In 1987, Jonathan Pollard, a former US government intelligence analyst, pled guilty to espionage and providing top-secret classified information to Israel. Under the Espionage Act, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He is the only American to have gotten a life sentence for providing classified information to an American ally.
Pollard justified his actions by claiming “the American intelligence establishment collectively endangered Israel’s security by withholding crucial information”.
A website dedicating to pursuing justice for Jonathan Pollard is online at JonathanPollard.org. It claims to be authorized by Jonathan and his wife Esther Pollard, and we have not found evidence to the contrary. It contains information about the case, as well as some political cartoons drawn in defense of Pollard, as seen below.
When Pollard arrive back in Israel on December 30, 2020, he was greeted with a hero’s welcome by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
[Image credit: The Times of Israel]
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw108143/Sir-Robert-Waley-Cohen
Waley Cohen joined the Shell company in 1901 and negotiated its merger with the Royal Dutch Oil Company in 1906. He was the director of the merged company and chief assistant to its managing director. He was the petroleum advisor to the Army Council during World War I, and received a Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
Robert Waley Cohen was generally opposed to Zionism, and was the main creator of the Palestine Corporation.
He was listed in ‘The Black Book’ of prominent subjects to be arrested in the case of a successful Nazi invasion of Britain.
In 1910, Chaim Weizmann became a British citizen when Winston Churchill as Home Secretary signed his papers, and held his British nationality until 1948, when he renounced it to assume his position as President of Israel. In Britain, he was known as Charles Weizmann, a name under which he registered 100 research patents. At the end of World War II, it was discovered that the SS had compiled a list in 1940 of over 2.8k people living in Britain, which included Weizmann, who were to have been immediately arrested after an invasion of Britain had the ultimately abandoned Operation Sea Lion been successful.
Weizmann devoted himself to the establishment of a scientific institute for basic research in the vicinity of his estate in the town of Rehovot. Weizmann saw great promise in science as means to bring peace and prosperity to the area. As stated in his own words: “I trust and feel sure that in my heart that science will bring to this land both peace and a renewal of its youth, creating here the springs of a new spiritual and material life… I speak of both science for its own sake and science as a means to an end.” His efforts led in 1934 to the creation of the Daniel Sieff Research Institute, which was financially supported by an endowment by Israel Sieff in memory of his late son.
Weizmann was also absent from the first Zionist conference, held in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland, because of travel problems, but he attended the Second Zionist Congress in 1898 and each one thereafter. Beginning in 1901, he lobbied for the founding of a Jewish Institution of higher learning in Palestine. Together with Martin Buber and Berthold Feiwel, he presented a document to the Fifth Zionist Congress highlighting this need specifically in the fields of science and engineering. This idea would later be crystallized in the foundation of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 1912.
https://www.history.com/topics/us-government/felix-frankfurter
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Frankfurter took a special leave from Harvard to serve as special assistant to the Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. He was appointed Judge Advocate General, supervising military courts-martial for the War Department.
In September 1917, he was appointed counsel to a commission, the President’s Mediation Committee, established by President Wilson to resolve major strikes threatening war production. Overall, Frankfurter’s work gave him an opportunity to learn firsthand about labor politics and extremism, including anarchism, communism, and revolutionary socialism. Former President Theodore Roosevelt accused him of being “engaged in excusing men precisely like the Bolsheviki in Russia.”
Frankfurter was encouraged by the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis to become more involved in Zionism. With Brandeis he lobbied President Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration, a British government statement supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In 1918, he participated in the founding conference of the American Jewish Congress in Philadelphia, creating a national democratic organization of Jewish leaders from all over the U.S. In 1919, Frankfurter served as a Zionist delegate to the Paris Peace Conference.
Brandeis was being called “the people’s lawyer.” He no longer accepted payment for “public interest” cases even when they required pleading before judges, legislative committees, or administrative agencies. He began to give his opinion by writing magazine articles, making speeches, and helping form interest groups. He insisted on serving without pay so that he could freely address the wider issues involved beyond the case at hand.
Although originally a La Follette Republican, Brandeis switched to the Democrats and urged his friends and associates to join him. The two men (Wilson & Brandeis) met for the first time at a private conference in New Jersey that August and spent three hours discussing economic issues. Brandeis left the meeting a “confirmed admirer” of Wilson, who he said was likely to make an “ideal president.”
On January 28, 1916, Wilson nominated Brandeis to become a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. His nomination was bitterly contested and denounced by conservative Republicans. Further opposition came from members of the legal profession, claiming Brandeis was “unfit” to serve on the Supreme Court.
