Esther Pollard
Esther PollardIsrael news photo: Flash90

Esther Pollard met today with Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger to discuss her long-incarcerated husband's ill health. "I just want him to return home alive - alive!" she wept, "and I am so afraid..."

Watch the Hebrew video here.

Jonathan Pollard, into his 26th year of a prison sentence for a crime that usually draws only 2-4 years in jail, has been taken to a hospital by ambulance three times of late, and underwent an emergency operation this week. His wife Esther said that this week was the first time that he had been too sick to call her.

"Today at 6 AM, he finally called me," she told Rabbi Metzger, "and I found out he was the only one in the entire Jewish Nation who did not know that Prime Minister Netanyahu had decided to act publicly for his release..."

She related that Jonathan told her he "was taken to a civilian hospital for an emergency operation; he is still very weak... I asked Mr. Netanyahu if he wanted to work for Jonathan's release, and he said that he did; I told him that if so, the time is now, right now - for he will not have another chance."

Mrs. Pollard asked Rabbi Metzger to issue a call for Jews everywhere to pray for her husband's health and speedy release.

Rabbi Metzger said there is a near-total consensus in the Knesset and elsewhere in favor of Pollard's speedy release, "and I am sure that your prayers and tears will finally be heard in the Heavens, and we will soon greet him here in Israel and we will accompany him straight to the Western Wall."  At that, Mrs. Pollard laughed through her tears in anticipation.