Israel - What the Rule of Law Looks Like - by Jonathan Tobin

...American justice is generally the envy of the world, and we know that of Israel is imperfect. But the sight of Olmert heading to jail where he’ll share a cellblock with Katzav is a reminder of the Jewish state’s high standards and ability to treat the mighty as being just as accountable as the marginal. When the dust settles on the Clinton email scandal, let’s hope Americans can say as much of their justice system.

Image by © DEBBIE HILL/POOL/epa/Corbis

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
17 February '16..

On Monday, Israelis were treated to the awful spectacle of a former prime minister starting a jail sentence. After a drawn out appeals process, Ehud Olmert, who served as Israel’s leader from 2006 to 2009, began serving a 19-month sentence on corruption charges. He’ll be housed in a special wing of one of the country’s largest prisons along with the other white-collar criminals that can be trusted to live with a man that was privy to the country’s national security secrets. Among the few prisoners who fit into that category is Moshe Katzav, who is serving out a sentence for rape.

The idea that a former prime minister and president are currently doing time is a discouraging one for the Jewish state and its friends. But though the crimes committed by both Olmert and Katzav provide a not very attractive portrait of some members of the country’s leading politicians, Israel’s supporters should actually take some grim satisfaction from their humiliation. Say what you want about the intemperate and sometimes downright crazy nature of Israeli politics, as well as the unfortunate tone of much of its discourse or the not particularly elevated nature of its popular culture. What happened to Olmert proves that, for all of its flaws, Israel is a country where the rule of law still reigns supreme.

Olmert is a product of the generation that came just after Israel’s founders and the contrast between his behavior and his predecessors speaks volumes. Whereas men like David Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin lived simply, if not as ascetics, Olmert always lived large. And in contrast to many of his colleagues who spent their formative years in senior military positions (or his successor Benjamin Netanyahu, who had been a commando as a young man and then served in diplomatic posts until getting elected to the Knesset), Olmert was a hotshot lawyer and political fixer. Like other American journalists who met and interviewed him, I always thought that unlike most top Israeli politicians, Olmert seemed to be a very familiar type and would have fit in nicely in any urban political machine in the United States.

It is interesting that, even as he entered jail, Olmert was not only still denying his guilt but also claiming that his downfall was a political conspiracy. His intention is to muddy the waters of public opinion to rebuild his tarnished legacy. That is, of course, nonsense. If anything, the pace of the investigation of his crimes while serving as mayor of Jerusalem was slowed by the fact that he was pushing ahead with the peace process and some in the judicial establishment were loath to disrupt his administration because of ethical lapses. Indeed, there were many in Israel that thought the investigations of Ariel Sharon’s sons’ dubious ethical behavior (which eventually led to a corruption conviction for one of them) was also held back because of his decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza as he began his journey from the right to the center.

Many endings, but a chance to move on

...Until now, it was US pressure on Israel for concessions to the Palestinians that kept the Israeli Left going. Now, without any leadership, with its power base in the permanent bureaucracy weakened, and the US role as mediator wholly discredited not only among the Israeli public, but in the US media, the Left has nothing to latch on to. If the government uses the opportunity to abandon the two-state paradigm, it stands its best chance in 20 years of succeeding.

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
04 April '14..

On Monday, former prime minister Ehud Olmert’s career ended.

Earlier this month, former IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Gabi Ashkenazi’s career ended.

And on Tuesday, the phony peace process ended.

In the lead-up to last year’s elections, the media and key political figures were yearning for Olmert’s return to politics.

In July 2008, Olmert was forced to cede leadership of the Kadima party, and so opt out of running for reelection, when then-attorney-general Menahem Mazuz announced he was indicting the premier on corruption charges. Olmert left office in March 2009 when his government was replaced by Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition government.

The public abandoned its support for Olmert in the summer of 2006 as a result of his incompetent leadership of the Second Lebanon War. By the end of the summer, Olmert’s approval rating stood at 3 percent. But with the able assistance of the media, and of Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman who saved Olmert’s government by joining it, Olmert was able to weather the storm and keep going despite the public’s lack of faith in his leadership and ardent desire to force him from office.

