Case of Divided Loyalty Still Divides the Public ‘The Law of Return’ Revisits the Jonathan Pollard Case
Laura Collins-HughesAugust 11, 2014: The whole Jonathan Pollard Israeli spy scandal of the 1980s might have been avoided if only the United States Navy had subscribed to a simple bit of wisdom that Tina Fey attributes to Lorne Michaels: “Don’t hire anyone you wouldn’t want to run into in the hallway at 3 in the morning.” That’s one takeaway from Martin Blank’s political thriller, The Law of Return, inspired by the real-life Pollard case and presented by Newsom Zipoy Productions at the Fourth Street Theater. The Pollard we meet here is a shifty-seeming young man who has to be ordered to make eye contact. Run into him in the hallway in the wee hours? No, thank you. Give him access to classified documents? Clearly a bad idea. But Pollard (Ben Mehl), an American civilian, is a brilliant intelligence analyst. When he tells Steve Harris (André Ware), the officer who hires him, that he’s motivated by a desire for “a safe home,” how is Harris to know that “home” to Pollard means Israel? Soon Pollard is meeting with Rafi Eitan (Joel Rooks), an Israeli intelligence officer, and spying for Israel. Sentenced to life in prison in 1987, the real Mr. Pollard has become a political cause, with Israel pressing for his release. But Mr. Blank’s play is evenhanded in its way: Both the United States, personified by Harris, and Israel, represented by Eitan, come off as basically decent. Pollard supporters and detractors can find fuel for their arguments in Mr. Blank’s narrative, even if some of the exposition is clumsy.
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