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Jonathan Pollard’s life reads like a spy novel, full of intrigue, grit, and some violence, but without the requisite tuxedo glamour. Perhaps it’s because the infamous spy has a mission that propelled his career in Naval Intelligence and as an agent for Israeli Intelligence: his love for Israel.“I always felt as a Jew that Israel was my home and that living in the Diaspora was unacceptable now that Israel was in existence. It took me a really long time to live here because of certain decisions I made,” Pollard said.
Now, Pollard has announced that he will be running for Knesset – either with a party that aligns with his values or independently if he cannot find one. One way or another, he vows that he will be on the ballot.
“People ask me, ‘How can you expect us to vote for you if you’re not even fluent in Hebrew?’”
He admits that this is a big challenge, but his response is “Would you agree that, for the most part, our leaders since 1948 have been fluent, native Hebrew speakers?’ And then I ask, ‘And how did that work out for you?’
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“It’s not about the language I use – it’s the ideas and my sincerity behind them that count. My loyalty is to the Land and people of Israel, without exception. Just as certain members of the Trump administration profess an ‘America first’ doctrine, I wholeheartedly embrace an ‘Israel first’ doctrine. And I went to jail for that for 30 years; it even left me disabled.”Pollard will be running on a 10-step platform.
“I need people to understand and think about what I am proposing because if these principles are not adopted, I’m very afraid we are going to be suffering from successive Oct. 7s going forward. I don’t want our children, our grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to experience or witness another Oct. 7.”
Pollard’s 10-step platform
1. Establish military self-sufficiency. “After what happened with the Biden administration’s manipulation of military supply, it’s clear that we have to be responsible for the majority of our military equipment. It makes sense, not just from a national security standpoint but from an economic standpoint as well. We need jobs here.”2. Rejection of disproportionality. “What this means is if someone lobs a mortar at one of our border communities and destroys a house, we take out an enemy’s city. There is no proportionality – none. It’s been used as a weapon against us to tie our hands. Getting rid of terrorists’ homes when they conduct a terror event? What’s that? You take out the village that they come from.”
3. No more buffers. “David Ben-Gurion said fight on the enemy’s territory. This notion of relying on buffers should have been dispensed with after Oct. 7 plain and simple. Even if you have a hint that there is a threat, you move. Buffers give you a false sense of security.”
4. Prevention and preemptive action. “We’ve lost this idea. That is why when you have a threat, you either prevent the threat from being realized or you preempt it decisively before it occurs. People might ask, ‘If you have a buffer and quick reaction forces, isn’t it the same thing?’ No, because that’s tactical. If you have a threat that requires a wall, a buffer, or a barrier, you eliminate the threat.”
5. Annexation of enemy territory. “The Arabs don’t care how many men they lose. They don’t care how much material they lose, infrastructure, factories – they don’t care! The one thing they care about is the loss of land. In the case of Gaza, just use this as an example. It is our biblical land. And even under the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations mandate, as confirmed by the San Remo Agreement, this is Israel’s.
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“It’s not enough to say, ‘We are going to destroy Hamas. We are going to expel.’ We have to annex this land, reimpose sovereignty, repopulate the [Gaza] Strip with Jews and turn the page. That’s the only way we’re going to guarantee security, not just for our Gaza border communities but for the rest of the nation. Why? Because annexing land enhances our deterrents and our credibility.”6. Admission of nuclear arsenal. “We should admit that we have a nuclear arsenal and that we will use these weapons at a time and place of our choosing. I asked some generals once if anyone could tell me how we could actually use nuclear weapons – and nobody could. So I asked, ‘Then why did we build them?’ One general answered, ‘It was for deterrence.’
“Well, here’s a wake-up call. If you’re not ready to use them, the enemy is not afraid of us anymore. We are going to have to threaten to use them and think about the scenarios under which we will use these weapons. Put up or shut up.”
7. Stop seeking partial victories. “We should dedicate our military to achieving total victory through annihilation of the enemy army as opposed to seeking partial victories. Ceasefires, otherwise known as managing a threat, mowing the grass, or kicking the can down the road, doesn’t do it. We must eliminate the threat.”
8. Eliminate the Purity of Arms manual. “The Purity of Arms manual indoctrinates our soldiers to appreciate ‘diversity’ and reject the notion of total victory. Total victory, as explained by the Purity of Arms, is immoral. We are only allowed to defeat the enemy to the extent that it stops them from attacking us.
“My father, a highly decorated army officer who fought in the Second World War, asked me, ‘Where does your loyalty lie?’ To the country? No. To the flag? No. To the Constitution? No. To my commanding officer? No. My father said, ‘Your loyalty is to the man or woman on either side of you. If your tactical doctrine or your orders are in conflict with that loyalty, I expect you to be in prison rather than at the funeral of the men or women whom you pledged to defend.’”
9. Promise of essential equipment and military compensation to our reservists. “We are not equipping our soldiers appropriately or paying them appropriately, and we are certainly not giving them the notion of fighting for victory. I believe that if someone is in the reserves, he should get a normal salary. If that were the case, the military would fight to win from day one – because they couldn’t afford to keep them that long. If it’s going to cost them money, they will fight a war to win very quickly.”
10. National service for everyone. “Everyone in the country should be expected to perform national service of one’s choice. The penalty for not serving should not be prison but rather the loss of the right to vote and the loss of receiving any government assistance. This applies to Arabs as well, except for military service. As Israelis, they can and should do national service within their community as well.
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“We need a statement from the government that Oslo is officially dead,” he declared in his interview with the Magazine. “We should understand that the PLO never ratified the agreement. This is one of the worst-kept secrets I’ve ever seen – they never signed Oslo,” the Knesset candidate said.
