Crime Now Seen as More Serious : Backlash in U.S. Against Spy Case Worries Israelis

JERUSALEM — “The Israeli-American relationship rests on two pillars: strategic cooperation and moral affinity,” a senior Israeli official told a visitor Friday. “Usually, when we screw up we damage one of those pillars. But on rare occasions we are capable of damaging both. And that’s what we did with Pollard.”

The official was referring to Jonathan Jay Pollard, the spy who was sentenced Wednesday to life imprisonment for stealing U.S. military secrets and passing them on to Israel.

Pollard’s crime became public knowledge when, on Nov. 21, 1985, he was arrested as he tried to seek asylum at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. But even though Jerusalem apologized at the time for what it termed an unauthorized, “rogue” operation, it is only now that widespread concern is emerging over the possibly longer-term impact of the affair on Israel’s most important bilateral relationship.

Although Pollard’s sentencing put the case back in the public spotlight and thus is expected to result in some rocky days for Israel’s image in America, the backlash has been much worse than expected because of two added factors:

--A new perception of the seriousness of Pollard’s crime, based on public statements by top American officials that the damage he did to national security was, as U.S. Atty. Joseph E. diGenova put it in a television interview, “beyond calculation.”

--Renewed doubt about the sincerity of Israel’s contrition, based on the promotion just five days before Pollard’s sentencing of the Israeli air force officer who allegedly recruited him as a spy.

Israeli officials still insist that Pollard did not compromise U.S. security by passing secrets to Israel and that they are nonetheless genuinely aghast at what they insist was a mistake, though a serious mistake.

Concern Over Fallout

But they concede that in the case of the air force officer, Col. Aviem (Avi) Sella, they managed to make matters far worse through a combination of insensitivity and stupidity. As a result, there now seems to be much more concern here over the fallout of the Pollard affair than there had been.

“I think Pollard will come back to haunt us for years, for decades,” said the senior official who spoke of damaging the foundations of U.S.-Israeli relations. He is an official with particular responsibilities for those relations, although he spoke only on condition that he remain anonymous.

“It’s the kind of thing that will be brought up whenever the chips are down--or whenever someone wants to raise chips,” he said, clearly referring to American economic support for Israel. “It’s the kind of thing that gives legitimacy to a hostile school of thought.”

This official compared the Pollard affair to an incident involving the Liberty, an American intelligence-gathering ship sunk by Israeli aircraft and patrol boats in the Mediterranean during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

Attack Believed Deliberate

The Israelis have always said that the sinking was the result of mistaken identity, while others, including American survivors and much of the U.S. Navy, believe that Israel attacked the ship deliberately. The case is invariably cited when U.S. support for Israel comes under question.

According to James M. Ennes Jr., the author of a 1980 book on the incident, U.S. intelligence documents indicate that the Israelis attacked the Liberty because they feared the ship’s crew would monitor their plans to attack the Syrian-held Golan Heights, a move that the United States opposed for fear it would provoke Soviet intervention. The Israelis later captured the strategic heights.

An Israeli defense source who spoke on condition of anonymity called the Pollard affair and the furor caused by Sella’s recent assignment to a more prestigious command “the most serious case of friction between the United States and Israel since the beginning of the relationship.”

This source said he was particularly concerned that American pique will spill over into normally close day-to-day contacts, particularly among the military of the two countries. He spoke of “the residue it leaves in middle-level echelons” of the services, and said he feared it could have an impact on “strategic cooperation” and “joint endeavors.”

U.S. Shuns Officer

The United States has shunned Sella ever since he was publicly linked to the Pollard affair last year, after his return to Israel from a study leave at New York University. It was allegedly while he was in the United States that Pollard asked to meet him and offered to supply secret U.S. intelligence material to Israel.

Until last week, Sella was in charge of the Ramon Air Base in the Negev Desert. The U.S. attitude toward him meant, for example, that Vice President George Bush passed up a visit to the base on his trip to Israel last summer because Sella commanded it, an Israeli military source said.

A week ago Friday, Sella was given the new assignment as commander of the much larger Telnof base near Tel Aviv. Although he was not promoted to brigadier general, as would normally be the case, American officials were furious at what they saw as a violation of Israel’s commitment to punish those involved in the spying operation.

Adding insult to injury, U.S. officials learned of the new assignment when the American Embassy in Tel Aviv received an invitation to attend a special ceremony marking Sella’s installation at Telnof.

‘Aggravated the Situation’

“I can’t account for it,” Simcha Dinitz, a member of the Knesset (Parliament) and former Israeli ambassador to Washington, said of Sella’s new assignment. “That was one of the things that aggravated the situation.”

The independent daily Haaretz said in an editorial: “The close relations between our air force and the United States Air Force constitute a security asset of the first order. This absolutely must not be risked because of one man, whatever his military and professional qualifications. (Sella’s) personal ostracism and the boycott of his unit would severely hamper the Israel air force’s cooperation with American military arms in a way which we cannot afford.”

Haaretz called on Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin to cancel Sella’s appointment, saying it is incumbent upon him “to draw a line unequivocally separating the Israel government from the espionage affair. Aviem Sella’s place is neither at the Telnof base nor anywhere else where he is liable to disrupt . . . close cooperation with the U.S. armed forces.”

Dinitz, a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said the panel will look into Sella’s promotion, and a senior defense source confirmed that Rabin has been asked to appear next week before a Knesset subcommittee on intelligence.

Sensitive to Humiliation

Israeli officials were skeptical that Rabin would cancel the appointment in light of what they described as domestic political pressure on him to avoid being seen as allowing the United States to humiliate the government.

“In my opinion, we’ve already crossed the point of no return,” one said.

Military sources said it is possible that Sella will decide to resign.

Meanwhile, Israeli sources said that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is planning to convene his senior Cabinet ministers for a broad discussion of the strains in U.S.-Israeli relations as a result of the Pollard affair.

In a statement issued late Thursday, Rabin said that “these are very sad days for Israel.” At the same time, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres called for “a supreme effort to overcome” the fallout from the incident.

Israel radio reported Friday that U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, in a lengthy telephone conversation with Israel’s ambassador in Washington, Meir Rosenne, said that Pollard “should have been hanged for what he did,” and added that it would cost Washington “billions of dollars to undo the damage his spying has caused.”

Mood ‘Not Pleasant’

Dinitz, who just returned from a trip to the United States, tried to minimize the danger of long-term damage to the American-Israeli relationship. He said it is in the basic interest of both sides that the relationship remain strong.

However, he conceded, the mood in the United States “is not very pleasant or favorable toward Israel right now.”

“I would advise my government,” he went on, “to devote in the next few weeks very close attention to the PR side of it, and try to . . . assure ourselves and others that this was really an exception to the otherwise very close and normal relations, and not something that should continue to cloud our relations.”