The American practice of justice and fairness is pretty fokokt. I don’t think there was anything wrong with Obama’s government coming to some sort of agreement with Cuba about releasing Alan Gross after five long difficult years of imprisonment there and rebuilding diplomatic ties after a half a century.
What’s out of balance, or disproportionate (a favorite word of the Americans when discussing their demands and expectations of Israel) is the continued and unprecedented imprisonment of Jonathan Pollard for a crime that didn’t endanger the United States of America. Pollard illegally transferred data, intelligence (security) information to an ally, Israel. That was thirty years ago, and since then he has been held in the most secure and punishing conditions the American Prison System provides. He has also served longer than enemy communist spies arrested during the same time period. A generation earlier the Rosenbergs were executed for spying for the USSR. All they and Pollard have in common is religion, Judaism. But Pollard did not spy for an enemy country!
As part of the Alan Gross package, the United States has released three Cuban spies.
Cuba also released an intelligence agent who spied for the United States and was held for nearly 20 years, and the United States in return freed three Cuban intelligence agents held in the United States...…The three Cuban intelligence agents, jailed since 1998, are Gerardo Hernandez, 49, Antonio Guerrero, 56, and Ramon Labañino, 51. Two others had been released before on completing their sentences – Rene Gonzalez, 58, and Fernando Gonzalez, 51.
Yes, those Cubans were spies for an enemy. Did Cuba apologize for their spies the way Israel apologized for Pollard? And please don’t forget that Israel actually handed Pollard over to the Americans by locking him out of the Embassy!
Will the American Jewish community temper their celebrations of Gross’s release by demanding that the United States release Jonathan Jay Pollard?