.
Commentary;
Almost a year and 4 months ago Esther Pollard spoke at Young Israel Beit Knesset Hanassi, Jerusalem indicating that State Controller Micha Lindenstrauss had promised to investigate the entire Pollard affair and the role of successive Israeli governments in it.
It is a disappointment that 16 months later, it seems that only a mandate by the Knesset State Control committee has compelled beginning such an investigation and that the State Controller and his staff apparently did not take the initiative on its own to investigate based on his meetings with and promises to Esther Pollard.
Be that as it may, we can only hope and pray that the Controller’s investigation will bring all of the facts to light as to successive Israeli governments’ feigned concern about Pollard, which in actuality disguised outright hostility toward him, as well as their abandonment of him on the field of battle. Hopefully these investigations won’t prove out to be political whitewash resulting from the political mandate which brought about their initiation. Hopefully “censorship requirements” cited in the report below won’t be the political out to further Etrogize Olmert and his predecessors.
The State Control committee investigations regarding the government’s inaction regarding Pollard, as well as the investigation regarding sale of contested Hevron Shalom House will go a long way to ascertaining whether the good offices of the State Controller are part of the solution, or part of the problem endemic throughout Israeli governance. MB
Lindenstauss to Examine Governments’ Failed Attempts to Free Pollard
Full Text;
The Knesset State Control Committee is expected on Monday to instruct State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss to examine the failed attempts of the current and previous governments to secure the release of jailed spy Jonathan Pollard.
Committee chairman Zevulun Orlev (National Religious Party), who initiated the move, recently reached a compromise with Kadima representatives by which the report the comptroller compiles will at first be classified and will only be published after it is examined for any censorship requirements.