Esther Pollard asks to meet PM before he goes to DC

Multiple Likud MKs call on Netanyahu to make a plea for jailed Israeli agent at his upcoming meeting with US President Obama.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Esther Pollard 311 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Esther Pollard 311
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Esther Pollard, the wife of former Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard, has requested an urgent meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu before he leaves for Washington on Thursday.
Pollard, who submitted her request more than a week ago, said she had an important personal message for Netanyahu from her husband and an urgent update that he must receive ahead of his meeting with US President Barack Obama on Friday.
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Netanyahu has been under pressure to raise Pollard’s fate in his meeting with Obama and May 24 speech before Congress.
During a meeting on Monday at the Knesset, several Likud MKs called on Netanyahu to make the plea for Pollard.
Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office said they were not aware if Netanyhu would be able to meet with Pollard before he departs this week. Pollard responded that the meeting could be brief and that she was confident it would take place.
Pollard last met with Netanyahu in December, when she persuaded him to formally request that Obama commute her husband’s sentence to the more than 25 years he has already served.
She also met with President Shimon Peres before he went to Washington to meet with Obama at the White House on April 5.
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni (Kadima) met with Pollard on Monday and told her the state is doing everything in its power to free her husband. Livni said there is “absolute unity” in Israel to secure Jonathan Pollard’s release.
Livni said she would bring up the issue during meetings with American officials in the US next week and that she would speak and write on Pollard’s behalf in both Hebrew and English so it would be unequivocally clear that Pollard’s release enjoys the support of all Israelis, without exception.
“We remember too well how the gates of the Washington Embassy were slammed in Jonathan Pollard’s face, and from that time, our hearts have been torn apart,” Livni told Pollard on Monday. “All of Israel is united in the hopeful expectation of the release of a man who acted on behalf of the security of the State of Israel and who has paid an unbearably heavy price for it.”