Pollard Slams Israeli Government For Not Bringing Him Home

Gil Hoffman - The Jerusalem Post - May 22, 2019

"To be disappointed you have to expect more," Pollard said in the impromptu interview in a New York restaurant.

Former Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard has expressed deep frustration over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not doing enough to enable him to move to Israel.

"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 sentence of 45 years to 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 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.

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