Former spy Jonathan Pollard announced on Sunday that he will run for Knesset as a member of former deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel’s Israel First party, declaring in a joint statement filmed at the Western Wall that Israel needs “a new government that’s dedicated to the preservation of the land and people of Israel.”
“I wasn’t the exception to the rule. My abandonment and betrayal was not the exception. On October 7, I saw that the entire country had been abandoned and betrayed,” Pollard, 72 said in English, referring to the years he languished in prison.
Many lawmakers “talk a very good game” but failed to take responsibility for Hamas’s attack, he asserted, telling Haskel that “the only way we’re going to reassure ourselves that that won’t happen is if we get people like you back into responsible positions of authority in the government.”
Haskel’s new Israel First party is a member of the so-called “third bloc” of center-right parties aimed at forcing a compromise between Likud and the Zionist opposition parties to create a broad Zionist unity government. None of the bloc’s parties have managed to pass the electoral threshold in recent polls.
“The Israel First party is receiving a significant boost today from Israeli hero Jonathan Pollard, who paid a very heavy personal price for his commitment to Israel and the Jewish people,” said Haskel, an ex-Likud MK who recently left Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope faction over its merger with her former party.
