(CNSNews.com) – President Bush’s decision to grant a rare posthumous pardon to a man who provided planes to Jews fighting Israel’s 1948 war of independence will be welcomed in Israel, where many campaigners are also hoping for clemency for another, living American who helped the Jewish state.

Twenty-four years after his death, Charles Winters was one of 19 people to receive a pardon Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced.

Winters, a Protestant Christian, helped to provide the fledgling Israeli armed forces with three converted World War II B-17 bombers, one of which he flew himself to Czechoslovakia for retrofitting.

In November 1947 the United Nations authorized a Jewish and an Arab homeland in the British mandate of Palestine. The Arabs rejected the plan and stepped up attacks against the Jewish community, known as the Yishuv; the Jews accepted the plan and declared independence in May 1948. Six Arab armies then attacked the new state.

The U.S. had imposed an arms embargo on the region the previous December, and Britain imposed a naval blockade. Israel was desperate for weapons in the face of relatively better equipped Arab armies.

Israel eventually won the war, but at huge cost: more than 6,300 Israelis were killed, nearly one percent of the then Jewish population of 650,000.

Winters was convicted in Miami in 1949 on charges of violating the 1939 Neutrality Act, was jailed for 18 months and fined $5,000. The law prohibits American citizens from providing assistance in foreign conflicts in which the U.S. has not taken sides.

In 1961, then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in a letter invited Winters to attend the opening of a memorial in Tel Aviv as a “tribute to those who had contributed so valiantly in pre-State days to the struggle for the defense of the Yishuv and for independence.”

Two other Americans involved in the effort, Herman Greenspun and Al Schwimmer, were also convicted but did not serve jail terms. They were pardoned by Presidents Kennedy and Clinton respectively.

(Schwimmer, who is Jewish, later emigrated to Israel and later became director-general of Israel’s Aircraft Industry. In 2006 he was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for lifetime achievement.)

Winters died in 1984, aged 71, and was buried at his request in a Christian cemetery in Jerusalem.

A pardon application on his behalf was later submitted by his son, Jim Winters, and the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County.

Last August, movie director Steven Spielberg wrote to Bush in support of the application. “There are some moral people in this world, many of whom never receive the credit they deserve,” he said. “Winters was obviously one of those and deserves it.”

Winters’ cause was also taken up by Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.), who on Tuesday welcomed Bush’s decision.

Klein said Winters, Schwimmer and Greenspun had “acted at great personal risk to fight for a cause they believed in. The raw guts and extraordinary bravery of their actions proved essential to the state of Israel at a critical moment, when it was besieged by enemies on all sides.”
 
Hope for Jack Johnson?

Posthumous pardons are unusual. Clinton in 1999 pardoned Henry O. Flipper, a former slave and the first black West Point graduate who was dismissed in 1882 after being charged with embezzlement. Flipper died in 1940.

“I think Winters’ application was put together well and made a strong case for clemency – assuming one buys into the acceptability of granting pardons for dead people. Arguably there are enough concerns with the living!” political science professor P.S. Ruckman, who focuses on presidential clemency powers and edits the Web site Pardon Power, said Tuesday.
 
Ruckman said Clinton had been first to grant a posthumous pardon “and – until now – most figured Clinton’s behavior would remain an anomaly.”

He said supporters of a pardon for the African-American boxer Jack Johnson must be pleased, as Winters’ pardon “suggests they have a chance.” Johnson, who became world heavyweight champion in 1908, was imprisoned for a year in the 1920s for an offense relating to the interstate transport of women for immoral purposes, arising out of a relationship with a white woman.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has led efforts in Congress in support of a pardon for Johnson.

New push for Pollard
 
Meanwhile a longstanding campaign to press for the pardon of Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. Navy analyst who was jailed for life three years after Winters’ death for passing military secrets to Israel, has picked up steam in recent weeks.

Israel at first said Pollard’s spying had been a rogue operation, but in 1998 admitted that he was an Israeli agent, “handled by high-ranking Israeli officials in an Israeli-authorized bureau.”

His supporters have argued that he gave Israel critical information – including intelligence on Iraqi intentions toward Israel – which they say the U.S. should not have been withholding from a key ally.

Those who oppose clemency say his activities exposed U.S. intelligence methods and personnel, and argue that it is irrelevant who he spied for.

Every Israeli prime minister since Yitzhak Rabin has all taken up Pollard’s cause, but the U.S. intelligence community has for years opposed a pardon.

This week, Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger wrote to Bush, appealing for Pollard’s release, saying the act would “serve as testimony to the alliance and friendship between Israel and the U.S.”

Metzger, who recently visited Pollard in prison in North Carolina, noted that he has been in prison for 24 years and that some convicted of spying for enemy states had received shorter sentences. Pollard had also expressed remorse for his actions, he said.

The Free Pollard Now campaign says that thousands of Israelis and others have phoned the White House over the past month. Also supporting the call are Israeli politicians, former judges and diplomats.

Pardons expert Ruckman said he has not heard anything to suggest that Bush will exercise clemency on Pollard’s behalf.

“I also know a few individuals who know him [Pollard] personally and, while they are optimistic, they are careful to say it is a very, very cautious optimism.”

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino confirmed early this month that Bush “is well aware of the request to pardon – or commute the sentence of Jonathan Pollard,” but said she was unable to comment.

“It’s a private matter for the president and if and when there would be an action that the president would take, then we would let you know,” she said.

Last May, Bush told Israel’s Channel 10 television network that “there’s been no change in the government’s attitude at this point” regarding requests to pardon Pollard.