The media’s romance with Olmert began formally in late 2003, when he followed then-premier Ariel Sharon from the center-right to the far Left. Indeed, as Sharon abandoned his pledges to voters and adopted the platform of the defeated Labor Party of unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza, Olmert outflanked him from the Left.

Always a political pugilist, Olmert was eager to attack everyone who opposed Sharon’s withdrawal plan. He had no qualms about using rank demonization to attack his former political allies in the Likud.
It was Olmert’s newfound devotion to the platform of the far Left that won him the support of media heavies like Yediot Aharonot’s Nahum Barnea, Ma’ariv’s Ben Caspit and Channel 2’s Amnon Abramovich. They were more than happy to attack as delusional independent investigative reporter Yoav Yitzhak who broke nearly every corruption story regarding Olmert, beginning in 2005.

After four years of desultory, at best, probes between 2009 and 2012, Olmert was indicted in four separate cases on corruption charges. After he was acquitted of most of the charges in his first two trials, his media allies began a campaign to return him to politics. Only Olmert, they said, had a chance to defeat Netanyahu. None of the other leftist party heads had a shot.

But alas, Olmert was otherwise engaged, in his criminal defense. And now that he is a convicted felon, Olmert will never be able to return to politics.

Even his media friends have to cut their losses and find a new leader.

Is Abbas really a 'partner for peace'? Well....

Shlomo Cesana/Daniel Siryoti..
Israel Hayom..
01 January '13..

This week President Shimon Peres urged the Israeli government to embrace Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, calling him a "partner for peace." But a renewed look at the so-called Palestine Papers that were leaked about a year ago paints a completely different picture of the Palestinian leader.

The documents, which detail the behind-the-scenes deliberations on the Palestinian side between 1999 and 2010 over the peace process, were obtained by the pan-Arab news channel Al Jazeera last January, although their content was partially exposed by WikiLeaks before that. Through these documents, one can also learn how far the Israeli leaders were willing to go in the negotiations and how their peace proposals were received by the other party. In light of Peres' comments, Israel Hayom has revisited the controversial aspects of the Palestine Papers .

The documents show that when then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put on the table what was then the most far-reaching peace offer [somewhere between 2006 and 2008], Abbas told his negotiating team "not to commit to any counteroffer lest the Palestinians be bound to it."

The papers suggest that the two parties ironed out numerous details of a would-be permanent status agreement until Olmert handed Abbas a comprehensive peace proposal. While the accepted narrative is that Abbas had no time to respond because Olmert was forced to resign in the wake of corruption allegations in 2008, the papers tell a different story: Abbas had no intention of responding to the offer in the first place.

In September 2008, the Palestinians' chief negotiator Saeb Erekat met with his team and reviewed three possible responses. The first was a counter offer that included a map. It would be presented to the Israeli counterparts but they would not be allowed to hold on to it. The second option was to provide an evasive answer or to equivocate. The final option was a flat-out rejection. Shortly after the documents were leaked, Erekat announced his departure, although his resignation has yet to take effect.

The New Abbasids of Israel

P. David Hornik..
frontpagemag.com..
12 December '12..

The Abbasids were the third great dynasty of caliphs, ruling West Asia and North Africa from Baghdad starting in the mid-eighth century.

These days there is an Abbasid camp in Israel. They are not Muslim Arabs and definitely not caliphs but, rather, Israeli Jews of a certain political persuasion.

At least, I’ve come to call them “the Abbasids” in my mind. The reason is that they’re staunch, unwavering acolytes of Mahmoud Abbas, the internationally high-profile president of the Palestinian Authority.

Israel is gearing up for elections on January 22. The right-of-center bloc, more unified and much more popular than its competitor, is heavily favored to win. The left-of-center bloc is fragmented into several factions, the major ones being led by former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, former journalist Yair Lapid, and legislator Shelly Yacimovich.

The left-of-center, like any opposition, needs to differentiate itself from its rival. It is hard for this camp, though, to find much to criticize in the performance of the Netanyahu government—not stellar, but solid.

