Meet Anne at "Pollard's Place" in Tel Aviv

By Ella Bancroft

Anne Pollard, who now lives in Israel and is planning to open a nightclub in north Tel Aviv called "Pollard's Place," might be excused for being bitter about her former husband, convicted spy for Israel Jonathan Jay Pollard. He overruled her desire for trials by jury for both of them after their arrests on espionage charges. Then, after she got out of jail after serving 40 months and was hospitalized for an eating disorder, he served her with divorce papers so that he could marry a Canadian woman who was raising funds for a campaign for his release. He also made sure that his first wife lost access to the hundreds of thousands of dollars raised on their mutual behalf. By divorcing her he also cut her off from access to his monthly salary, which the Israeli government doubled after his arrest and which CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer has estimated may by now have reached $600,000 in deferred payments. However, the first Mrs. Pollard, who appears on stage nightly at a Tel Aviv theater to lead discussions with audiences after a play entitled simply "Pollard" (in which she's not happy with the characterization of her own role in the real-life drama), told the Jewish Week of New York: "I'm very happy that I'm single now and can find a new husband...I have a clear conscience—I stayed loyal to him."

As Congress debated debt relief for Jordan as part of the 1996 foreign aid bill, Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan told members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations: "Peace building cannot be a lip-service commitment...The time has come to focus on substance." He complained that Jordan still is burdened with $7 billion in foreign debt and is beset with an influx of 300,000 Palestinians who fled Kuwait after the 1990 Iraqi invasion. "We had to get 70,000 students into primary school seats in a country of 4 million," he explained. "That was not a small number of people."

Speaking at a May commencement ceremony at the (Conservative) Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Vice President Al Gore reported that earlier in the same week Russian fascist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, when asked by CBS anchorman Dan Rather what he disliked about the foreign policy of U.S. President Bill Clinton, responded: "Vice President Gore is a Jew." Gore, who is a Baptist, advised the graduates: "Don't hesitate to lobby Washington when we are wrong or when we can do right."

Executive Director Matthew Brooks of the Republican-party-linked National Jewish Coalition said in a interview with correspondents for Jewish publications that "few know the real Newt Gingrich." The Republican speaker of the House, Brooks said, has long been a maverick, especially when it came to defending Jewish causes and Israel in Congress. He added that in 1994 Gingrich was instrumental in defending foreign aid for Israel from budget cutters.

Former President George Bush said in a televised June interview for NBC-TVs "Today" show that he believed the changes Gingrich is trying to bring about would be good for America, "but anytime you take on special interests, you better put on a flakjacket and batten down the hatches." Bush also criticized a remark by a White House staff member last October when the Clinton administration sent troops to Kuwait that "this time we are going to do it right," presumably implying that if hostilities broke out, the U.S. would seek to overthrow Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussain. "I thought to myself, you little sandal-clad minion, what are you talking about," Bush said. "We did do it right and we restored the honor and credibility of the United States."

A letter in the Jewish Week of New York took issue with an article in the newspaper that credited Morton Klein's Zionist Organization of America with leading opposition to the nomination of Strobe Talbott as deputy secretary of state in 1994 "after AIPAC decided to remain on the sidelines." In fact, wrote Miriam Bernstein of Passaic, NJ, AIPAC board president Steve Grossman did not remain on the sidelines but "supported the Talbott nomination." Wrote Bernstein: "Grossman's decision to support Talbott was especially disturbing when one considers that Talbott authored 16 anti-Israeli articles in Time magazine from 1981 to 1991, including his infamous essay, 'How Israel is Like Iraq.'"

Rabbi Avi Weiss, whose ability to get media attention rivals that of Morton Klein, is suing the FBI for not notifying him that on two occasions his name allegedly was mentioned by followers of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman as a possible candidate for assassination. The sheikh has been accused of being the spiritual adviser of men who blew up the World Trade Center and others on trial in connection with an alleged plot to bomb tunnels connecting New York City to New Jersey. Rabbi Weiss said he was only informed of the threat when it became apparent that Arab informant Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali was going to reveal the threat in open court. Weiss speculated that the FBI also knew in advance of the successful plan to assassinate Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York in 1990.

