samkorn's blog

During his first-ever visit to Syria recently, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev met with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus and, in the interests of advancing Middle East peace, urged the release of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Perhaps President Medvedev, on strictly humanitarian grounds, should now visit Washington and ask American President Barack Obama to free the other long-imprisoned and almost forgotten Israeli, Jonathan Pollard.

Mr. Pollard is the Jewish-American, U.S. Navy civilian analyst, and honourary Israeli citizen, who has been incarcerated in the U.S. ever since being sentenced to an incredible Life in Prison, without a trial, some 25 years ago for allegedly spying for Israel.

He is the ONLY person ever in American history to receive such an unheard of sentence simply for sharing military information with a U.S. ally, an offence for which the median jail sentence is 2-4 years upon conviction. Apparently Israel was entitled to this information, unharmful to the U.S., by a previous agreement anyway.

Repeated efforts, by the state of Israel and other interested parties over the years, to get successive U.S. administrations to pardon the now-ill Pollard have all proven to be unsuccessful so far.

Russian President Mevedev might just succeed where all others have previously failed.