The White House on Monday rejected Israeli President Shimon Peres's personal appeal to commute convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard's life sentence. "Our position hasn't changed," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in an email to Yahoo. Asked whether the White House had received Peres's written plea to President Barack Obama for clemency, Vietor said he was not sure "but the position is the same." Obama had rejected a January 2011 request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to free Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst convicted in 1985 of passing classified information to Israel. Netanyahu's appeal was the first such plea in public, and it drew support from most of Israel's parliament, the Knesset. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Peres had based his appeal on Pollard's deteriorating health, and mentioned a recent conversation with Pollard's wife Esther Polla...