[ Ссылка ] Rabbi Pesach Lerner, Exec. Vice-President of the National Council of Young Israel relates the realities of the persecution of the ailing, over-sentenced Jewish-American, Jonathan Pollard.
U.S. Naval intelligence officer, Pollard destroyed his family and sacrificed his freedom in order to pass on certain intelligence information to the Israelis. What sort of information? Details of: Iraqi and Syrian gas, chemical and biological warfare capabilities; Soviet arms shipments to Arab countries; Pakistan's efforts to build an atom bomb; U.S. Intelligence assessments of PLO-planned activities; Libyan air defenses, and more.
Why such information, some of vital to Israel's very survival, was being officially withheld from Israel by the U.S. - despite the "U.S.-Israel Exchange of Intelligence Agreement" the two nations had signed just two years earlier - remains a mystery. To Pollard, it was more than a mystery; it was an outrage.
(When Pollard asked his superiors in the U.S. Defense Department why information about the poison gas capabilities of Israel's sworn enemies was being withheld from Israel, he was reportedly told: "Jews are too sensitive about gas.") Pollard responded by breaking the rules.
