Ex-US spy for Israel calls for Gaza ethnic cleansing as he seeks Knesset seat

Jonathan Pollard, a former US navy intelligence analyst jailed for 30 years for spying for Israel, has said he will stand for election to the Knesset this year on a platform of ethnic cleansing.

Speaking to Channel 13 television, Pollard said: “I personally prefer the forcible removal of all current residents of Gaza, and the annexation of Gaza and its repopulation by us.”

Pollard said he decided to enter politics because of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities that killed nearly 1,200 people and triggered the Gaza war. He blamed the Israeli government for failure to prevent the attack or intervene quickly after it began.

“Until then, I thought that the abandonment and betrayal I experienced from the government was an exception and not the rule, but after October 7 I realized that I was not an exception,” he said.

Pollard was released on parole at the age of 61 from US prison in 2015 after serving 30 years for selling military secrets to Israel for money. He and his wife, Anne Henderson, were arrested in 1985 after Pollard passed a huge volume of classified documents to Israeli intelligence – enough to fill a 10ft-by-6ft-by-6ft room, by Pollard’s own calculation. In return he received cash and jewels.

Marion Bowman, a Pentagon lawyer who assessed the damage to US national security by Pollard’s espionage, told NBC News in 2014 the spy had been motivated by money as much as allegiance to Israel, and alleged he had provided highly classified materials to two other countries.

He pleaded guilty in 1986 in hopes of avoiding a life sentence, but in 1987 the plea agreement was rejected by a federal judge. He was championed during his imprisonment by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and he was awarded Israeli citizenship while in jail.

The terms of Pollard’s parole did not allow him to leave the US for five years, but he emigrated to Israel in 2020 after his parole term was over, and received a hero’s welcome from Netanyahu.

Despite Netanyahu’s past support for him, Pollard has become a fierce critic of the prime minister. In his television interview, he said Israel was not winning the war it had been fighting since 2023 and called for new leadership with a clearer and sharper policy.

According to Channel 13, Pollard will enter politics as part of a new party, formed with Nissim Louk, whose 22 year-old daughter, Shani, was murdered in the 7 October attack while she was attending a music festival near the Gaza border.

Despite his bitter criticisms over the security failures that made Israel vulnerable to attack, Pollard said that if Netanyahu comes out of the coming elections, expected in October this year, still in command of a governing coalition, “then we will have to support him”.