At wife’s funeral, tearful Pollard says it’s ‘not how I expected’ to come to Israel
Hundreds attend Esther Pollard’s funeral in Jerusalem, after she died of COVID-19 complications
The wife of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was buried Monday in Jerusalem following her death from COVID-19 complications.
Eulogizing his wife Esther, with whom he moved to Israel in late December 2020, a tearful Pollard praised her for advocating on his behalf during his 30-year term in a US prison and five years of parole before he was able to move to the Jewish state.
“This is not how I expected for us to come home to the land,” Pollard told the hundreds of mourners as she was buried at the Har Hamenuhot cemetery. “But as much as you love the land, the land will now love you, the land will embrace you and you will truly become part of the land you loved so much.
“She was the one who taught me love of an undivided, God-given land. She was the one who told me to love the Jewish people,” he continued. “She was the one who taught me everything I know about halacha, Torah — everything.
“Undiluted, unchanged, pure. That’s who she was.”
Esther Pollard, who battled breast cancer for years, died earlier Monday at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem, where she was hospitalized over the weekend after she was infected with the coronavirus and her condition deteriorated.
“I did not imagine in my worst nightmares that I would lose Esther. After decades of fighting for my release, I felt so helpless that I could not help her in her struggle for life,” Pollard told media following his wife’s death.
Esther and Jonathan were married while the latter was serving a multi-decade prison sentence in the United States.
Pollard, as an intelligence analyst in the US Navy’s counterterrorism center, passed thousands of crucial US documents to Israel, straining relations between the two close allies.
He was arrested in 1985, convicted of espionage and sentenced to life in prison two years later, despite pleading guilty in a deal his attorneys had expected would result in a more lenient sentence.
He was eventually released in 2015, but was kept in the United States by parole rules and not allowed to travel to Israel.
For several years, he remained subject to a curfew, had to wear a wrist monitor, and was prohibited from working for any company that lacked US government monitoring software on its computer systems. In addition, he was restricted from traveling abroad.
The couple moved to Israel a year ago, after the parole restrictions that prevented him from leaving New York were removed.
