Rabbi Bar Hayim: Shalom and welcome to all our viewers. And with me today, as always, is my good friend, Yonatan, Jonathan Pollard.
Hello. How are you? Shalom.
Jonathan Pollard: Fine Rav, Shalom.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: Today is Monday, Yom Sheini.
Being evening it is now Kaf Hei B’mar Cheshvan, the 25th of the month of Mar Cheshvan, 5785, according to our calendar. And that corresponds to the 25th of November, 2024, according to the Gregorian calendar. And I believe that you wished to begin with the ongoing and outrageous Eli Feldstein or Feldstein scandal that some of our viewers may be familiar with and others may not. So perhaps you should begin at the beginning.
Jonathan Pollard: The beginning involves a young reserve officer who came across a document that he was shocked and outraged to find out had not been passed to the Prime Minister.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: This young man, Eli Feldstein, works in the Prime Minister’s office.
Jonathan Pollard: He worked. Yes, he worked in the Prime Minister’s office!
He apparently didn’t have the appropriate security clearances as far as the security services were concerned to be vetted, to see highly classified information that was available to the Prime Minister. But the Prime Minister believed in him, that he was a good, loyal, patriotic citizen, a Jew, and took him along to meetings and speeches, etc.
So, one day in the course of his normal work, he ran across this document, which laid out, which had been seized by our forces in Gaza. And it was basically Sinwar’s strategy for using the hostages to undermine our war effort, to create social discord in the country, to put pressure on the Prime Minister to resign and have the government fall, and to put as much pressure on as possible on the weakest link in the government that they identified as the Minister of Defense, Yoav Galant, which was not a misreading of the situation on the part of Hamas.
They understood that he had political ambitions to unseat the Prime Minister and to become the darling of the left, if you will, because of his concern for the hostages and his feeling that the liberation and the freedom, if you will, of the hostages superseded victory over Hamas.
So, this was a very important document because it basically justified everything the Prime Minister instinctively knew was going on with Hamas’s manipulation of the hostage issue. As I’ve said on several occasions, they had successfully weaponized the hostages to take advantage, if you will, of our love for one another. And they were joined in this effort by the left, who had figured prominently in the anti-judicial reform movement. So, he apparently showed this to the Prime Minister. From what I understand from the media, he showed this document to the Prime Minister, who was equally horrified.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: Which proved that Netanyahu was correct all along, as were all the other people, including the two of us, who said on many occasions that Hamas and Sinwar may he rot in hell, Shem Reshaim Yerkov,
Jonathan Pollard: Amen!
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: had no interest ever in any kind of hostage deal.
Jonathan Pollard: None whatsoever!
It was quite clear, in fact, that we were never going to get all of the hostages back. That was very clear. And that they were going to use this process to initially get us out of the Philadelphi corridor, their oxygen basically, so they could get resupplied and move back and forth. And then to leave Gaza entirely, essentially handing them a victory from us.
Okay. These were things that apparently the Prime Minister instinctively knew. And there was a fight at the time within the government between the office of the Prime Minister and the Kiria, the Ministry of Defense, over whether or not to stay in the Philadelphi corridor with the leftists in the Kiria basically saying, we don’t need the Philadelphi corridor anymore because Hamas is finished. They don’t represent a military threat anymore, which was a blatant lie then. And it’s a blatant lie now.
And so, what happened was they over-classified this document, which in effect suppressed it. And by withholding it, they prevented the Prime Minister from explaining to everybody that his assumptions were based on facts. And so, they suppressed it, not only from the Prime Minister, but from the people of Israel as well.
And when this case first blew up, my first question to many of the editors in-chiefs in Israel is, you’re asking the wrong question. I want to know who classified this document at that level. Who was it?
But I’m ahead of myself.
So, what happened to this fellow, Eli Feldstein, this young officer, was that when he couldn’t get anybody here in Israel to publish it, this document, because apparently the censors in the media absolutely forbade it being publicized. Apparently, apparently, he provided it to a German newspaper, Bild; it’s actually a magazine, and to the Jewish Chronicle. And when that came out, the Prime Minister immediately asked the censor if he could discuss it.
This is an old technique that’s used, that if you can’t talk about a classified matter, you leak it overseas. And because it’s already out and published, they usually look the other way.
In many cases, they look the other way and they say, go ahead and talk. There have been many, many other cases that where even though it was published overseas, they still forbade anybody in this country from talking about it.
So, the Prime Minister was given permission to talk about it.
