Ex-spy Jonathan Pollard announces Knesset run on Haskel's 'Israel First' slate

Pollard, a former US intelligence analyst jailed for 30 years for passing secrets to Israel, has called for imprisoning hostages’ families and pushed for the forcible transfer of Gazans

By Sam Sokol 23 August 2026, 2:23 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Former spy Jonathan Pollard announced on Sunday that he will run for Knesset as a member of former deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel’s Israel First party, declaring in a joint statement filmed at the Western Wall that Israel needs “a new government that’s dedicated to the preservation of the land and people of Israel.”

“I wasn’t the exception to the rule. My abandonment and betrayal was not the exception. On October 7, I saw that the entire country had been abandoned and betrayed,” Pollard, 72 said in English, referring to the years he languished in prison.

Many lawmakers “talk a very good game” but failed to take responsibility for Hamas’s attack, he asserted, telling Haskel that “the only way we’re going to reassure ourselves that that won’t happen is if we get people like you back into responsible positions of authority in the government.”

Haskel’s new Israel First party is a member of the so-called “third bloc” of center-right parties aimed at forcing a compromise between Likud and the Zionist opposition parties to create a broad Zionist unity government. None of the bloc’s parties have managed to pass the electoral threshold in recent polls.

“The Israel First party is receiving a significant boost today from Israeli hero Jonathan Pollard, who paid a very heavy personal price for his commitment to Israel and the Jewish people,” said Haskel, an ex-Likud MK who recently left Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope faction over its merger with her former party.

“We believe in a Jewish, Zionist, strong, and prosperous Israel that defends itself, strengthens settlement, guards Jerusalem, and grants its citizens the opportunity to build a better future here. We do not apologize for who we are and we do not forfeit our right to build the future of the Jewish people here,” she said.

Jonathan Pollard, pictured December 17, 1997, at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina. (AP Photo/Ayala Bar)

Pollard, a former US Navy intelligence analyst, spent 1985 to 2015 in US federal prison for passing secrets to Israel, in a case that caused a major rift 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.

He has since become an outspoken advocate of right-wing policies and a critic of both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former premier Naftali Bennett. He has previously rejected recruitment efforts by the far-right Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism parties. He briefly endorsed Ayelet Shaked’s Zionist Spirit party in 2022 before retracting his support several hours later.

Pollard announced he was entering politics in May, stating that his main goal was to “unify the right.”

Pollard said earlier this year that “I personally favor forcible transfer of all current residents from Gaza out, and the annexation of Gaza and the repopulation of Gaza by us.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) greets convicted US spy Jonathan Pollard at Ben Gurion Airport, December 30, 2020. (Courtesy)

In November 2023, he argued that Israel should have silenced families of hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, and even imprisoned some of them, in order to avoid public pressure to reach a deal with the terror group.

First elected on the Likud slate in 2015, Haskel jumped ship for Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s hawkish New Hope faction in late 2020, complaining at the time that there was “a big gap” between the Revisionist Zionist ideology of Likud’s founders “and the values and norms that characterize Likud today.”

When the Likud Central Committee voted overwhelmingly to approve a merger with New Hope last year, Haskel told The Times of Israel that she, and other Israeli security hawks and economic conservatives, were left feeling “politically homeless” — although she declined to resign and continued to serve as both a coalition MK and deputy foreign minister.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel speaks to the media as she announces her resignation as Deputy Foreign Minister at the Knesset in Jerusalem, July 14, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

It was only in mid-July 2026, three months before the general election, that Haskel, one of the coalition’s most outspoken opponents of legislation to exempt yeshiva students from IDF conscription, resigned, citing the passage of a controversial law freezing the arrest and prosecution of Haredi draft dodgers.

The following day, Haskel announced the formation of her own party, Israel First, despite months of negotiations over the possible formation of a new right-wing party led by former Likud MK Yuli Edelstein and former minister Gilad Erdan.