The Spy From New Jersey

It sounds like the plot of a Zev Chafets novel, or a Purim spoof: An 84-year-old New Jersey man active in the Jewish War Veterans and the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County is accused of being an atomic spy for Israel, run out of an Israeli consulate in New York that is better known for the hummus served at its annual Israel Independence Day party. The feds say that the spy was compensated by being taken out to dinner at a restaurant in Riverdale. What's next, the Israelis recruiting Hadassah ladies as secret agents and paying them with pomegranates?

In all seriousness, Israel's friends in America have long counseled her to look for spies elsewhere than in the American Jewish community, which can be of most use to Israel if its loyalty is not put in doubt. The details of the case have yet to emerge fully, but it is easy to understand the exigencies involved when the spying allegedly happened, in the early 1980s. Israel, as it does to this day, faced an existential security threat. Security cooperation between America and Israel was not as well developed as it is today, and there was even personal hostility to Israel among certain sectors of the Reagan administration, even if the administration overall was supportive.

These are not excuses -- there can be none for breaking America's espionage laws -- just context. America surely faces graver threats in the current war than an 84-year-old federation activist. But surely, too, the law needs to be enforced impartially. The accused spy deserves due process of the law, and he will have much to learn from the case of Jonathan Pollard, who pleaded guilty to a single count in hopes of leniency and landed instead a life sentence.