“Secondly, we should move to eliminate the PA kinetically, in particular the elimination of all refugee camps, which are nothing more than terrorist training centers,” he said. “And illegal Arab building in Area C must be stopped. We should eliminate any restrictions whatsoever on Jewish settlement of Yehuda and the Shomron [Judea and Samaria, the West Bank]. The occupiers are the Arabs. The League of Nations Mandate, the Treaty of San Remo, and even the Quran acknowledge that this is the land of the Jews.”
As for the Palestinian Authority, Pollard asked, “How can you possibly deal with an organization that has an active pay-for-slay program and that uses its media, print, TV, and education to call for the murder of Jews? Our acceptance of this is a sign of our insanity.
They have to go. If they want to stay and be law-abiding citizens, understanding that this is our land and they are here as tax-paying guests, then it’s fine. And for that, they will receive social services, medical services, and an educational system that we will control. They may not indoctrinate their children to slaughter us on our dime.”
He added that, if elected, he expects to see the Israeli flag flying over the Temple Mount.
“The Waqf has got to go,” he concluded. “Whether Jewish people should or shouldn’t visit the site should be their choice, after they consult with their rabbi – but this should not be the decision of the Hashemites,” referring to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which occupied the West Bank and east Jerusalem during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and has administered the Temple Mount ever since.
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Why a spy?
It isn’t fair to write about Jonathan Pollard without sharing a bit about his back story. His father, a microbiology researcher at Notre Dame (with a specialty in biological warfare) and a lieutenant colonel in the US Armed Forces during World War II, had drilled the ideas of military strategy and preventive and preemptive warfare into his son. Pollard’s first trip to Israel was in 1970, when at the age 16 he participated in the Weizmann Institute’s Summer Science Program.He considered volunteering to go to Vietnam, as his number was not called to draft. His father convinced him not to go because he said the United States was not set on a decisive victory, since it wasn’t under an active threat.
After graduating from Stanford University, Pollard joined the US Navy as a Naval Intelligence officer, where he worked as a field officer and analyst. His father was concerned that his unconditional loyalty to Israel could interfere with his job.
One of Pollard’s tasks as a young officer was to investigate the USS Liberty incident of 1967 in which an American spy ship off the coast of Sinai was mistakenly attacked by Israel, resulting in American naval casualties. His father had advised him that if he were to go into intelligence work, his loyalty was to the truth, no matter where it led him, so he was prepared to find out anything about the attack. After poring over the information and doing an all-source analysis of the incident, Pollard concluded that it was simply a terrible accident, a case of mistaken identity.
Upon presenting his findings to his commander, the officer asked him, “Whose side are you on?”
“I said, ‘I’m on the side of truth,’” Pollard recalled. “Well, we’re gonna have to keep an eye on you,” replied the officer.
His career as a spy came later when he was assigned to a team involved in a US and Israel intelligence exchange.
“I found out that I wasn’t allowed to share any information of a certain nature – despite the fact that it was part of the terms of reference,” he explained. “And when I went up the chain of command to find out why we were withholding information, I found out there was an undeclared intelligence embargo against Israel. It all went back to the 1981 bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor.”
Pollard said he could not stand idly by while the United States illegally withheld information it had promised Israel, especially since it was “war-winning” information. So he reached out to the special intelligence-gathering organization of Israel’s Defense Ministry.
He was scrupulous to only share intelligence that he felt was being embargoed unfairly and to not do damage to the United States. When he was convicted, in civilian (not military) court, it was for providing classified material to a major non-NATO ally, but not for treason.
He was given a life sentence, an unheard-of punishment for sharing classified information with an ally, and served 30 years in five federal prisons under grueling conditions.
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But is he a diplomat?
Jonathan Pollard is not known for being a diplomat. He has brash, fresh ideas, and he shares them without hesitation.“At this point in our history, I think diplomacy is a waste of time,” he said. “We are not dealing with supportive countries except for the United States, and I’m afraid that could change in the next election. What we should be concentrating on right now is securing our immediate safety and well-being. That doesn’t need diplomacy – that needs an effective security doctrine,” he asserted.
“We need to get very basic in our approach to safeguarding our welfare now,” he said. “Rather than fooling around with ambassadors and the diplomatic service, we should be concerned with reforming our military, developing a military production system that is largely self-sufficient, and provides technology for export. Countries like Spain, Norway, France, and Ireland should not have permission to have consulates or embassies in Israel – they don’t deserve them. Many have been used for subversive activities against Israel.
“Having an embassy and consulates here is a privilege and not a right. Diplomacy among friends is one thing; diplomacy among enemies is something that should be dispensed with.”
The family man comes home
Pollard has been married three times. Once to a fellow intelligence agent, later to Esther, who became known for her advocacy in championing for his freedom, and most recently to Rivka, a widow who came with a built-in family of six daughters and a son, ranging in age from 13 to 24.For the first time, at the age of 71, Pollard is enjoying the pride and challenges of being a father. The girls call him Aba (“Father”), and he gets very involved in their welfare. You can tell that he finds this role, which had eluded him for most of his life, to be very fulfilling.
He described each child’s talent and laughed at some of the teenage pushback that other parents might find frustrating. In touch with many influential people all over the world, he has interrupted Zoom calls with a member of Gulf royalty when a child needed attention.
“The sheikh didn’t mind,” Pollard said. “He’s got 10 children himself.”
Is Israel ready for Jonathan Pollard? Well, with all his bravado and moxie, he is certainly ready to take on Israel – and his wife and family are poised to support him in his efforts. After all, his whole reason for joining the US Navy so many years ago was so that when he did go home, he would have intelligence and strategic skills that would benefit Israel.
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“My whole life, I believed, if you feel strongly about Israel, then you have an absolute moral obligation to go home.”Pollard is home at last – and is ready, in his own way after all he’s been through for Israel, to make it better.