Pollard asks to pray for kidnapped teens
Jailed Israeli agent says he's "davening for the safe return of our 3 boys who were kidnapped on Thursday by a blood-thirsty Palestinian terrorist cell."
Gil Hoffman - The Jerusalem Post - June 15, 2014 Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard asked Jews around the world over the weekend to pray for kidnapped Israeli teens Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Sha'ar and Naftali Frankel.
Pollard released a statement to his supporters worldwide in which he revealed that he was praying for their return and urged others to do the same. The statement included the Hebrew names for the boys, which are used for prayers.
"In the depths of Gehinom, Jonathan Pollard is davening for the safe return of our 3 boys who were kidnapped on Thursday by a blood-thirsty Palestinian terrorist cell," the statement said. "Jonathan urges everyone to drop what you are doing and to pray urgently for the immediate rescue and safe return home of our kidnapped boys, alive, healthy and unharmed."
It has been assumed that the teens were kidnapped in an effort to pressure Israel to release Palestinian terrorists from prison. The Americans were willing to have Pollard's life sentence commuted as part of the recently suspended diplomatic process in which Israel was expected to release Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners.
Supporters of Pollard's release are currently campaigning for President Shimon Peres to persuade US president Barack Obama to commute Pollard's sentence when he visits the US June 25. They hope the release comes as a gesture to Peres and on humanitarian grounds and not as part of a diplomatic deal.
Peres was prime minister at the time of Pollard's arrest in 1985 and gave the US documents with Pollard's fingerprints that were used to incriminate him.