So it wasn’t that critical in terms of the security level; and it fully justified his position on the hostage negotiations and on the critical need to maintain our presence, not only on the Philadelphi corridor, but on the Neitzarim corridor and in Gaza in general.
Now, apparently the powers that be, what you and I and many other people in the know, called the Deep State, apparently swore blood revenge on this young man and arrested him and several others. And what they’re doing to him, this Eli Feldstein right now, in my opinion, represents a clear and present danger to the health of our democracy.
Now let me back up for a second. A lot of people have actually come to me to talk about the similarities and the dissimilarities between my case and Eli Feldstein’s.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: There is a well-known tactic used, not infrequently, in order to circumvent censorship matters, and that is to leak certain information to a foreign press outlet, a foreign media outlet, and they publish it and they’re not required to follow Israeli military censors’ orders. And then once it’s out there in the world, then a person in Israel can more easily find himself (that is to say) get permission to speak about that same topic. And that’s what happened in this case.
Jonathan Pollard: Correct!
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: So, it was published by The Bild and The Jewish Chronicle in England. And then Netanyahu was able to speak about it. And he did begin to speak about this document.
Jonathan Pollard: Correct.
Which basically justified his intuitive understanding of how Hamas was using the hostage issue to win, to divide Israel, to prevent us from winning the war against them, and from ultimately succeeding in ejecting us from Gaza.
Many people have come to me in the intervening weeks since Feldstein’s arrest and have pointed out the many similarities and some of the glaring dissimilarities between my case and his case. And it’s worthwhile, just for a moment, kind of reprising what my case was about.
It was about an undeclared intelligence embargo against Israel, where critical information that should have been shared with Israel was being withheld.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: When you say with Israel, do you mean with Israel’s Prime Minister, Netanyahu? And his people.
Jonathan Pollard: Right. And the military and intelligence agencies here in Israel.
So, in other words, we’re talking about an intelligence embargo by the Israeli Deep State that cannot abide Netanyahu.
Jonathan Pollard: Well, that’s (the case) here. This is in the case of Feldstein.
But in my case, it was a violation of a solemn agreement between the two countries to share intelligence.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: Oh, I see. You were referring to your case.
Jonathan Pollard: Right. Right. And this was intelligence that was of critical importance to the state of Israel.
So, I did what I could to go up the chain of command to find out why this embargo was occurring. And I found out why. And it was political. It wasn’t anything relating to the sensitivity of the information or any other kind of security issue. And it all stemmed from our raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor. And it enraged people like Casper Weinberger, the then Secretary of Defense, and Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who was the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
So, people have asked me in retrospect, couldn’t I have gone to the media with this information? And the short answer to that was absolutely not. Because the information would, A) have been compromised. And B) Look, I understood that many wars in the Middle East had been caused by misperception more than any other element. And I didn’t want the Syrians in particular to get the wrong idea of where we were security-wise. That is, that we were being blindsided. And hence, maybe we were vulnerable. The Syrians had a standing start war option that could have done some really real damage on the Golan Heights.
So, I was then asked by people, why didn’t you go to people on Capitol Hill and bring your concerns to them? And the short answer for that was the information never would have gotten to Israel. And I would have been arrested. And that would have been the end of it. Then they asked me, why didn’t you go to a Jewish leader? And I related a story where I asked the top Jewish leader in the country who came to visit me in prison, what if I had come to you with my concerns with proof to back it up? And he said, I would have listened to you patiently, given you coffee or tea and had my secretary call the FBI to arrest you because I would have considered you to be an agent provocateur.
So, the safest thing I could do, since I was concerned with maintaining the security of this information, and at the same time making sure it got to its appropriate recipient in Israel, is I became an Israeli agent. Now, during my ordeal, I was tortured pretty badly. I’m basically 100% disabled now, if I don’t take certain medications and do some other things.
I was subjected to being buried alive, basically, in a prison that was pretty close to sensory deprivation. I didn’t see anybody. I didn’t talk to anybody. I had no phone calls, nothing to read, nothing to write, no recreation, nothing. And that was for seven years. That was to get me to talk and to cooperate. And then when that didn’t work, I was put in a killing field, what we call the gladiator school, where many people died around me. And death was a constant threat.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: Can you perhaps explain to the audience what you mean by a killing field or a gladiator school?
Jonathan Pollard: It was a prison where people died. A lot of people were not going to be leaving this place. Most of them were not.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: Because of violence between the inmates?
Jonathan Pollard: Because of their crime, the nature of their crime.
