Pollard was never jailed

In a cast in Skypeland, about being tolerant of other religions, things naturally turned into a discussion about how awful Israel is. I listened in amazement as Arabs told me that Israel gets 2/3 of the US foreign aid. (I checked and Israel gets less than 10% of US foreign aid at the moment, and this figure has been dropping over the last 10+ years: http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/31987.pdf) The Arabs told me that it is unfair that Israel is allowed to improve the antirocket weaponry that it had bought from the US and from Germany (This strikes me as a crazy objection. How is Israel supposed to be stopped from developing technology? And why? So Arab rockets are more deadly?). The Arabs told me that Israel had developed a very powerful submarine force that could project power anywhere and launch rockets based on technology they had bought from Germany. I was told that it was unfair that the US sells crippled airplanes to Egypt and other Arab countries. I was told that it is unfair of the US to allow Syria to have planes that are so weak that they cannot even fly as far as the Israeli border. Apparently, Egypt was forced to give up its Russian M60 tank with a range of 100 km and accept a light American tank with a range of 40 km. I was told that Egypt only gets 30 million dollars of aid per year from the US, and most of its aid is in the form of uniforms for the Egyptian army (The sources indicate that Egypt gets almost 2 billion dollars of aid per year from the US).

Most incredibly, I was told that notorious Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard had stolen satellite technology from the pentagon and given it to Israel. Although he was supposed to spend 20 years in prison the Arabs said, he had never served a day in prison and turned up on the streets in Israel free immediately after with his wife, who had also given military information to Israel (Doing some checking. Pollard is still in US federal prison and has served 21 years of a life sentence in spite of actions in US courts including the US Supreme Court, actions in front of the Israel Supreme Court, lobbying of US and Israeli politicians etc. His wife also spent several years in prison but was released.)

What is fascinating to me is what sorts of things people believe in these situations. These people seemed perfectly reasonable until we got on this subject. Then they started throwing out crazy claims, with no evidence to back them up. I did not challenge them in this case, but in most instances when I question these claims, people become irate and combative. Wow...