Pollard: Like Hamas hostages, ‘I know what it’s like to be raped’ during interrogation

Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard on Tuesday compared his treatment by US interrogators to that experienced by Hamas hostages held in Gaza, lobbing the explosive allegation that he was raped while in custody.

“I know what it’s like to be buried alive, I know what it’s like to be brutally treated, including being raped, I understand that, under interrogation,” Pollard said during an English-language interview with Kan’s Reshet Bet radio station.

Pressed by the interviewer if he was saying he was raped by his American interrogators after being arrested on espionage charges, Pollard said, “Absolutely. And I’m glad some of the hostages are talking about it now.”

In recent weeks, two released hostages, Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Rom Braslavski, spoke out during interviews about sexual abuse they experienced during captivity, the first male captives to publicly confirm violence of this sort.

While Pollard has repeatedly alleged abuse while he was held in US custody, the interview marked the first time that he has claimed he was raped during that time.

Pollard on Tuesday asserted that “the people that interrogated me took a lot of pleasure in what they were doing, and they didn’t really care about what I answered. They actually took pleasure in hurting me. They never did that to a Soviet spy,” he claimed. Pollard did not specify which department or agency he was interrogated by.

Pollard, a US Navy intelligence analyst, was arrested in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison two years later after he pled guilty to passing thousands of crucial US documents to Israel.

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.

Pollard was welcomed at the time as a hero by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he became an outspoken supporter of the prime minister, although in recent years he has begun to voice criticism of the premier.

The former spy told Kan on Tuesday that the entire current leadership of Israel needs to be replaced.

On October 7, 2023, the entire country was “abandoned and betrayed,” he said. In order to recover, he urged, “we need a clean sweep. We need all new people with different perspectives, different views to come in and replace the old guard… left, right, and center. Everything.”

Asked by the interviewer if he meant that all current Knesset members had to go, Pollard answered: “All of them.”

“We have not defeated any enemy on any front, including the media front,” he added.

Pollard said he wants Netanyahu “to admit his failure, his human failure, with regard to October 7 and to correct his mistake in terms of bringing Qatar into the Strip through money and everything else. I want him to make us strong and proud as a people.”

He also specifically criticized Netanyahu for what he alleged was the premier’s subservience to Washington, including ending the war against Iran in June under US pressure.

“I’m sorry, a prime minister worthy of the name would have told the president, ‘You know, we’ll get back to you when we finish what we’ve started just now. Until then, I thank you for your opinion, but keep it to yourself,'” he said.

Pollard added: “When I said [in the past that] I couldn’t imagine a better prime minister, unfortunately, I was a bit too naive. Now I can imagine a better prime minister.”

The ex-spy hit headlines recently after The New York Times reported on a secret meeting he held earlier this year in the US Embassy with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, which raised eyebrows in the American intelligence community.

Speaking Tuesday, Pollard said, “I have my idea about who it could have been” that leaked news of the meeting. “Somebody from the CIA station did this. They still have a real grudge against me.”

Still, he insisted that there “was no secret about the meeting — he greeted me, brought me to his office. I saw any number of people, said hello to any number of people there.”

Pollard said he sought the meeting to thank Huckabee for his longtime support and his kindness to Pollard’s late wife, Esther, who died in 2022.

“If we had wanted to conduct a secret meeting, we could have met here, we could have met in a hotel room, we could have met 100 other places. There was nothing untoward about the meeting,” said Pollard. “What am I going to talk to him about?”