dealing with the uprising will be termed collective punishment, but defends it, *'lt is less bliint and more honorable r- and it does not create false expecta-, tions."''^
It is the Tsomet M;lC.*s opinion the ciyU unrest can be stopped without bloodshed prwithaslittleblopdshedas possible: "What we did was exactly the opposite,*'he castigates the gdvemment, "escalating out of fear of escalation. In other words, we treated it witha minimum aniqumpf re|ctipn whi^