Baruch Dayan Emet, Morris Pollard

Morris Pollard z"l, Jonathan Pollard's father, a longtime professor and award-winning microbiologist at the University of Notre Dame, passed away at the age of 95 on Saturday evening. Morris spent much of the last 24 years seeking clemency for his son. Earlier this year, he said Jonathan's sentence is "such an overwhelming miscarriage of justice" that at night he keeps "waking up fighting with people" in his imagination.

Morris was particularly vocal about the role of former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in Jonathan's sentence. Last year, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb wrote in a letter to Obama:

Based on the knowledge that I have firsthand, I can confidently say that the punishment was so severe because of lack of sympathy for Israel by the U.S. Secretary of Defense at the time, my boss, Caspar Weinberger.

The Pollard family has sent an urgent plea to Obama asking him to allow Pollard to attend his father's funeral. After authorities refused to allow Pollard a 24-hour leave to visit his sick father, MK Aryeh Eldad issued the following statement to Pollard:

The people of Israel will not forget President Obama's cruelty in ignoring all the requests to free you. A president who lacks the basic human feeling that would allow a son's visit to his dying father should not wonder that the Jewish people will make every effort to prevent his re-election.

A petition initiated by MK Nachman Shai of Kadima to allow Pollard to visit his father had been signed by 75 MK's and was to be handed to Obama's VP Biden any day now. [Achieveing justice for Pollard is a rare cause that has proven to unite Jews across the Israeli political and religious spectrum]. Please G-d the petition will be reworded to request that Pollard be entitled to attend the funeral and be submitted to Biden with no delay.

Last week Razi Barkai of Galei Tzhal radio asked a question relating American and European policy regarding daylight savings time, referring to those countries as the 'enlightened' world. May the enlightened world please stand up? (And don't expect to find sympathizers even in the 2012 Republican camp.)

אין לנו על מי להישען

כי אם על אבינו שבשמים