Close to home

Though he was initially ignored by both the Israeli establishment and US Jewry, the campaign to release Jewish-American spy Jonathan Pollard has, for much of the last 30 years he spent in prison, remained steadfast to its fervent call: “Bring Pollard Home.”

But his release on Friday from the Butner, North Carolina, facility where he has been serving a life sentence for spying on the United States on Israel’s behalf was not quite the end of the journey for both Pollard and the “Committee to bring Jonathan Pollard home.” Strict parole conditions will mean he cannot come “home” to Israel, where he was granted citizenship in November 1995, for at least another five years.

“Pollard is free” declares huge lettering on the front page of tabloid Israel Hayom, but the underline quickly adds, “[Pollard’s] lawyer will challenge the stringent parole conditions while the US administration makes clear: ‘They will not be eased.'”

The same dichotomy is clear on the page 2-3 double spread. “A free man” reads the headline next to another photo of the gray-beaded and balding Pollard.

“The actual release took place quickly and in secret, away from the lenses of the cameras – just as those closest to Pollard wanted. Journalists who came to follow the release found themselves disappointed, not only that Pollard didn’t speak with them and that the guards prevented them from entering the compound, but that he managed to leave the prison without anyone even seeing him,” reads the report.

Underneath the lead story runs the headline, “Let’s hope that Pollard makes it to Israel before we do,” quoting Leah and Ron Showl-Jackson who had come to the prison to get a glimpse of the infamous spy.

“”We have prayed for him for many years,” Leah told Israel Hayom. “A few years ago our son taped a sticker on our front door calling for his release, and since then, every day when we get home, we have been reminded that he is still not set free.”

“This is a day of celebration for the Jewish people, but I just hope he makes it to Israel before we do,” offered Ron.

Haaretz runs a front page photo of Pollard alongside an analysis by its US editor Chemi Shalev of the newly launched campaign to lift the parole conditions and allow Pollard to come to Israel, suggesting that Pollard supporters have become “addicted to his image as a Prisoner of Zion.”

“Only a few short hours after his release from prison on Friday, a new campaign for Pollard swung into full gear, as if getting out of jail after 30 years was minor. The restrictions placed on Pollard the parolee, including a five-year ban on traveling to Israel or anywhere else, are now the proof of the inherent malice if not outright anti-Semitism of the US administration and justice system,” Shalev writes.

After a look at the controversy that has surrounded the last 30 years of Pollard’s incarceration and suggesting it seems set to continue, Shalev finishes with a comment on the newly released photos of the once-undercover agent noting that “instead of Daniel Craig as the master spy who rocked US Israel relations to the core, we got Tevye the Milkman from Fiddler on the Roof.”

The photo that perhaps most encapsulates Shalev’s description features on the front page of Yediot Aharonot with a grandfather-like Pollard looking out from the paper with his loyal wife Esther beaming behind him. But unlike the rest of the Hebrew media, Yediot does not dedicate the next umpteen pages to the story, instead placing its double page spread on pages 13-14.

There, in addition to the details of his imprisonment and release, the paper offers a human angle on “Pollard’s new life.”

“After spending his first Shabbat as a free man in his new house in New York, tomorrow morning Pollard will already start his new job as a financial analyst for an investment firm,” write Yedioth reporter Itamar Eichner. “Pollard is expected to earn a living solely through his own work. Even though he has been recognized as an Israeli agent, at this stage Pollard has no arrangement to receive financial support from the state,” he continues.

Pollard’s release is joined center stage in Israel’s Sunday editions by a story closer to home, a stabbing and subsequent five-hour manhunt Saturday night in the southern city of Kiryat Gat. Israelis have gotten used to news of stabbings and shootings in cities across the country over the past two months – the near-week long lull in violence was shattered Thursday with five people killed in two terror attacks – but Saturday night’s terrorist chase may have been a little to close to home, with the perpetrator eventually caught hiding in a residential neighborhood garden.

Yedioth gives prominent focus to Saturday’s terror attack.

In the blood-red print reserved for the most terrifying of headlines and surrounded by a scratch-effect border, the paper declares “Terrorist in the yard,” referring to the police search for the attacker which culminated in a dramatic stand-off outside a family home in Kiryat Gat.

The paper describes the five-hour manhunt in sensational detail including a nearly-first hand account from Israeli musician Ninet Tayeb relating how the “the terrorist was caught next to my brother’s house.”

“Last night the terrorist came armed with a knife in order to carry out the attack. He stabbed two then continued to run with the knife…but the terrible incident didn’t end there. The terrorist managed to escape and for many long hours, the city of Kiryat Gat became a city under siege.”

In a Haaretz op-ed, contributor Natasha Lehrer, who now lives in Paris, drew a comparison between the feeling many Israelis experience when faced with ongoing terror attacks to those that Parisians are now facing following last week’s carnage.

“The summer that my baby was born a suicide bomber blew himself up in the market. Maddened with fear for myself and my child, I took to strategically planning my trips to the market, making sure that I never ventured too far down its sinewy alleyways, figuring that the fifteen or so minutes it took for me to buy tomatoes and pita and onions and chicken my luck was likely to hold. Surviving those times felt like luck, pure and simple,” she said. “We in Europe are about to learn what I found out then about living with terror.”