Jonathan Pollard
Jonathan PollardFile

Professor Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said Monday that American sources are behind the claims that Israel has been hiding information from the United States regarding Jonathan Pollard.

These sources are sometimes hostile to Israel, he said.

Speaking on Reshet Bet radio, Rabinovich said: "They tried to pull out various arguments, not necessarily grounded in facts, in order to prevent Pollard's release. These are unfair and intentional arguments."

Rabinovich said that in meetings he attended, no one ever claimed that Washington refuses to release Pollard because it suspects he had accomplices.

He said there are two lobbies in the U.S. that oppose Pollard's release: the intelligence community and the legal community. Beside the matter of damage to U.S. intelligence, there is another claim that is never stated outright – the Americans' suspicion that there were additional spies who were not exposed. The anger, he said, is directed more at Israel than at Pollard.