And so, they were put in this place, basically, to live out their lives, as best they could. And there were lots of gangs who lived by the sword, as we would say, lots of drugs, lots of liquor, lots of illicit indecencies going on. And it was like living in Sodom and Gomorrah. And I guess the point was, they wanted me so scared that I would cooperate. And it got so bad that when my mother and father died, and I asked to go either to the Leviah or to the Shiva, that I was told that there was a condition that I talk and cooperate in implicating innocent people, basically the American Jewish leadership.
The American Deep State Wanted to Decapitate the American Jewish Leadership
What they wanted me to do, the Deep State wanted me to do was help them decapitate the American Jewish leadership. And these were people I knew were betraying me at the time by calling for my head, because I had somehow, I had been a “Shonda” for the goyim, as they said, I was an embarrassment to the Jewish community.
But I was raised not to Moser (inform on) another Jew, not to betray another Jew, no matter what. And so, I had to keep my mouth shut.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: But what are the Jewish leaders done according to your your…
Jonathan Pollard: They wanted me to implicate them in my activities.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: But they were not.
Jonathan Pollard: Not at all; not one of them at all. Not at all.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: So, they want you to lie.
Jonathan Pollard: To lie.
Rabbi Bar Hayim: Well, that’s that…
Jonathan Pollard: Bear that in mind.
Rabbi Bar Hayim: The CIA wants you to lie. That’s truly shocking.
Jonathan Pollard: Quite!
So, legally, basically, every constitutional safeguard was waived in my case. And I could spend hours describing point by point what that meant. But suffice it to say that every protection that an ordinary prisoner would receive was waived in my case. The judge, the sentencing judge, saw me in my condition after six weeks. I had a hole in my head. I have a plate now, but there was a hole in my head. My back was broken in four places. Rabbi Bar-Hayim: From what? What do you mean you had a hole in your head?
Jonathan Pollard: I’ve been bashed in.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: By other prisoners?
Jonathan Pollard: No! No, by the interrogators.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: Oh, I see.
Jonathan Pollard: This was six weeks of interrogation. My ankles were broken, my knees were broken. I mean, I was busted up pretty badly. All to get me to cooperate.
Eli Feldstein’s Mistreatment
So, we now turn to Eli Feldstein. The case against him is so overblown that it begs the question as to whether the rule of law actually exists in principle here. Forget about in execution, but in principle, whether safeguards that everybody assumes people are eligible for actually exist. He has been subjected to the worst physical treatment, mistreatment, you could imagine. Mistreatment, I might say, that has really not even been meted out to the Nukba terrorists who committed such heinous actions against our people on October 7th.
Why?
And why? Why? Because they want him to implicate the Prime Minister in his leaking of these documents. Now, if a man says no or refuses to answer, that should be the end of it. The government, the security services, and the Attorney General’s office, and the state prosecutor can threaten all they want in terms of what they intend to do to this person. But to physically mistreat him and consider him to be worse than the worst terrorists that we’ve had to deal with over the past year? No. That is not how a democracy works.
Really the Interrogators Should Be in Jail
Basically, if we were a real democracy at this point, the head of the Shabak, every one of this young man’s interrogators, the state attorney, and the attorney general should be in jail right now, not Eli Feldstein. He is guilty, if anything, of a crime that the left commits every day of leaking information, sensitive information, without any regard to the impact that it might have on our national security.
The government claims…
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: We all know by now, I just wanted to point out, Yonatan (Jonathan), I think we all know by now, I think we all know by now, any reasonable person aware of the realities and willing to look them in the eye is aware by now that the extreme anti-Jewish left-wing here in Israel are happy to burn the country down if they are not in charge of it, and if they are not pleased with the way things are going.
Jonathan Pollard: Correct!
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: And they have what’s called in Hebrew the Rak Lo Bibi, anything but Bibi syndrome, the Bibi (Netanyahu’s nickname) derangement syndrome, BDS, as we’ve discussed before. All that interests these people is bringing Netanyahu down. I’m not saying that…
Jonathan Pollard: By any means.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: I’m not saying that because I necessarily think he’s the right person or the best person to lead the Jewish people.
Jonathan Pollard: Nor do I.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: But he is the person who was elected democratically, and he and his party at this point in time, according to all the polls that I’ve seen, would receive more seats in a parliament if the elections were called tomorrow than he currently has. So, he has a lot of support. This is something they cannot forgive him. The self-hating Erev Rav, the mixed multitude anti-Jewish left-wing cannot forgive him for denying them ruling over the roost 110%. As it is, they control 90% of everything that counts in this country, literally 90%, as we were discussing earlier. The Deep State here, which includes the various security agencies, like the GSS, the Shabak, and the Mossad, and the police, and the attorney general, and the Juristocracy, in all its various manifestations, the army, that is to say, the general staff, and many other aspects of Israeli society, are all united against Netanyahu. They have been in the business of fabricating quasi-legal cases against him now for, well, if you want to go back a long way, you can go back 20 years, but certainly for the last eight to 10 years.
