Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard claimed in an interview broadcast on Monday that he was told years ago by someone “sent by the Israeli government” that he should commit suicide to “close the door” on his case, which had caused a major rift between Israel and the US.
The recording, which was aired on Army Radio, featured Pollard recounting a conversation he had with an apparent Israeli agent, sometime between his release from a US prison in 2015 and his immigration to Israel in 2020.
“He said, ‘You are a patriot right? You love your country?’” Pollard recounted.
“Why don’t you just do the right thing and we’ll bring you home, give you a nice burial on Mount Herzl, so we can close the door on this case,” the Israeli man continued, according to Pollard, referring to the main military cemetery in Jerusalem.
“I didn’t understand what he meant,” Pollard said.
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Pollard, a US Navy intelligence analyst, was arrested in 1985, pled guilty to passing thousands of crucial US documents to Israel, and sentenced to life in prison.
Jonathan Pollard, pictured December 17, 1997, at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina. (AP Photo/Ayala Bar)
The incident caused a major crisis in relations between Jerusalem and Washington.
After his release in 2015, he was kept in the United States by parole rules until 2020, when the US Justice Department lifted the restrictions and he was able to emigrate to Israel, which had granted him citizenship in 1995.
Pollard was welcomed at the time as a hero by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of whom he became an outspoken supporter, although in recent years he has begun to voice criticism of the premier.
Jonathan Pollard, a former US Navy analyst who spent three decades in US prison for spying for Israel, seen in Jerusalem, August 31, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
In his interview with Army Radio, Pollard also said that he opposes any foreign military presence in Israel, and views the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in Kiryat Gat as a “threat” to Israel’s sovereignty.
The CMCC, established under US leadership, is designed to coordinate humanitarian, logistical, and security assistance in Gaza while helping oversee the postwar stabilization phase. It is home to a host of troops from the US, Jordan, the UK, Germany, Denmark, Canada, Australia, France, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates.
“I don’t want to see any of them, for whatever reason,” he said of foreign military personnel in Israel.
The ex-spy hit international headlines last month after The New York Times reported on a secret meeting he held earlier this year in the US Embassy with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, which raised eyebrows in the American intelligence community.
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