Jonathan Pollard: Let's 'decisively' win the war for Jerusalem
Tovah Lazaroff - The Jerusalem Post - June 10, 2021
He spoke in support of a push by the Right to hold a flag march in Jerusalem that went through the Damascus Gate and the Muslim Quarter.
The time has come for the Jewish people to "decisively" win the war for Jerusalem, Jonathan Pollard told the Youth for Sovereignty Conference held Thursday evening as he spoke in support of the right for Jews to walk anywhere in the Old City.
"No Jew should be afraid to walk the land, from Metulla to Eilat, ever," said Pollard, who spent 30 years in an American prison for passing classified US information to Israel. He is considered an hero in Israel, particularly among the Right, whose cause he supports.
On Thursday night he gave rousing speech in support of Judea and Samaria sovereignty and the need to ensure that Jerusalem remains Israel's united city, when he spoke at Oz Ve Gaon in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank.
Pollard explained that Israel had not won the battle for Jerusalem, when it wrested the eastern part of the city from Jordan during the 1967 Six Day war.
"We won a battle," in that war, he said, but "for every year after that victory we have been losing Jerusalem brick by brick."
It's time to turn the tide on the downward trajectory and push for a final victory with respect to a united Jerusalem, Pollard said. "I'm not interested in just winning the battles anymore. I want to decisively win the war for Jerusalem and for our God given land in Judea, Binyamin and the Shomron," Pollard said.
He spoke in support of a push by the Right to hold a flag march in Jerusalem that went through the Damascus Gate and the Muslim Quarter. Police refused for the second time in two months to allow them to stride along that route fearing that it would incite unnecessary violence.
It's inconceivable, Pollard said, that "we can not walk through our capital with our flag." He called on the young people in front of him to abandon the mentality of fear for one strength.
"We fear no one but God, period, nothing else and never forget that," Pollard said, adding that he had lived by that motto while he was in prison. "And here I am," Pollard said.
"It's the others that should be afraid of us. They know they have stolen our heritage, they have stolen our past and if we are not careful they will steal our future as well," Pollard said.
Pollard spoke in a support of a host of right-wing causes including a call for the authorization of the West Bank Evyatar outpost and the final approval for the construction of 3,500 homes in an unbuilt area of the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement known as E1.
He warned against forces that want to once again divide Jerusalem and against the dictates of US President Joe Biden when it comes to Israeli activity in the city.
"The day so of the ghetto are over. We are free Jews in the free Jewish land and no one, not even the president of the US has the right to tell us where we can and can't live, he has enough problems of his own to worry about," Pollard said.