This has been an interesting week for Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel. In his jail cell in North Carolina, Pollard certainly heard about the death this week of his nemesis Caspar Weinberger.
Weinberger, who was 88, was the former U.S. Secretary of Defense who pushed for a life sentence for Pollard and oversaw U.S. forces in Lebanon.
Weinberger took positions on other issues that affected Israel and the Jewish community. He added his voice to the criticism against Israel’s 1981 attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak.
In spite of his name, Weinberger was not Jewish. In his book, “Jewish Power,” J. J. Goldberg wrote, “Even close aides agree that Weinberger’s apparent discomfort [with being assumed to be Jewish] may have played a role in his occasional tilt against Israel in debates within the Reagan administration.”
In addition, another character in the Pollard affair made headlines this week, and will soon take his seat in the Israeli parliament as leader of Gil, the pensioners’ party.
Rafi Eitan is the former Mossad agent who resigned from the Office of Scientific Relations after the Pollard spy affair became public. According to stories in Wednesday’s Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz, he has pledged to work for Pollard’s release from the Knesset.
Once regaled as the leader of the squad that captured German Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires in May 1960, Eitan has now become the prime character in a political party that perhaps most clearly reflects the tenor of politics in Israel.
Gil garnered seven seats of 120 in the Knesset. That is a massive victory for a new party whose platform deals only with advancing the rights of the elderly, including ensuring pensions for all citizens and placing medications for the elderly in the health basket of medications and medical treatments subsidized by the state.
That platform is one that people can believe in, it seems. The party received votes not only from retirees but also from a tidal wave of young people.
Much has been said about low voter turnout in Israel, about apathy toward this election, which paradoxically may be a critical one for the future of the Jewish state.
Much has also been said about Israelis’ exhaustion from the endless conflict with the Palestinians. Add to that the mushrooming cases of corruption among politicians and a crisis of poverty and unemployment.
The result is a coming-of-age generation that is more excited about being able legally to order a beer at age 18 than to participate in its first parliamentary elections.
Some are quick to dismiss as trendy the young voters for Gil. But history demonstrates that social change has almost always started with the young. And this time the young are taking sides with their grandparents against the middle generation. They voted against the same old-same old and grabbed onto the Gil platform of real aid for real people.
Eitan may have captured the key to his party’s success among young voters. “I think we radiate sincerity and credibility,” he told the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday morning.
That is something all of us can appreciate — from Pollard in his jail cell to Weinberger’s family in New England to Israeli teens in Tel Aviv.
We at The Chronicle join with the people of Israel in our hopes for the success of the new government. May it ensure that Israelis are safe, well-educated, prosperous and healthy. And may we find peace.
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