New York – Former Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard expressed deep frustration over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not doing enough to enable him to move to Israel.
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“To be disappointed, you have to expect more,” Pollard said in an impromptu interview in a New York restaurant broadcast Tuesday on Channel 12.
“My expectation level is so low that I am not surprised. The government’s indifference to get us [he and his wife, Esther] home would be crushing if I didn’t know that our faith in Hashem and love of the land is so strong that it will eventually see us home.”
Asked if Netanyahu had done enough, Pollard said there were numerous occasions when the prime minister could have raised his fate with US President Donald Trump but chose different priorities.
“There always seems to be something else,” he said, singling out moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, breaking the Iran deal, and recognizing Israeli control over the Golan Heights.
“To make it a priority would mean the government cared enough to say it’s time for me to come home in a forthright manner and this hasn’t been done,” he said. “There is concern as to what this suggests about its commitment to security. If you don’t care about someone like myself, who spent 30 years in prison on behalf of the land and people of Israel, then how much concern can you actually show or exhibit or feel towards anybody in the country, from our soldiers to our civilians?”
Pollard concluded by saying that the people of Israel need to know he was still “fighting to get home, and with God’s help we will get home.”
Netanyahu’s office responded that Israel remains committed to the Pollard issue, and that the prime minister has raised it many times and will continue to raise it.
Pollard was paroled on November 20, 2015, after having served 30 years of his 45-year sentence of life in prison for passing classified information to an ally. He is on parole for the final 15 years, during which he not only cannot come to Israel, but he must remain in his New York apartment from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. He wears a tracking device at all times, and any computer he uses must be monitored by government software.
This article contains a technical error; to the best of my knowledge, the restriction, regarding Pollard not being able to leave for Israel (as well as wearing his monitoring device, and being under daily house confinement for 12 hours), is for five years, and is scheduled to end on Nov. 20, 2020. I hope that the government doesn’t extend those vindictive restictions for the remaining ten years of Pollard’s parole. Incidentally, I don’t think Pollard is allowed to give any interviews; interviews with Wolf Blitzer in1986, and the one that he and his first wife gave to Mike Wallace in 1987, are what contributed to Judge Aubrey Robinson throwing the book at him, and at her. Hence, Pollard giving an interview, and complaining about Netanyahu will only make things worse for him. Perhaps, Trump is waiting until after he is re-elected, before commuting Pollard’s vindictive parole conditions.
Is this a kidush hashem or a chilul hashem ?
It depends, if he is chariedi its a chilul hashem if not it’s a kidush hashem.