Visiting Beit Yonatan, the building named after him, is a “dream come true” for Jonathan Pollard.
Speaking to Arutz Sheva in an exclusive interview from Ateret Cohanim's Beit Yonatan in Jerusalem’s Yemenite Village, Pollard said, “Apart from the land and apart from Esther, it was Beit Yonatan that was foremost in my mind and it helped focus me on what the ordeal was all about back in prison. Safeguarding the land, building the land up.”
He described Beit Yonatan as a “physical manifestation of that realization.”
“Telling the world we’re here, we’re not going anywhere. This is ours,” he said.
Pollard said that imagining his freedom and coming home to Israel kept him going during his long years in prison.
“It was very hard to imagine but you had to. These are some of the visuals that keep you alive, it’s the hope, it’s the dream.”
To keep him focused on the day he would be free to be with his wife Esther and the Jewish people in Israel, Pollard kept two pictures taped to his locker. One was of Esther and the other was of Beit Yonatan. He focused on both pictures every morning when he woke up and every night before going to bed.
He was also “very well informed” of the swell of support from the Jewish people on his behalf. And Esther made sure to keep him updated on that support and what was taking place in the fight to get him released.
On the other hand, it might be surprising for many people to find out that a succession of Israeli governments were not exactly in his corner.
“A lot of the governments that were in office actually sabotaged and undermined a lot of efforts that were being made to secure my freedom and my repatriation,” he said. “Really there were just two governments – that of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Those were the only two that were really working hard to get me home.”
The updates that Esther gave him of the huge support he had from the people “filled the void that had been created by various Prime Ministers. It gave me hope.”
Esther Pollard added that the hardest thing for her husband was to feel how much people on the outside cared.
“The thing that was the hardest for him to internalize was how much the people of Israel cared, how much they loved him and how much they supported him, and how much the people wanted him home,” she said. “And he would listen and he would smile when I would tell him these things but it was hard to feel.”
Does you feel any anger toward the previous Israeli governments?
“No. I feel intense thanks for my wife and everyone else who helped, including Arutz Sheva,” he said. “Many times people come up to me and apologize for the government not doing enough to bring me home. And I keep telling them you don’t have to say that because I know that the people wanted me home.”
Pollard believes a big part of the reason for the succession of governments working against his release was grounded in politics, a fear of upsetting the relationship with the United States.
Pollard said this was “primarily” the case, “but there were personal reasons also, where people felt that they’d done things wrong and they didn’t want me coming home to be a living reminder of what had gone on and what should have gone on. I leave that behind and now when I come to events like this or just walk anywhere – the kind of reaction I get from people reaffirms my initial assumption that it was the land and people who were fighting to bring me home.”
For Pollard, the recent 11-day conflict with Hamas was not a victory. “Unfortunately it’s a function of weakness.”
“There’s a myth that we won the battle for Jerusalem in 1967 and we didn’t,” he said. “This is our land. We shouldn’t have to live like we’re stealing anything from anybody. We aren’t. Quite the opposite. We’re liberating the land from people who are illegally occupying it. We are not the occupiers. The other is. When we came (to Beit Yonatan) I kept looking and I said, ‘Where are we? This isn’t the wilds of the territories. This is our capital.’”
He continued, “And when I hear the American Secretary of State saying that we shouldn’t do certain things in Shimon HaTzadik, as if we’re stealing property from somebody, that land was ours from before, long before Mr. Blinken ever became Secretary of State. They turned what should have been a real estate dispute into something way out of proportion for political ends.”
For Pollard, Beit Yonatan is “evidence of where we started this community in 1885. The pictures don’t lie. There was nobody else here.”
He has a message for those who claim that Jews are “stealing the land.”
“First of all, all of the land is ours. This was given to us by HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and I’m sorry if certain governments and the world, including the United States, don’t accept that fact but it is a fact. Perhaps people that take the Oath of Office on the Bible, certain people who are now president, should open up the Bible and look at Bereisheet, and they’ll see exactly where our land comes from, where our ownership to the land comes from.”
He added, “What the community is trying to do is not to take anything from somebody but to reestablish what was. And that’s not a fine distinction. That’s a major distinction. That’s a crucial distinction. If you don’t accept it, then there’s something else going on.”
So what’s next for you?
“I’m trying to start a business, a start-up to benefit the country, and I hope that we’ll be able to realize the goals of this company in short order so I can start giving back. I’m not through giving back to Israel at all. The name of the company is Third Commonwealth Energy and it’s a renewable energy company. It’s part of our efforts – Esther’s and mine – to make Israel energy independent. And an energy exporter,” he said. “This is basically what Jews have to remember. The land welcomes us. The land takes us in. But we also have to cultivate the land. We also have to improve the land. This is what we hope we can do with this company."
Politics?
No.