Klinger's happy moment.
Klinger's happy moment.Amos Ben Gershom, GPO

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) awarded the rank of Chief Commissioner to Ofra Klinger, the new Israel Prisons Service (IPS) Commissioner, on Monday.

Netanyahu thanked the outgoing IPS commissioner, Chief Commissioner Aharon Aksul, and congratulated his replacement.

"I want to congratulate you first, Aharon, and thank you, and to congratulate you, Ofra, and to say to you what I always say in the government when we decide to appoint a person who will carry the weight of public office on his or her shoulders," Netanyahu quipped: "please accept my congratulations and my condolences. Today we will stress the congratulations."

Netanyahu said that Klinger was not appointed because she is a woman, but because she was the best person for the job.

"The women and men of the IPS stand at the front line of the fight against crime and terror, and I see truly excellent people there who are aware of the size of the responsibility that they shoulder," he stated.

Klinger is the second woman to be appointed IPS Commissioner. The first woman on the job was Orit Adato, who was a brigadier general in the IDF before being appointed to head the IPS. Unlike Adato, Klinger came up through the ranks of the IPS, in which she has served for 26 years.

Netanyahu noted that Klinger wrote a paper on the effect of the African infiltrators on national security, and that the paper had "found its way" to Netanyahu's desk, and had affected national policy.

Erdan noted that the IPS plays a central role in fighting terrorism, and that one of the IPS's challenges will be "to limit the ability of prisoners inside Israeli jails to influence the terrorists running wild in the streets."

"We must demand of ourselves a complete disconnection between the prisoners who we hold and those that who feed upon their incitement, on the outside," he said.