Clinton White House Counsel Abner J. Mikva, a former Democratic congressman from Illinois, received the third annual Jewish Leadership Award in May from the Washington Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values. The award was made at a fund-raising dinner for an institute program that brings Jewish high school students to the national capital for intensive training in public affairs. "Mikva is very much involved in his Jewishness and he brings a Jewish passion to repair the world to his own career," said political consultant Jonathan Kessler, chairman of the event.

In the national capital area former Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham received the Productive Aging Award of the Jewish Council for the Aging on June 8 at the Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, MD. Graham, who was active on the Post from 1969 to 1991 and remains chairman of the Washington Post Company executive committee, whose other members are her son, Donald Graham, and Alan Spoon, is the daughter of former Federal Reserve Board governor Eugene Meyer, who purchased the Post at a bankruptcy sale in 1933.

Sons Ian Maxwell, 38, Keven Maxwell, 36, and British advisers to the late media mogul Robert Maxwell, Larry Trachtenberg, 42, and Robert Bunn, 42, went on trial May 31 on charges related to the siphoning off of funds from employee pension funds to protect the Maxwell media empire. Maxwell, who was long rumored to have Mossad ties, was negotiating to buy the New York Daily News when he jumped, fell or was pushed to his death from his private yacht off the Canary Islands in November 1991. The mystery deepened when, after a cursory autopsy by Spanish authorities, Maxwell's body was flown to Israel for immediate burial. The Daily News subsequently was purchased by real estate magnate Morton Zuckerman, a long-time supporter of Israeli causes, who also owns U.S. News and World Report and the Atlantic Monthly.

Lt. Cmdr. Michael Schwartz of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet based in Norfolk, VA has been accused by the Navy of disseminating classified intelligence documents to Saudi naval officers while Schwartz was assigned to the U.S. Military Training Mission in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, between November 1992 and September 1994. Schwartz, 43, of El Paso, Texas, is charged with delivering national defense information on documents and computer disks and with storing classified information at his home. "This appears to be an isolated incident," said Atlantic Fleet public affairs officer Kevin Wensing. "Why he did it is the big question."

Political strategist Ed Rollins, who broke ranks with former Republican colleagues to support the short-lived presidential candidacy of Ross Perot in 1992, got his foot firmly wedged in his mouth during a May 16 Los Angeles political roast for California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. In what was meant to be a comic routine, Rollins said that if Brown were elected mayor of San Francisco, "he could show those Hymie boys Berman and Waxman who were always trying to make Willie feel inferior for not being Jewish." Representatives Howard Berman (D-CA) and Henry Waxman (D-CA), who are Jewish, were not amused. Nor was Sen. Robert Dole, in whose presidential campaign Rollins was an unpaid consultant. Dole campaign manager Scott Reed issued a statement acknowledging the offensiveness of the remark and noting that Rollins had apologized. Rollins subsequently withdrew from the Dole campaign staff.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson was criticized in June 1994 by B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League for speculation in a 1991 book Robertson wrote entitled The New World Order about plots against American interests by "European bankers," among others. The ADL said the term "European bankers" is used by those who allege there is a Jewish conspiracy to control world finance. After speculating that "only someone who is desperately attempting to cause mischief would make the unfounded allegations about me or my book that have recently appeared in the New York Times," Robertson claimed he had been causing some mischief of his own in support of Israel. He wrote: "All who know me, Jewish and Christian, recognize that I have been one of the strongest friends of Israel anywhere in the world. In 1974, when Israel appeared threatened and alone as a result of a worldwide oil crisis, I made a vow that I have kept to this day: I promised to use my influence, and that of the institutions I founded, to vigorously support Israel and the Jewish people. I have kept my vow. My comments on my daily television program have been pro-Israel. In fact, during the Gulf war, I was one of the few voices in America speaking out regularly in support of Israel. I have lobbied for Israel and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Jewish interests and organizations. By every published word and deed I have kept my promise."

Ella Bancroft covers U.S. and Canadian affairs for overseas newspapers.