Its tenure has been much quieter in security terms than the tenure of previous, left-of-center prime minister Ehud Olmert. The public’s only complaint about the recent skirmish with Hamas was that the government ended it too soon. In the economic sphere, the skilled team of Netanyahu, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, and Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer has made Israel an island of stability and low unemployment.

True, Yacimovich—alone among the opposition leaders—claims that what Israel needs is a good dose of the kind of statist socialism that kept it in economic shackles for its first four decades. At the same time, she hints that she may be willing to join the next Netanyahu-led coalition, “heartless capitalists” and all.

No, what’s left for the left-of-center to differentiate itself from the dominant camp is basically one man—Abbas.

The Truly Unique Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
02 December '12..

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s political options at home are limited. His breach-of-trust conviction and his pending corruption trial are preventing him from running in next month’s Knesset election. But even if he could run, the fact that the overwhelming majority of Israelis reject his position on the peace process would give him no chance to defeat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So he has done what he and other Israeli political has-beens always do: go to the United States and receive applause from their country’s critics.

To that end, he was in Washington yesterday criticizing his country’s government and saying that Netanyahu’s decision to approve building projects in Jerusalem and its suburb was a “slap in the face” to President Obama. He believes the project to build in the so-called E1 area that connects Maale Adumim with the city was an insult to the president, especially after the United States stood by Israel during the conflict with Gaza and at the United Nations. Olmert is right to say that Obama’s recent support for the alliance has been exemplary and there’s little doubt the administration would have preferred if Israel would have taken its punishment at the UN meekly rather than by showing that it would stick up for its rights. But Olmert’s assertion that the building in the E1 area undermines a two-state solution is belied by his own behavior while in office.

It should be remembered that Olmert offered the Palestinian Authority a state in almost all of the West Bank, Gaza and a share in Jerusalem with the PA to be compensated for Israel’s retention of the settlement blocs with swaps of territory. Among those areas to be held by Israel was the Maale Adumim bloc of suburbs just outside of Jerusalem.

Whenever he is in America earning speaking honorariums from liberal groups, Olmert is always careful to praise PA head Mahmoud Abbas as a genuine partner for peace, even though he didn’t accept Olmert’s proposal just as his predecessor Yasir Arafat rejected Ehud Barak’s offers. Olmert claims that if he had just had a few more months in office, the two could have crafted a deal and brought about peace. But such assertions are either delusional or mendacious.

Israel's anti-Churchill tries to rise again

Fresnozionism.org..
08 November '12..






Could there be an Israeli politician more cynical than Ehud Olmert?

Yesterday he accused PM Netanyahu of alienating President Obama — as if Obama could dislike him more — by ‘intervening’ in the US election:

“Following what Netanyahu did in the last few months, the question arises of whether or not our prime minister has a friend in the White House,” Olmert said in a meeting with New York Jewish leaders.

Olmert said that while the Israeli head of state was allowed to have a personal preference for one candidate over another, it would be “better, obviously, if he kept it to himself.”

“What took place this time was a breaking of all the rules, when our prime minister intervened in the US elections in the name of an American billionaire with a clear interest in the vote,” Olmert continued. “The very same billionaire used Israel’s prime minister to advance a nominee of his own for president.”

Olmert’s words were a clear reference to Jewish-American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who according to reports donated some $100 million to Romney’s failed campaign. Adelson also owns the Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom, which is largely perceived as a stalwart backer of Netanyahu.

Olmert didn’t explain how he knows that Adelson was acting on Netanyahu’s instructions. He seems to think that it is impossible for a Jewish billionaire to prefer one or another candidate for US president or Israeli PM without engaging in a conspiracy. His remarks, intended to damage Netanyahu with the Israeli public, can only damage his relationship with Obama as well.

Olmert, who was probably the worst Prime Minister in Israel’s history, plans to return to politics after a miraculous escape, with his skin mostly intact, from a trial on several serious corruption charges. The Israeli state prosecutor’s office has filed an appeal of his acquittals on the major charges and an especially light sentence he received for one minor offense.