Jonathan Pollard: Correct.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: And they’re all entirely spurious.
They took this individual. They tortured him. He was kept, as I understand it, blindfolded, handcuffed, sensory deprivation. He was not allowed to see a lawyer for 10 days.
Jonathan Pollard: They even put a noose in his cell, a subtle suggestion, if you will.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: Some kind of a cord, which shouldn’t have been there, which was a suggestion.
Jonathan Pollard: It was a noose. It was an actual noose.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: Actual noose, okay.
Jonathan Pollard: And who knows what drugs they’ve been giving him? Now, I’ve been in sensory deprivation for seven years, and I never experienced during that time what he’s going through, so my only assumption is that they are giving him something.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: His brother, by the way, appeared on the most popular TV current affairs program panel show called The Patriots, HaPatriotim, here in Israel this past Saturday night. I didn’t see it, but I saw a recording of a couple of minutes of it, in which the brother of this individual, (namely) Eli Feldstein’s brother, appeared.
He said, I met him. I was allowed to meet him just the other day. He was arrested about a month ago now. I think it’s almost a month ago. He said, I didn’t recognize him. He’s lost 15 kilo (33 pounds). He’s suffering from PTSD. He’s dysfunctional, and he will never be the same person again. They’ve destroyed him.
Jonathan Pollard: As I said, I was in a terrible situation for seven years, and when I came out, by the grace of God, I wasn’t in this kind of deteriorated condition, which suggests to me that he’s being given psychotropic medication to make him disoriented, to forget where he is, to forget the past, to feel a high degree of anxiety and fear. This has happened before on two other occasions that I’m aware of, one to a Mossad agent and another one to a military intelligence officer who died under very suspicious circumstances while incarcerated here in Israel.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: This was just a few years ago, as I recall.
Jonathan Pollard: Correct. And whose deaths were not properly investigated. They just swept it out of the way. So, the placing of a noose is what I said before was suggestive. You know, hang yourself. And if you don’t want to do that, what happens is it sets up even more anxiety within the person who’s being drugged. I’m sure if a blood sample was taken from Eli Feldstein today, it would be filled with the psychotropic medication that they’re giving him, either forcibly by injection or in his food. This is what they do.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: And this is all for the noble purpose. This unfathomable cruelty and pure evil, is all for the noble cause of bringing down Netanyahu and his government; so that the Jew-hating Erev Rav Jews can get back on their high horse.
The Amiram Ben-Uliel Precedent Shows the Claim of Torture is Ignored by The High Court
Jonathan Pollard: And what’s really frightening about this is that even if he does cooperate with it, and later recants, as a young man by the name of Amiram Ben-Uliel has done, who was falsely accused of killing some Arabs and under torture, admitted that he did it, and then when he was okay, in better conditions, recanted and explained what torture he endured. When the case went to the High Court lo and behold, the Politburo, the Supreme Soviet, if you will of the Juristocracy, the High Court, in a shocking act of cruelty, acknowledged the legitimacy of torture to extract confessions.
It’s the only High Court in the Democratic West that has ever stooped so low as to do that.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: That decision runs against Israeli law, of course.
Jonathan Pollard: Of course it does. They don’t care. Words on paper.
The Supreme Court, the Politburo, or the Supreme Soviet
So, this is why I call the Supreme Court, the Politburo, or the Supreme Soviet. I don’t know what will happen to this man, Eli Feldstein. I don’t know whether he will continue to deteriorate and completely lose his mind. In which case, any confession he makes isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. But that won’t stop them from using it. Or he could kill himself after they forge his signature on a confession. They’re capable of doing that. They’re capable of doing that. They’re capable of putting a piece of paper in front of him, and as he’s so drugged, have him sign it, and then they’ll kill him. Dead men tell no tales. Like Jeffrey Epstein. This is the kind of society that we’re living in right now.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: Like Jeffrey Epstein.
Jonathan Pollard: Oh, yeah.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: I’m not comparing the two individuals.
Jonathan Pollard: No, a person who died under very suspicious circumstances.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: To put it mildly, yes.
Jonathan Pollard: To put it mildly.
Rabbi Bar-Hayim: Very mildly.
Jonathan Pollard: So, these things happen all the time.
Transcript of a youtube video produced by Machon Shilo.