Opposition lambasts government ‘neglect’ over home front report
State Comptroller’s findings ‘reinforce the sense of most Israelis that everything has been neglected,’ charges Zionist Union chief Isaac Herzog
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A state comptroller report that found woeful unpreparedness of home front authorities for a possible rocket assault sparked accusations of negligence from opposition lawmakers Tuesday.
Opposition head MK Isaac Herzog blamed the reported shortcomings in Israeli preparedness, including some two million Israelis who do not have ready access to bomb shelters, on the government’s shirking of its duties amid “corrupt considerations.”
“This report reinforces the sense of most Israelis that everything has been neglected,” Herzog said in a statement Tuesday. “If we’ve reached the point where corrupt considerations are linked to the purchase of submarines, and now we learn that they [the government] have not dealt with protecting children and families from rockets, then everything has been neglected.”
Among other findings, the report by State Comptroller Yosef Shapira said that between a quarter and half of all Israelis do not have access to a bomb shelter in case of an emergency. The document, a review of the country’s preparedness against rocket and missile attacks, found numerous gaps and failures in the government’s and military’s plans to protect Israel’s civilian population. A similar report, released last year, also noted shortcomings in the country’s home front defense.
Last month it emerged that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s personal lawyer may have worked as a representative of the German company that builds Israel’s naval submarines, ThyssenKrupp, in what may constitute a conflict of interest. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit ordered an investigation into allegations that the attorney, David Shimron, used his close relationship with the premier to push Israel to purchase three submarines from ThyssenKrupp, award the company a 2014 contract for naval vessels to defend Israel’s gas fields, and allow it to build a shipyard in Israel.
Meretz party leader MK Zehava Galon made the same link to the submarines affair in a terse, sarcastic tweet on the comptroller’s findings.
“Who needs to defend the home front or [build] bomb shelters when we have three shiny new submarines? Spoiled,” she wrote.
מי צריך הגנה לעורף, מיגון וממ״דים כשיש 3 צוללות מנצנצות? מפונקים
— זהבה גלאון (@zehavagalon) December 6, 2016
Yesh Atid MK Karine Elharar, who chairs the Knesset State Control Committee which oversees the comptroller’s work, said the findings showed “disregard for the very lives of our citizens, it’s that simple.”
The report “reveals serious failures by both the political and security echelons, led by the prime minister,” she charged, including “cabinet decisions [before 2014] that went unimplemented, and in fact have still not been carried out.”
She called on Netanyahu, the Defense Ministry and the National Security Council “to do what they failed to do [in 2014]: immediately implement the preparedness and budget plans for home front defense and correct the failings revealed in the report.”
The committee will convene for a special meeting on the report next Tuesday, Elharar said.
The Times of Israel Community.