Olmert said that he would run only if Obama won the US election — which makes one wonder if he expects ‘intervention’ in the opposite direction, which apparently he considers appropriate! He is expected to join with Tzipi Livni and other outspoken enemies of PM Netanyahu, take over the moribund Kadima party, and run against him in upcoming elections on an anyone-but-Bibi platform.

Livni was Olmert’s partner in the government which so badly bungled the 2006 Second Lebanon War, leading to the unnecessary deaths of dozens of soldiers and a disadvantageous cease-fire which left Hizballah in a position to rebuild and rearm (which it has done with a vengeance).

Lebanon Warned, Lebanon's Responsibility.

Ruthie Blum..
Israel Hayom..
28 August '12..

If what was reported in Haaretz yesterday is true, then I would like to commend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I am not referring here to the brouhaha surrounding his investment portfolio, but rather his alleged warning to the Lebanese government that it had better watch its step, or else.

On the investment portfolio, a scandal erupted when it emerged that Netanyahu had requested to shift some of his holdings. Though he did this through all the appropriate legal channels — and was given approval from the State Comptroller’s Office — opposition politicians seized upon the “incident” and were outraged. Ostensibly, they object to the fact that a person who is preparing for war in the near future shouldn’t be rushing to protect his stocks and bonds as a result of his assumption that the market is going to fluctuate.

Immediately, comparisons to former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz began to fly faster than the Hamas rockets that have been landing on southern Israel in honor of the start of the school year. Halutz shamed himself badly when the first thing he did after two Israeli soldiers were captured by Hezbollah terrorists in August 2006 — the event that sparked the Second Lebanon War — was to phone his broker to sell his stock portfolio.

This is why Netanyahu withdrew his request to move his money around at this particular time. Too bad he didn’t anticipate the carryings on. He should have known it was going to ensue, especially now, with the whole country up in arms (no pun intended) over Iran.

But we have to give him credit where it’s due — and it’s due him big-time on an issue that he has not discussed publicly. Indeed, even his office has declined to comment on it this week.

Apparently, Netanyahu sent a message to the Lebanese government — via a “Western diplomat” — to the effect that Israel will not tolerate Hezbollah attacks against its citizens, even if it means full-scale retaliation that includes the bombing of much of the country’s infrastructure.

This is a huge deal.

During the Second Lebanon War, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert kept insisting that Israel had no problem with Lebanon, and that its only enemy was Hezbollah.

"We have no quarrel with you," he assured the Lebanese people. "We look forward to a time when we will live together in quiet and cooperation … and hopefully in peace."

That distinction cost Israel many lives — and enabled Hezbollah to rebuild its network of terrorists and massive arsenals decimated by the war. It was a distinction that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, backed by his patrons in Tehran, has always counted on in confrontations with Israel. Indeed, it is what all terrorists rely on in their battle against the West. They know that Western democracies fear inflicting “collateral damage” more than they fear defeat. It is thus that Islamists situate themselves among innocent civilians, constructing munitions factories under kindergartens and placing key operatives in apartment buildings populated by regular people.

Mr. Olmert, count your blessings and retire graciously.

Isi Leibler..
Israel Hayom..
16 July '12..

Following the verdict of the Jerusalem District Court, I was very relieved that Ehud Olmert will not be behind bars unless the Holyland trial determines otherwise. It would have reflected adversely on the State of Israel for a former prime minister to be incarcerated, in addition to our former president.

However, there is a surrealistic tone to Olmert’s triumphalist responses and the arrogant predictions of his acolytes that he is now on the road to regaining the premiership.

Olmert was fortunate that the judgment declared insufficient evidence to show conclusively that he was aware of what had transpired and unable to determine whether the cash he received was directed toward political campaign funds or for personal benefit.

This in no way makes Olmert a martyr, or provides credence to the wild accusations that he was the object of conspiracies. Olmert himself called for investigations into "right-wing American Jews" who, he alleges, paid millions of dollars to bring about his downfall.

His supporters are also irresponsibly demanding the resignation of State Prosecutor Moshe Lador because the prosecution failed to convict him on all charges. His friend, former Maariv editor Amnon Dankner, even called on him to "commit suicide.”

