I can no longer be silent 

By Jonathan Pollard –Special Total News Agency

Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy who paid a heavy price for Israel’s security – 30 years behind bars in the American prison, breaks his silence and refers in a special article published this morning (Monday) in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, under the headline “I can no longer remain silent”, against the background The ongoing wave of terrorism in Israel where he currently lives.

 In a special article in Yedioth Ahronoth following the wave of terror, Jonathan Pollard writes: * “I know very well what a prison designed to take out a prisoner’s desire to live looks like. But here the conditions of imprisonment only encourage the next terrorists to join the club” *

 After all the years I have been through, the natural tendency is to try to focus on rehabilitating my life.  This is what my beloved wife Esther and I tried to do during the year of grace given to us to live here together and this is what I am trying to do now that I have lost her.  But the clear knowledge of what disaster we are leading ourselves to, the sights of recent months, and especially the shocking massacre in Elad do not leave me.  I just can not keep quiet anymore.

 For decades, Esther went on my behalf to be with the families of IDF victims and victims of terrorism in their difficult times. I do not understand how she was able to cope with this. Since her death, I try to continue her path,  Shaking from the embrace at the funeral continues to burn my body and soul – especially because like them and like all of us I can not escape the knowledge that this is a victim that could have been prevented.

 For the thirty years I lived in prison, I lived in constant fear and worry for my life.  I had to be alert at all times, I could not sleep at night for fear that someone would enter my room and stab me or my roommate to death.  I always had to carry a knife and be willing to use it without hesitation.  Again and again I had to witness horrific deaths of other people and my friends in particular, which occurred without warning.  In prison, the hardest thing was the fact that those who were responsible for protecting us were completely afraid of the violent prisoners and contained their behavior as much as they could.

Simply put, prison authorities wanted “peace at all costs,” even if it meant innocent people were murdered without serious consequences to those who attacked them.  We could not trust the guards to protect us because they feared that a violent prisoner injured by them would drag them to court.  I quickly learned that we have no right to self-defense under any circumstances.  People can not believe me when I tell them how one of us who tried to defend himself from an attack was severely punished to make it clear that he is no better than the one who attacked him.  It was utter madness.

 I prayed and believed that when I got one day to get home, I would not have to live that way.  Unfortunately, I was wrong.  In fact, given what I saw last year, it’s even worse now, because this time it’s not one or two people killed randomly but an entire nation living in terror of an army of bloodthirsty antisemites that the authorities are afraid to “stir up.”  I’ve already lived in this movie, and it never ended well.

 In prison, I had one or two good friends who looked after me and I looked after them, I lived under the care of God and tried to remember not to be afraid of anyone but God .. and to attack first.  Here, inconceivably, I live in a country that ranges from fear of death to denial.

 We all suffer from the same perception of a political, media, military and legal elite, which reveals an infinite bridal capacity for the suffering of its citizens while cooperating and implying as if we are somehow responsible for all the violence directed against us.  With a system that insists on forcing our soldiers to conduct a military campaign with tools designed to deal with criminal offenders, with legal advisers and a court entering the middle ground between the barrel of the tank and with a unilateral commitment to detached ethical codes that our enemies despise and burst out laughing at.  And our children.

 I see the faces of the terrorists who were caught after committing the horrific massacre in Elad and see very well that they are not afraid of prison – they know that they are facing conditions that are several times more upgraded than any criminal prisoner, a huge salary from the Palestinian Authority.

 Oh, I know very well what a prison designed to take out of the prisoner the desire to live looks … but here the conditions of incarceration of these heinous murderers only encourage the next terrorists to join the club.  How can such a hallucinatory situation be allowed to last even one more moment?

 I’m tired of it.  I’m tired of seeing those who are supposed to lead us, take our flag and erase the blue from it and leave it as a white flag of surrender.

 I’m waiting for someone, for the leader.  A true Jewish leader, who will step forward and return the blue stripes and the Star of David to our flag.

 I am waiting for a leader who will put fear of God into the hearts of our enemies.

 I am waiting for a leader to act without fear of what everyone else outside our country thinks.  Be it the US, the EU, the UN, or anyone else who thinks he has the right to tell us how to live and how to protect ourselves.

 We know why we’re here.  God has given us this land.  Not the British Empire, the League of Nations, Washington or the United Nations. But despite this fact, it is sad to understand that our sacred mission to rebuild the national home of the Jewish people for the third time is not even halfway through our fear and anxiety, not because of  Our enemies.

 We have not yet regained our country, our self-confidence and our independence in the way we are committed to after 2000 years of pogroms, crusades, inquisitions and repeated attempts to destroy our people.

 I spent thirty years in prison hoping and praying that I would come home to a country that knows how to protect its citizens.  Was I wrong?

Unfortunately I totally feel that way.

 I see time and time again how my brothers and sisters, are forced to defend themselves and those around them, not only from the enemy but from our governments.  Who is too scared to do what it takes to eradicate the terrorist threat.  This state of affairs is completely incomplete!

 We must get rid of the exile mentality that dictates the need to “understand” our enemies over the security of our people.  We just can not think like the spies who threw at others what they felt towards themselves – “and be in our eyes like grasshoppers”.  I am not a grasshopper and neither are my brothers and sisters in this country grasshoppers.

 We are the descendants of proud and noble warriors who feared only God and never hesitated to defend our country from some of the greatest empires the world has ever seen. For many years, our leaders have continually tried to make us forget this fact in favor of adopting a more liberal and postmodern conception.  In which we “share” our land with those who openly seek to destroy us.

 enough!  We must reject this cynical defeatism before it kills us.

 It is time to regain our personal and collective self-respect.  It is time for our nation to demand that our leaders care more about us than about foreign masters.

 It is time for our representatives to work seriously to defeat those organizations and countries that are working to eliminate us.

 At the very least, we want the Army High Command to wake up and stop pretending that “managing the conflict” is a strategic doctrine that can be accepted.  This is not.  It is a kind of “reconciliation” that protects our enemies while making us look weak and stupid.

 I know we can make these vital changes.  If we really want to be an independent state – we have no other choice.  We must see these goals as our sacred commitment not only to ourselves but also to our future generations.

 Who will give and Gd will give us the wisdom and power to do so.