In 1934, when William H. Woodin resigned because of poor health, Roosevelt appointed Morgenthau Secretary of Treasury; even conservatives approved. Morgenthau was a strict monetarist. President Roosevelt, Morgenthau, and Federal Reserve Chairman Marriner Stoddard Eccles jointly kept interest rates low during the depression to finance massive public spending, and then later to support rearmament, support for Britain, and U.S. participation in WWII.
Morgenthau used his position as Treasury chief to investigate organized crime and government corruption. Treasury Intelligence and other agencies were uncoordinated in their efforts; efforts to create a super-agency were stalled by J. Edgar Hoover, who feared his FBI would be overshadowed. Nevertheless, Morgenthau created a coordinator for the Treasury agencies; although the coordinator could not control them, he could move them to some cooperation.
Morgenthau believed in balanced budgets, stable currency, deduction of the national debt, and the need for more private investment. The Wagner Act regarding labor unions met Morgenthau’s requirement, because it strengthened the party’s political base and involved no new spending. Morgenthau accepted Roosevelt’s double budget as legitimate, a balanced regular budget, and an “emergency” budget for agencies (ie. Works Progress Administration / Public Works Administration / Civilian Conservation Corps) that would be temporary until full recovery was at hand.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Baruch expressed his concern that the United States needed to be prepared for the possibility of another world war. He wanted a more powerful version of the War Industries Board, which he saw as the only way to ensure maximum coordination between civilian business and military needs. Baruch remained a prominent government adviser during this time, and supported Franklin D. Roosevelt’s domestic and foreign policy initiatives after his election.
When the United States entered World War II, Baruch supported what was known as a “work or fight” bill. He advocated the creation of permanent superagency similar to his old Industries Board. His theory enhanced the role of civilian businessmen and industrialists in determining what was needed and who would produce it. Baruch’s ideas were largely adopted, with James Byrnes appointed to carry them out. It is estimated that these policies cut two years off the time taken to produce tanks, bombers, etc. and caught Hitler totally by surprise.
In February 1943, Roosevelt invited Baruch to replace the widely criticized War Production Board head Donald M. Nelson. Baruch had long coveted the job, and responded that he only needed to ask his doctor if he was healthy enough for the post. During the delay, however, presidential advisor Harry Hopkins persuaded Roosevelt that firing Nelson at the army’s demands would make him look weak, and when Roosevelt and Baruch met at the White House, Roosevelt declined to discuss the job offer further.
In early 1969, Kissinger was opposed to the plans for Operation Menu, the bombing of Cambodia. Kissinger would play a key role to disrupt raids into South Vietnam from Cambodia, as well as the 1970 Cambodian Incursion and the subsequent widespread bombing of Khmer Rogue targets in Cambodia.
In 1973, Kissinger did not feel that pressing the Soviet Union concerning the plight of Jews being persecuted there was in the interest of U.S. foreign policy. In conversation with Nixon shortly after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on March 1st, 1973, Kissinger stated; “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective American foreign policy, and if they put Jews into gas chambers into the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
Henry Kissinger is a proponent of Realpolitik, he played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. In that period, he extended the policy of détente. The policy led to a significant relaxation in US-Soviet tensions and played a crucial role in 1971 talks with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. The talks concluded with a rapprochement between the U.S and the People’s Republic of China, and the formation of a new strategic Anti-Soviet Sino-American alignment. He was jointly awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Lê Đức Thọ for helping establish a ceasefire and U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. The ceasefire, however, was not durable. Thọ declined to accept the reward, and Kissinger appeared deeply ambivalent about it. He donated his prize money to charity, and did not attend the award ceremony, and later offered to return his prize medal.
Ed Rendell was born in 1944 in New York City to a Jewish family from Russia.
He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts, the from Villanova University School of Law with a J.D. Ed was elected as the Mayor of Philadelphia in 1991 and went onto be very successful in this position. Learn more about Ed’s Mayorship.
Ed also served two terms as the Governor of Pennsylvania. As of today, Ed Rendell often appears on NBC’s programs
Jeremy Bash was born in 1971 in Arlington, Virginia.
After graduating from Harvard Law School with a J.D. degree with honors, he clerked for Leonie Brinkema, U.S. District Judge.
In 2000, Jeremy served as the national security issues director for the campaigns of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman.
Jeremy worked as chief of staff at the CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense under Obama.
After retiring from his work in the government, Jeremy Bash joined NBC and became their national security analyst.
Jeremy was married to Dana Bash, a CNN reporter. They divorced in 2007.