Olmert should come down to earth. Despite his denials, the judges were highly critical of the fact that he received huge bundles of cash and accumulated piles of money held in the safe of Uriel Messa, which were never reported. Olmert’s personal assistant, Shula Zaken, was found guilty of criminal charges – fraud and breach of trust – despite the fact that Olmert was the sole beneficiary from her actions. After the trial, Zaken told the media that she "took one for the team and jumped on a grenade" to protect her former boss.

But what if his name was Bibi?

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
13 July '12..

I couldn’t help rubbing my eyes in disbelief at the joyful celebrations which greeted former premier Ehud Olmert’s acquittal in two corruption cases and the simultaneous belittling of his conviction on a third – what his cheerleaders portrayed as the “minor” matter of breach of trust.

I couldn’t help wondering whether the same reactions could have been remotely conceivable had the defendant been named Binyamin Netanyahu.

I vividly recalled when the “breach of trust” innuendo was hurled accusingly at Netanyahu, not after a courtroom verdict but after the prosecution admitted it had no case to at all take to trial. That in no way prevented a raging tempest from ominously swirling around Netanyahu.

In diametrical discrepancy to the Olmert phenomenon, there were no orchestrated (or other) compunctions about attempts to bring down a serving prime minister at the outset of his term. Nobody dared suggest adoption of the French law which shields PMs in office from investigation and prosecution. In fact, keeping Netanyahu from his weighty duties was deemed a laudable objective.

If anything, the prevailing bon ton dictated that it was a darn shame Bibi wasn’t hauled off to court, summarily tried, convicted and ignominiously booted out. To hear trendsetters, that was what he deserved because the prosecutors, who estimated that they didn’t have the goods on him, nevertheless rebuked him for supposed intentions which they admitted they couldn’t prove. That alone sufficed to pillory Netanyahu.

And woe to anyone who dared not toe the line.

Glick - Thoughts on Olmert's partial acquittal

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
11 July '12..






I have not had the opportunity to read the court decision on Olmert. And so my thoughts on his acquittal have little to do with the merits of the prosecution in the three cases adjudicated by the Jerusalem District Court.

I have a problem with corruption investigations against politicians generally and against Ehud Olmert specifically. In general, I find these sorts of investigations against politicians inherently biased. I take my cue from the Federalist Papers, and there I believe it was James Madison who explained that the presumption has to be that politicians are all corrupt. Their power puts them in contact with powerful and wealthy men who use their proximity to politicians to advance their interests. The larger government is - that is, the larger government's influence over the economic life of a society, the greater the likelihood of corruption. The more power a politician exerts over the economy, the larger his propensity to take bribes from people interested in making a profit.

This is the way of the world. And in our world, where governments control enormous welfare states and therefore exert massive influence over the economic life of a country, the assumption ought to be that all politicians are corrupt.

This assumption then leads to the clear conclusion that every corruption investigation and prosecution of politicians is inherently discriminatory. If all politicians are on the take to greater or lesser degrees, then the decision regarding who to investigate is essentially a decision about who to single out. And therefore, all corruption investigations of politicians are by their nature unjust. The investigations are themselves corrupt.

Abrams - Peace Was Not At Hand

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
25 May '12..

In The Weekly Standard I commented recently on the account former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has given of the peace negotiations he led near the end of his term in office. Here are some excerpts; the article is found here.

Here is Olmert, describing his negotiations with PLO chairman and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas:

I was within touching distance of a peace agreement. The Palestinians never rejected my offers. And even if on the thousandth time there are people who are going to try to say that they rejected my offers, the reality was otherwise. They didn’t accept them, and there’s a difference. They didn’t accept them because the negotiations weren’t concluded; they were on the verge of conclusion….The gaps were very small, we had already reached the very last final stretch.

This account is plain wrong. At the time, back in 2008, Olmert explained his proposal to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In her memoir No Higher Honor, she recounts what happened:

Eydar - Bypassing the government

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
25 May '12..

