We grew up writing letters to Washington for his release. It’s therefore somewhat surreal to be sitting across the table from Jonathan Pollard in Jerusalem, where he is gearing up to run in the next national election – whenever it might take place.
“Look, you are either part of the solution or part of the problem,” he says matter of factly. “You cannot just sit on the sidelines and criticize. If you believe in what you are saying, you must participate.”
Pollard has been eyeing the Knesset ever since he landed back in the country with his late wife Esther four years ago. He had spent 30 years in prison in the US, seven of them in solitary, accused of spying for Israel against America. He then lived under house arrest and other restrictions in New York from 2015 until 2020.
Whether you agree with him and his politics or not, he’s become a local celebrity. If he runs, he would want to be on Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit list. He says Ben-Gvir has an undeserved bad reputation.
“He’s never been allowed to realize some of his projects,” Pollard states. “He says some pretty wild things sometimes,” Pollard admits. “He’s a man of high emotion. But I trust him. I believe his heart is in the right place.”
Pollard was offered to run with Ben-Gvir in the last election – in fact, for about 24 hours the country thought he was going to – but ultimately, in the shadow of the loss of his wife, who had died only months before the election, Pollard says his head just wasn’t in the right place.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also offered him a top slot in the 2021 election when Netanyahu failed to take the crown, but he decided against running then, too.
“A friend of mine had called me and said, ‘Be aware, do not get involved because Bibi is not going to win,’” and he would have burned a lot of bridges, Pollard recalls. He knew that if he joined the prime minister back then and they lost, he might never be able to run again – so he didn’t.
But Pollard has long had close ties with Netanyahu – who stood on the tarmac when Pollard landed in Israel in the winter of 2020, amid the pandemic.
“The landing was hysterical,” Pollard says, shaking his head. “Bibi had promised [former US president Donald] Trump in writing: no publicity. I should have known better, but I saw all the cameramen when we were coming in for the landing. I turned to Esther, aleha hashalom [may she rest in peace], and said, ‘What do I say?’ She leaned back and said, ‘I’m retired. This is on you.’”
Next thing he knew, the co-pilot – mindful of COVID restrictions – ran down the plane’s stairs and instructed Netanyahu to grab the luggage. He then put his hands on the prime minister and demanded, “Do you speak English?”
Pollard recalls the prime minister was laughing – the co-pilot had mistaken him for an airport employee.
“Bibi thought this was the most hysterical thing you ever heard,” Pollard says.
A new love blossoms
We’re sitting at the Waldorf Hotel’s dairy restaurant, King’s Court. Pollard is a regular here, and the staff all come by to shake his hand. They nod in admiration and repeatedly check in to ensure everything is okay.
The restaurant off the lobby is beautiful, well lit, and modern with plush seating we sink into on a dark, rainy Jerusalem evening. It’s also quite fitting for Pollard: In 1935, the British government leased the building to serve as office space. The Peel Commission, established in 1936 to investigate the unrest in Mandatory Palestine, held its sessions in the former Palace Hotel’s large hall.
Various testimonies, including those of the high commissioner and his secretary, were given behind closed doors. Jewish community leaders who wanted to know what was being said sought the help of the hotel engineer, and microphones were installed inside the electric light fixtures above the meeting table. A hidden recording device recorded the discussions onto reels, which were transferred daily to representatives of the national institutions.
Over bites of salad – each of us, including Pollard’s new wife, Rivkah, tried a different salad variety, and all were tasty – we talk about everything from Pollard’s roots to prison stories to the books he read when confined to a cell. We learn that his grandfather was a dairy farmer on New York’s Hudson who, during Prohibition, stocked up on barrels of whiskey rolled down the river. Pollard grew up in Texas.
Pollard has a hearty but modest laugh, and his long white beard shakes like Santa Claus with a “ho-ho-ho” when he gets excited. He loves whiskey and wine, and especially wine grown in the State of Israel.
But mostly, he loves two women: his late wife and his new one.
He met Rivkah, a single mother originally from Birmingham, UK, at the Malha Mall when he was shopping with Esther. Rivkah was trying to get a book written about her father, and they started talking. The conversation lasted about an hour, and Esther just stood there smiling. When they parted, Esther asked Pollard: “Do you like her?”
“I am an old, married guy, and I know a trap when I hear one,” Pollard says. “So I said, ‘Why do you ask? That’s kind of inappropriate.’ And she said, ‘Well, I’m not gonna make it, and I want you to be happy.’”
Esther was dying of breast cancer, and not too long later, when she went into the hospital that one last time, she kept telling Pollard he had to marry Rivkah.
“It was tough to hear this because I didn’t want to lose her. And I suddenly realized, you know, I could try to save eight million Jews, but I couldn’t save one,” Pollard ruefully says.
But six months later, he took Esther up on her offer and reached out to Rivkah.
“I was scared because it had been a while since I dated. And I was thinking, ‘She is a beautiful woman; there’s no way she’s gonna look at this old goat.’ I invited her to lunch at Piccolino,” Pollard remembers. “After we exchanged pleasantries, I just said, ‘Do you want to get married?’ And she looked at me, and I saw she thought about it. And she said, ‘Yes. What would you like for lunch?’”
Pollard admits that he was madly in love with Esther for 40 years, and it was hard to contemplate loving somebody else. “It was almost like betrayal,” he says. “But by pushing our shidduch, she gave me the freedom to love and marry again. She got me out of prison with God’s help. She brought me home, and the last thing she did was give me my wife.
“She is very much alive with us.”
Pollard’s post-prison pursuits
Today, Pollard is focused on building four early-stage start-ups he imagined in prison. They deal with seawater, synthetic protein, renewable energy, and energy storage. Right now, they are all self-financed. He’s also helping raise Rivkah’s seven children.
“There’s nothing in prison that ever scared me half as much as having to deal with four Israeli girls, 11, 14, 16, and 18,” Pollard says fondly as he takes a bite of his fruit salad, and Rivkah bats her red eyelashes. “I admit that I’m a coward regarding the 11-year-old. All she has to do is look like she’s going to cry, and whatever she wants is fine.”
Pollard is working on these companies because he believes Israel is vulnerable to dependence on offshore natural gas and food imports.
“I feel we have to develop small modular reactors that can be buried, hardened, and dispersed so that we develop a system of microgrids around the country, and the grid is basically a backup,” says Pollard. He also talks about a plan for low-enriched uranium, which he states is the future.
Pollard also admits that he is “extraordinarily depressed” over what happened on Oct. 7, primarily because it was so avoidable.
“From the moment I got here, I never talked about judicial reform. I talked about military reform because it was my impression - and unfortunately, it’s been borne out - that the military was incapable of thinking offensively. And we now know what the consequences are.”
He says the IDF should be renamed the “Israeli Army” and change its mentality. He also believes Israel will need to annex Gaza if it wants residents to return to the South.
“I say we move the resident Arab population out [of Gaza],” Pollard maintains. “I don’t care where they go. My preference is for Ireland. I think the Irish deserve it.” Irish MP Richard Boyd Barrett has even donned a keffiyeh, he notes.
There’s just enough time for some prison stories that make Stephen King’s Shawshank seem like a cakewalk, best not published in a family magazine. Pollard shares how he got through his days in a small cell, where he rigged up a radio (though it was against the rules) and read stacks of books; Esther also regularly sent him news clippings. The top three books that made the biggest impact on him: The Time Traveler’s Wife; The Dovekeepers; and As a Driven Leaf.
“I saw the best and the worst,” Pollard affirms.■