Pollard: ‘Jew-hatred’ a foundational belief of ‘Amalek’ Biden administration
Convicted spy who recently moved to Israel is honored at Jerusalem Day event at prominent yeshiva, launches into diatribe against Democrats, Palestinians, Jordanians and UN
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew who served a 30-year sentence for spying for Israel, tore into the Biden administration on Monday, counting it among Israel’s worst enemies.
Pollard, who moved to Israel after his parole ended last December, was honored at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva’s annual Jerusalem Day gala, where the capital’s mayor, Moshe Lion, presented him with a certificate of appreciation for his efforts on behalf of the Jewish people.
Pollard used the keynote address to launch into a lengthy list of policy recommendations for Jerusalem that provided a window into his hardline worldview.
He began by reflecting on the recent murder of 19-year-old Yehuda Guetta in a terror shooting attack at a West Bank junction.
“The murderer was the manifestation of the oldest hatred, more lethal than the deadliest disease known to man — Jew-hatred. Cold-blooded anti-Semitism,” he said, speaking in English. “It’s the foundational belief of our so-called peace partners up the road in Ramallah [the Palestinian Authority], our avowed enemies in Gaza and many of the woke bureaucrats and officials that staff the current Biden administration.”
“What we’re talking about is Amalek, pure and simple,” he said, equating the Biden administration and the Palestinian leadership with the biblical archenemy of the Israelites.
“Whether you murder a Jew directly… or whether you pin his arms behind his back like the identity Democrats of the same Biden administration — the death of the Jew is the same,” he continued, apparently accusing the American leadership of killing Jews.
Pollard claimed that not all of Israel’s enemies “wear a keffiyeh and carry a Kalashnikov… some of them wear very nice suits… and they hate us with a passion that you can’t even imagine.”
He counted the US State Department and the United Nations as Israel’s “enemies” and referred to the latter as a “Knesset of hate.”
Insisting that the two-state solution is a “fiction,” Pollard said the entire biblical Land of Israel was God-given and that no one other people has a right to any of it.
He lamented Israel’s relinquishing of custodial control over the Temple Mount to Jordan and called for it to be reversed, adding that the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the compound should be turned into a synagogue and that the currently walled-up eastern gate to the holy site should be “rededicate[d] as the portal for Messiah.”
Countries should be told that they can either place their embassies in Jerusalem or nowhere in Israel at all, Pollard said, adding that US diplomats should be expelled if Washington tries to reopen its consulate in Jerusalem, which served as the de facto representative to the Palestinians.
Pollard, now 66, sold military secrets to Israel while working as a civilian intelligence analyst for the US Navy in the 1980s. He was arrested in 1985 after trying unsuccessfully to gain asylum at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and pleaded guilty. The espionage affair embarrassed Israel and tarnished its relations with the United States for years.
Pollard was given a life sentence. US defense and intelligence officials said his spying caused great damage and strenuously argued against his release. But after serving 30 years in federal prison, he was released in 2015 and placed on parole for five years. Pollard arrived in Israel to a hero’s welcome late last year.