The story of the disputed neighborhood of Ulpana is a test of loyalty for Likud. The greatly anticipated so-called arrangement law (which is supposed to retroactively authorize the construction of Jewish homes on private Palestinian land while awarding compensation to the original owners) does not bypass the court. As far as I can recall, the High Court of Justice is supposed to protect the laws of Israel. Now we find ourselves facing an uncompromising pursuit of justice (the High Court has ordered the evacuation and demolition of five apartment buildings in Ulpana after having ruled that they were built on private Palestinian land). Since the threat of destruction looms over Jewish homes, the decision is now back in the legislature's hands, and the legislature is the Knesset, not the court. What can you do?

Only in Israel can a law passed by a sovereign parliament be termed a "High Court bypass law." The people generating this kind of discourse are the same ones who support the court over the elected government. These people aren't standing up for the rule of law; they are standing up for their freedom to bypass both the legislative and the executive branches.

Shragai - Olmert's weakness

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
21 May '12..



Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is running away. It's unclear to where, but the remarks he made on Sunday in the name of "national responsibility" not only neglect that very duty but also avoid coping with reality, which he preached about for many years. No one ever promised us a rose garden in Jerusalem. This city, the essence of our identity, is a testament to endurance, but Olmert has grown tired and weak. His comments Sunday in Maariv about partitioning Jerusalem and making concessions in the Old City and the Temple Mount convey panic and infirmity.

It is hard to believe that the man, who saw the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo being fired upon for four years from the nearby Beit Jala, is now advocating putting additional Jewish neighborhoods in similar danger: Mount Scopus and French Hill near Issawiya, East Talpiot near Jabel Mukaber and Pisgat Ze'ev near Beit Hanina. After all, Israel doesn't really stand a chance in preventing the transfer of small arms into these Arab neighborhoods, into Palestinian hands, just like it wasn't able to prevent weapons from reaching the Beit Jala gangs.

In his address, Olmert failed to mention what happened in the past when Jerusalem was divided. In 1948 a quarter of the Jewish residents abandoned Jerusalem because they were not willing to live in a divided city. He also did not mention what happened in the early 2000s, when the separation fence in the northern part of the city essentially removed parts of Jerusalem from sovereign Israel. Some 70,000 Palestinians voted with their feet and relocated to the Israeli side of the fence, just to avoid being on the Palestinian side.

Gold - The incredible myth machine

Dore Gold..
Israel Hayom..
11 May '12..

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was interviewed last Friday by CNN's Christiane Amanpour. In the interview, Olmert tried to give the impression that he had been on the verge of a historic peace agreement with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in 2008, and it was only the outside funds brought in by American individuals that scuppered it.

Whatever his political motives, Olmert was feeding the international myth machine, perpetuating the story that Israelis and Palestinians had been close to a historic breakthrough, which needed to be bridged by muscular American diplomacy.

Putting aside his dramatic accusations about millions of dollars that were transferred from what he called "the extreme right wing" in the U.S. to hamper his peace initiative, Olmert was not even close to a final agreement, as he implied to the CNN audience. In fact, a careful examination of Olmert's secret talks with Abbas serves as even more proof that the maximum concessions made by an Israeli prime minister did not meet Abbas' minimum requirements for an agreement.

This was not the first time that the myth of an impending Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough, that never happened, was widely disseminated. At the end of the Taba talks in January 2001, the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators issued a joint statement saying: "The sides declare that they have never been closer to reaching an agreement." Yet when then-Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami repeated this to an Israel Radio reporter, Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan issued the immediate response of "kharta barta" (slang for baloney). The EU representative, Miguel Moratinos, even wrote in his internal report on Taba that "serious gaps remain" between the parties.

Leibler - Ehud Olmert and Intelligence Heads in Destructive Rampages

Isi Leibler..
Candidly Speaking From Jerusalem..
08 May '12..

We have recently been subjected to a variety of prominent Israelis publicly besmirching their country in order to promote their personal agendas or compensate for their frustrations. However we fail to appreciate the extent to which these ravings damage our global standing and embolden those seeking Israel’s destruction.

The most recent outbursts on display at the Jerusalem Post Conference in New York in which I participated, received massive global media coverage and were attended by over 1200 participants from throughout North America. Most attendees expected to hear reports relating to Israel’s current situation but were thoroughly bewildered when the former Israeli Prime Minister and the retired head of Mossad expressed views which were more in synch with J Street and the marginal left wing liberals.

