Pollard, who was accused of exploiting his position and spying on America for the benefit of Israel, said that the families of the Israeli hostages should have been “imprisoned to silence them,” stressing that “posters of pictures of prisoners should never be hung.”
He added to Israeli media: “When Israel declared war, the government should have declared a national emergency, and said to all the families of the hostages, either keep your mouths shut or we will shut them down.”
He said that the Israeli government should have prevented the hostages’ families from “interfering” in its management of this war.
According to the American “Business Insider” website, Pollard implied that the families of the hostages “are being used by the international community as a weapon against the Israeli government.”
He added: “If that means imprisonment to silence certain members of the hostage families, then so be it. We are at war.”
Until 1998, Israel denied that Pollard was a spy on its behalf. In 2008, he was granted Israeli citizenship, and in 2015 he was released after spending nearly 30 years behind bars. He did not become free to move outside the United States until 2020, when he spent 5 years under conditional release.
His arrest caused severe embarrassment to Israel, as it spied on its main ally, the United States.
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