Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu “prefers to meet with Madonna but not with us,” according to Esther Pollard, whose husband still is languishing in an American prison cell nearly 24 years after being sentenced to life imprisonment for passing on classified information on behalf of Israel. The average sentence for the offense is approximately four years.
Madonna, a Catholic who has adopted the Hebrew name "Esther," performed twice in Israel last week and met with senior government dignitaries, including the Prime Minister, Opposition leader Tzipi Livni and President Shimon Peres.
Pollard, in an interview with Arutz-7 (Hebrew), lambasted last week’s report by government Comptroller and Ombudsman Micha Lindenstrauss, who investigated the government’s handling of the issue.
Terming the report a "whitewash,” Esther Pollard added, "The office of the State Comptroller is giving a fraudulent stamp of approval to prime ministers of Israel; to the entire 'establishment' - to the Department of Defense, to the Foreign Ministry and so on - another branch of the government. They are being commended for all of the alleged initiatives and ‘extraordinary’ efforts that they supposedly carried out to secure Jonathan's release. This, despite the fact that there is no proof of any such efforts, no documentation, no record, and no results.”
Lindenstrauss included in his report testimony from an American legal expert that the United States might be guilty of violating Pollards’ basic rights as guaranteed by the American Constitution.
However, Esther Pollard noted, “Lindenstrauss knows that Jonathan has exhausted all his legal remedies in the United States. Jonathan has absolutely no possibility of filing in court again in the U.S."
She also noted that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert opposed Lindenstrauss’s probe, which he said would damage Pollard’s chances of being released in the future. Esther Pollard countered, "Jonathan used the opportunity to write a letter to Lindenstrauss. In his letter, Jonathan wrote that there is no reason to fear that an investigation will torpedo efforts to secure his release because there are no efforts! At the same time, Jonathan suggested to Lindenstrauss that the way to find out the truth about why there are no efforts to secure his release…is to follow the money trail.
"The government claims that it is giving us money. All of our efforts to stop the government from telling these lies have failed. If the government has records that show it is giving us money, but we never received any, then who is getting the money? Where has the money gone for the last 24 years?"
Despite Lindenstrauss’s statement that most of the testimony in his investigation remains classified and not for publication, he said that his authority did not include summoning witnesses or requiring the presentation of certain documents.
"If there was any proof of initiatives to free Jonathan, why is the report classified? Why aren't they proud of what they did?" Esther Pollard asks. She believes that this secrecy is to hide all that the government did not do for her husband.