I was not on the panel in which these statements were uttered. Had I been, this is what I would have sought to convey.

Israel is currently confronting the greatest challenges since 1948. We face existential threats from a potentially nuclear Iran which publicly proclaims its determination to wipe us off the map. The extremist Islamic revival in the Arab world raises doubts whether we will be retaining our tenuous peaceful relations with the purportedly moderate neighboring states.

Tobin - Netanyahu Isn’t Worried About Olmert

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
30 April '12..

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke in New York yesterday at a conference organized by the Jerusalem Post. In his speech, Olmert attacked the policies of his successor Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, defended President Obama against criticism and also called for dividing Jerusalem, which he once served as mayor. According to the New York Times, this is yet another blow to Netanyahu, coming as it did after similar statements from disgruntled former security officials who also trashed Israel’s current government. The Times devoted a fair amount of space to the story this morning and even speculated that Olmert’s remarks “reflected domestic political calculations of his own.”

But the idea that Olmert’s criticism means much in Israel is farcical. As the Times noted in a sentence tucked away in the middle of the story, Olmert is under indictment for corruption charges and faces prison if convicted. What they left out is that he left office in 2009 without even attempting to run for re-election not just because of his legal problems but because he was widely perceived as perhaps the most incompetent and unpopular prime minister in the country’s history. At a time when Netanyahu is riding high in the polls at home and considering moving up elections to strengthen his already tight grip on power for another four years, Olmert is a political pariah with no influence, no following and no future in public life. The only place he can get a hearing these days is in the United States where left-wing audiences enjoy his carping about those who do enjoy the confidence of the Israeli public who rejected him. The general lack of interest in this story on the part of the Israeli press confirms this.

Leibler - Olmert Honors J Street - A Disgrace

Isi Leibler..
Candidly Speaking from Jerusalem..
19 March '12..




I must confess I rubbed my eyes in disbelief when I read that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had accepted an invitation to be the keynote speaker at the J Street Conference Gala dinner on March 26.

By doing so, Olmert has sunk to an all-time low, not only destroying whatever remained of his battered political legacy but also shaming the State of Israel.

Let me state at the outset that I am acquainted with Olmert and once admired him. At 28, as the youngest member of Knesset, he developed a reputation, ironically as a crusader against crime and corruption. A successful fundraiser and networker, his engaging personality contributed towards making him the consummate politician. Olmert was loyal to his supporters and friends and made a distinguished contribution as health minister. I enthusiastically supported him when he was candidate for the mayor of Jerusalem, campaigning on the platform of a united city.

Let me also express the hope, for Olmert’s sake as well the reputation of Israel, that the courts will exonerate him from the charges currently confronting him. Few of us wish to see yet another former high-profile Israeli leader found guilty of corruption or consigned to prison.

Keyes - Saudi Arabia in Jerusalem?

David Keyes
Israel Hayom
02 October '11

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=578

There is much to critique about former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s New York Times op-ed “Peace Now, or Never” on the eve of the Palestinians’ request for statehood at the U.N. One seemingly minor point that highlights the absurdity of the article is his proposal regarding Jerusalem. “Neither side [Israeli or Palestinian] would declare sovereignty over the city’s holy places; they would be administered jointly with the assistance of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States,” Olmert writes.

The idea of custody shared between Israel, Jordan, America and Saudi Arabia sounds appealing to the internationally minded, but upon closer examination, a more absurd idea could scarcely be found.

Imagine telling a child that Saudi Arabia should take part in administering holy sites in Jerusalem. This child might ask how Saudi Arabia administers its own holy sites. Does it, for example, allow people of all faiths equal rights?

The Saudi government, in fact, bans all non-Muslims from entering Mecca and Medina. It prohibits the importing of Bibles and the building of non-Muslim houses of worship. It imprisons men like Hadi al Mutif for nearly two decades for making a joke about religion. Days ago it beheaded Abdul Hamid Al Fakki for the crime of “sorcery.”

