Former Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard has been dealt many blows through his life, as well as countless disappointments and betrayals. But for the vast majority of them, he had his wife to support him. On Monday morning, he was dealt a crushing blow when his rock, Esther Pollard, passed away, having dedicated the past 30 years to his wellbeing.
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Her efforts were motivated by altruistic and idealistic reasons, but perhaps they were mainly a consequence of the fact that she had fallen in love with him. She paid an unbearable price for this total devotion, and by the time her husband was finally released from prison, she could no longer bear children.
Pollard said on Monday that when he was imprisoned, she refused to write opinion pieces in the media despite being asked by newspaper editors. "She would always respond by saying that it would be problematic because she would only have one topic to write about, me," Pollard told friends in his home in Jerusalem on Monday. He added, "She dedicated her life to saving me, but I could not save her."
Although he was released from prison in 2015, for their first five years they lived in New York under major restrictions. Only after they arrived in Israel in 2021, were they finally free. Esther spent much of her time undergoing treatment for cancer.
She could not be deterred by anything on her mission to release her husband. "I am glad that at least we managed to arrive here so that she could be buried in the land that she loved, and that now this land will embrace her," Pollard said. "I may know a lot about politics and strategy but she knew what the real value of the land is and our devotion to it. She knew every Jewish community with great detail, and each Shabbat she would tell me all about the victims of the past week's terrorist attacks. She would pay condolence visits after terrorist attacks as much as she could, and she was entirely dedicated to the love of this land and its people. She had everything that is good in a Jewish woman."
In her campaign to release her husband she would often be relentless, to the point of being aggressive. She was the simple Jewish-Canadian teacher whose love and faith tied her to one of the major episodes in Israeli history. This also meant that she often found herself in direct confrontation with two powerful entities – the Israeli and US governments.
She paid dearly for her willingness to speak truth to power on how the most powerful people had betrayed her husband. Security services treated her as if she was a political foe, using the most powerful journalists against her. These attacks did not slow her down, but injured her soul and may have also shortened her life.
"What hurts most is the fact that the government caused her so much pain over the years, she wanted to build a home in Israel," Pollard said. "They spread lies against her, they slandered her and did things that no decent person – let alone governments – should ever do to another human being. The papers falsely claimed that she was receiving millions of shekels from the state when she was actually living in a small one-bedroom apartment near the open-air market in Jerusalem, under horrible conditions. She could not be bothered by these hardships, but the lies got to her. She was never given an apology."
Rest in peace, Esther. Your journey is now complete.
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