Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to former Soviet refuseniks: “Thanks to you, I am now Foreign Minister of Israel, and yes, I will mention Jonathan Pollard at every opportunity.”
Yosef Mendelevitch and eight other former Soviet Jewish refuseniks who were imprisoned for up to 15 years each before being allowed to make Aliyah [immigration] to Israel, commemorated the 39th anniversary of their arrest by writing a letter on behalf of imprisoned Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard.
Pollard has been incarcerated in the United States for 24 years, after being sentenced to life for having passed classified information to an American ally – Israel.
Mendelevitch and some 15 others, Jews and non-Jews, were arrested in an airport outside Leningrad 39 years ago, and were later convicted of attempting to hijack a plane to Sweden. Mendelevitch, who was 22 at the time, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but was released in 1981 after a world-wide struggle on his behalf. The incident put the struggle for Soviet Jewry on the map; though only 4,000 Soviet citizens were permitted to emigrate from the USSR in the 1960’s, this number rose to 250,000 in the decade following the attempted hijacking.
“We got together to mark this special date,” Mendelevitch told Israel National News, “but we decided we wanted to do more than reminisce about old times. So we wrote a letter to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a former Soviet citizen himself, and asked him not to forget another Jewish political prisoner, Jonathan Pollard.”
“Lieberman has already responded with a warm letter,” Mendelevitch said. “He wrote that first of all, he is Foreign Minister of Israel today in our merit. He also said that unfortunately, quiet diplomacy has not proven itself in the case of Pollard, and that he promises to raise Pollard’s name at every opportunity.”
After Mendelevitch was released from prison in 1981, he urged public activists to continue their campaign on behalf of two non-Jewish members of his group, Yuri Fedorov and Alexei Murzhenko. "The fact that both are non-Jewish is the worst example of Soviet discrimination,” he said at the time, “and must not pass without protest."
Mendelevitch enrolled in a yeshiva upon arriving in Israel, and is today a rabbi associated with the religious-Zionist movement, as well as an activist on behalf of various civil rights issues.
Asked how he would respond to those in the Jewish community who do not support the efforts for Pollard's release, Mendelevitch said, "I cannot comprehend such a position. He is a national Jewish hero only a cut below Eli Cohen [hanged in Syria in 1965 for spying for Israel - ed.], who did nothing to hurt the United States yet was convicted in a Dreyfuss-like trial."