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NEWS
Poraz: "No Local Authority Tried to Enforce Chometz
Law"
By Eliezer Rauchberger
Not a single local authority contacted the Interior Minister
with a request to authorize its inspectors to enforce the
Chometz Law, Interior Minister Avraham Poraz claimed in a
letter he sent to Attorney General Mani Mazuz after MK Rabbi
Moshe Gafni told him Poraz did not uphold the Chometz Law.
In his letter Poraz wrote, "Surely you know the Interior
Ministry does not have inspectors of its own who are capable
of enforcing the Chometz Law due to the diminished resources
at my ministry, which recently underwent a drastic cut. I do
not believe it would be advisable for me to assign special
inspectors from my ministry to this task. In the past as
well, when the post of Interior Minister was manned by
religious ministers, the Interior Ministry did not assign its
own inspectors to this matter, and law enforcement was
carried out by authorized inspectors of the local
authorities."
The letter, written the day before Pesach, stresses, "So far,
until the time of this writing, I have not received a single
official request from a local authority to authorize its
inspectors to enforce the law. I did receive one letter from
the Deputy Mayor of Bat Yam (and not the Mayor himself), but
instead of a list of inspectors the municipality would like
to approve, the letter was just a general request for
clarification."
At the end of his letter Poraz writes, "Granting the
inspectors the authority to enforce the law, which carries
criminal repercussions, requires preparation and inquiry.
Therefore requests to authorize inspectors should have been
submitted a reasonable period of time in advance, for the
arrival of the Pesach holiday did not come as a surprise to
anybody . . . Under these circumstances I do not feel there
is any room for criticism with regard to the issue of
enforcing the law."
In response MK Gafni said the Interior Minister was dodging
the question to avoid giving a real answer. After announcing
several weeks before Pesach that he would not enforce the
Chometz Law, local council heads did not contact him because
they were aware of his stance. Some local heads, such as
Jerusalem Mayor Rabbi Uri Lupoliansky, enforced the law
independently, using municipal inspectors. Yet none of this
exempts the Interior Minister, who declared intentions to
transgress the law, for which he must be held accountable,
said Rabbi Gafni.
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