Beyond Belief

Still trying to bluff it out and looking less credible by the hour, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir says that in Israel’s view the case involving convicted American spy Jonathan Jay Pollard “is closed.” Shamir’s eagerness to inter the scandal is as understandable as it is unseemly. The Pollard case involved a monumental breach of faith on Israel’s part. The official claim that only lower-level officials knew that Pollard, a civilian intelligence analyst with the U.S. Navy, was channeling massive volumes of intelligence to Israel is a fiction of insulting transparency. Of course Shamir and his colleagues at the top of the coalition government want the Pollard case to disappear from the political scene. There is a good chance that if it doesn’t, they will.

Responding to the rising clamor in Israel for a full investigation of the matter, the cabinet has moved boldly to perpetuate the cover-up. The matter has been referred to the 10-member inner cabinet--a group that includes Shamir, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who was prime minister during the period when Pollard was stealing American secrets, and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin. What did these men know, and when did they know it? Pollard himself, in a document submitted to the court before he was given a life sentence, wrote, “I was told that the highest levels of the Israeli government had purportedly extended their collective thanks for the assistance I had provided.”

It is beyond belief in any case that intelligence of the quality provided by Pollard didn’t end up in the hands of senior officials. It is beyond belief that for 18 months Pollard stole specifically requested data only as part of what Israel officially claims to have been a “rogue” operation. Rogues there certainly were, and not only in the ranks of the operational small fry whose careers high officials may yet sacrifice in an effort to save their own.

It has taken a while for Israelis to grap the full significance of the Pollard scandal. Former Foreign Minister Abba Eban, who uses words carefully, calls it his country’s most serious foreign-policy disaster. Its full effect on the U.S.-Israel alliance is yet to be felt. When Israeli officials desperately try to hide the truth, they are assuring that the ultimate effect will be all the greater.