“SILENCE THEM”: Pollard: Israel Should Have Imprisoned Some Hostage Families ‘To Silence Them’

In a recent online conversation with Rabbi David Bar-Hayim of the Shilo Institute, former Israeli intelligence operative Jonathan Pollard expressed controversial views on how Israel should have handled families of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

“When we declared war, the first thing that the government should have done was to declare a state of national emergency and told all of the hostage families, ‘You will keep your mouths shut, or we will shut them for you. You will not interfere in the management of this war. You will not be used by the international community or by our own leftists, who managed the Shalit deal, as a weapon against us,’” he says.

“And if that means imprisoning, to silence certain members of hostages’ families, then so be it. We’re in a state of war,” adds Pollard, who served decades in US prison for espionage before being released during former US president Barack Obama’s tenure and later being allowed to move to Israel by then-president Donald Trump.

Critically reflecting on the recent approval of a new hostage deal by Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, Pollard criticized the decision and expressed his disillusionment with the far-right Religious Zionism party, which supported the agreement.

“I was dead-set against turning all these posters out, the kidnapped, with all these pictures of these poor people that were kidnapped,” Pollard adds. “Why? Because each one of them was a poison dart at our ability to wage total war against our enemies.”

Pollard advocated for Israel to continue the conflict without entering into any deals, even if it meant sacrificing Israeli hostages.

{Matzav.com Israel}