Yehonatan Pollard: 'In absence of clear policy people need to act'
There are some things, he says, which he is still forbidden to discuss openly. "These are things that common sense says I am not allowed to discuss, particularly any material included in my case. However, fortunately, there are other sources that I can navigate people towards. Everything else - I can't be careful anymore. People might not like what I have to say, but I feel comfortable being candid."
Pollard says that his interest in Israel National News dates back to his time in prison: "My late wife, Esther, would send me a box of news about Israel, and translate anything in Hebrew, as I was not allowed any Hebrew materials. She would tell me to start with Israel National News and work my way down to Haaretz. Israel National News was with me through my entire ordeal. Once I got out, I wasn't allowed an internet computer, so I would walk to an internet store to order a coffee and download Israel National News. The people following me didn't seem to have a problem with that, and I would buy them coffee while they waited in the car outside. Now, it's the first thing I read in the morning and the last thing I read at night.”
"I've lived a few lives," Pollard says, "But the two I enjoy the most were being the husband of Esther and now the husband of Rivka."
"Esther was my teacher," Pollard remembers. "I don't think I will ever run into someone as formidable as her again. The situation she faced called for extraordinary heroism and smarts, and she was a good combination of both. She had incredible writing skills as well: she would write from the head and the heart and never needed a rough draft."
"It was scary when she went on hunger strike here, and I told her that. She was determined to push to the end, though thankfully, it did not come to that. I asked politicians, 'What kind of government do we have that allows a Jewish woman to starve herself on the streets of Jerusalem'? And they did worse than nothing - they undermined her.” "Some had the insolence to attend the period of mourning for her. I wondered what to do with them, so I asked myself how Esther would have handled it. In the end, I praised them to the point where everyone started laughing, and they got embarrassed and left. I need to conduct myself now in a way that honors her memory.”
"The interesting thing about our relationship was that for 23 years, we had no physical relationship. I was not permitted to kiss, touch, or hug her - I tried a few times and got whacked for it. In that situation, we had to talk, really talk, and so we got to know each other really well. When I got out, we picked up where we left off, and it felt perfectly natural.” "When I got out, she was dying. Her reaction to the diagnosis was typical Esther: The doctor said six more weeks, and she said, 'We'll see what God says about that' and lived for six and a half more years.” "Her last words to me were, 'Politics is the art of compromise. You do not compromise on anything. Remember that when the politicians come for you.' Then I sat and held her and counted her breaths until there were none."
Pollard contemplates his remarriage: "My wife now, Rivka, learned about me when she was seven. She is giving me a new lease on life right now, and I'm very thankful for that. One of the last things that Esther said to me was, 'Marry her, she'll keep you on the right path.' She certainly is keeping me on the right path, and I'm grateful for that.” The return to Israel, Pollard says, did not go quite as he thought it would: "We recited Psalms as we crossed the coastline. When we landed, I saw the press waiting and told Esther, 'It was promised that there would be no press - and Bibi is out there! I didn't know he would be there. Esther told me to say, 'I'm retired now, it's on you.'"
"As I arrived, I was thinking about the day I was arrested at the Israeli embassy in Washington. I went back to the building, and I saw my flag and all the blinds in the building coming down like eyes closing. All the dreams and assumptions I had lived by had just been shattered. I felt that I had sacrificed myself for the land and people of Israel, not any government or party, and so the thing that seemed appropriate to do was to say 'I'm back, hello, and to kiss the ground.”
Not all of the Jewish community was welcoming or supportive of Pollard's actions: "I once asked a Jewish leader what he would have done if I had walked into his office with all the evidence at my disposal and told him that there was an undeclared intelligence embargo against Israel. He looked me straight in the face and said, 'I would have excused myself for a moment and reported you to the FBI as an agent provocateur. I don't care if it's true, you are endangering our position here.'"
Pollard tells of what motivated him: "I had an uncle who was on the Voyage of the Damned (the ocean liner St. Louis, which was granted permission to sail with close to 1,000 Jews aboard escaping Nazi Germany. The passengers were refused permission to disembark by every country the ship sailed to and eventually were forced to return to Nazi Germany.) He drilled into me as I was growing up that every Jew has a responsibility to help another Jew, even at the cost of his own life. It was drilled into me - if you see a problem with another member of the community, you cannot walk away.”
He tells of the moments he felt fear and despair: “During the entire time, from then and until the present day, the time I was scared was when Esther told me she had breast cancer, and the time ran out on our call. I had to wait eight days to learn the details of her diagnosis. I felt despair in two moments - one when I saw missiles falling on Israel in the first Gulf War, and I thought to myself, ‘I failed’. The other was when I was permitted to write to my mother as she was dying, and a week after she died, all my letters were returned to me unopened.” Pollard recounts his introduction into prison: “The warden told me I would never see the sky or breathe fresh air again.
I told him, ‘We’ll see about that. God runs the world, not you.’ I sat down in my cell and negotiated with God, and said, ‘I can’t do this myself’. I agreed that I would do and not do a certain number of things, and he would save me. When I was brought out again seven years later, the warden was waiting for me, and I said, ‘See? God runs the world. I lost a tooth, but it was the sweetest pain I ever had.”
“Esther told me that I had to live like a real Jew. That helped me survive twenty-three years in the general population, where people were dying left and right. You can’t live on hate alone in there - you can live a long time on hate, but eventually, you will die of an overdose or in a fight. I saw the worst and the best of humanity in there - the worst I’ll leave to the imagination, but the best was someone who gave his painkiller patch to another inmate. He faced a five-year extension of his sentence for that but said, ‘I can’t stand by, I need to help him somehow’. The charge was dropped, and every color of inmate turned out to say goodbye to him.”
Pollard has a charge for the future generation:
“Sometimes, when you look around and see that there is no clear government policy to defend the Jewish people and the land, people need to act.
In the absence of a clear government policy to end terror, people need to act.
I told Israel National News, actually, in response to Rabbi Lichtenstein’s comments about ‘vigilante action’, and asked - what are people supposed to do?”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/374883
No comments:
Post a Comment