A 2010 U.S. State Department report on Saudi Arabia notes: “Freedom of religion is neither recognized nor protected under the law and is severely restricted in practice ...The government continued to commit abuses of religious freedom. Non-Muslim groups in different parts of the country were detained and harassed for worshipping privately ... The government continued to prohibit public, non-Muslim religious activities ...”

Should a government which systematically denies freedom of religion to its own citizens be invited into Jerusalem to uphold freedom of religion for others? Can one think of a more obscene proposal?

Ehud Olmert would be prohibited by the Saudi government from building a synagogue, importing a Torah and stepping foot in entire cities. And yet, he grovels for a Saudi role over overseeing Israel’s holiest sites.

Saudi Arabia is quite literally the last country on Earth that should be invited anywhere at any time to uphold and protect religious freedom.

David Keyes is the executive director of Advancing Human Rights and co-founder of CyberDissidents.org. He can be reached at david.keyes@advancinghumanrights.org.


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Gordon: Olmert’s Self-Serving Myth Promotes Cause of Palestinian Rejectionism

Evelyn Gordon
Commentary/Contentions
03 June '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/06/03/the-myth-of-why-peace-process-failed/

Testifying at his corruption trial yesterday, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asserted that, if only he had not been forced to resign by the multiple police investigations against him, there would already be an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

“I know how close we were and what was at stake,” Olmert told the court. “We stood on a brink that could have changed life here. But I also know that such decisions cannot be made when a black cloud is overshadowing your life.”

Olmert has propagated this myth with great success ever since leaving office in March 2009. Indeed, the standard narrative in the international media today, and in parts of Israel’s media as well, is that the sides were near agreement in autumn 2008 when Olmert’s legal woes interrupted the talks.

Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas backed this narrative once Olmert was safely out of office and he was spared the danger of actually having to accept the prime minister’s September 2008 offer—conveniently forgetting that at the time, he never even bothered to respond to it, and later told the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl that this was because “the gaps were wide.”

Those “wide gaps,” incidentally, followed Olmert’s offer of the equivalent (after swaps) of 100 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem; international Muslim control of Jerusalem’s Holy Basin, even including the Western Wall; and resettlement in Israel of 20,000 Palestinian refugees—the most generous offer any Israeli leader has ever made and one unlikely ever to be bettered. In other words, there never was any chance of an agreement. Yet the myth that the sides were “on the brink” has nevertheless gained wide currency.

Of course, this is merely a new incarnation of the myth’s original version: that if only Yitzhak Rabin hadn’t been assassinated in November 1995, he would have made peace.

In reality, Rabin most likely wouldn’t even have won the following year’s election. Throughout much of 1995, polls showed him “seriously trailing” his rival, Benjamin Netanyahu. And the main reason for this was that his September 1993 Oslo Accord produced not peace, but a wave of terror. In the following two and half years, more Israelis were killed by Palestinian terror than in the entire preceding decade. In response, as Oslo architect Yair Hirschfeld admitted in a 2009 interview with Haaretz’s Akiva Eldar, Rabin’s popularity rating plummeted from 90 percent in September 1993 to 22 percent a year later.

But the real problem with these myths is less their historical inaccuracy than the way they distort the future. The delusion that peace would have been achieved if only Rabin hadn’t been killed or Olmert indicted implies that any Israeli prime minister in fact has the power to achieve peace. And if he doesn’t, the fault is clearly Israel’s. This in turn enables its adherents to ignore the true cause of the ongoing failure to reach an agreement: Palestinian rejectionism.

And unless the world stops ignoring this root cause and begins seriously addressing it, peace will never be possible.

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Palestine Papers: 99 Percent Hype, 1 Percent News

Noah Pollak
Commentary/Contentions
23 January '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/pollak/387571

You wouldn’t expect Al-Jazeera and the Guardian newspaper in Britain to do anything but spin the “Palestine Papers”—the leaked transcripts of late Bush administration negotiations between Israeli, Palestinian, and American officials—to the max. And so they have, today, with shocked responses from foreign policy types. Indeed, an editor at Foreign Policy magazine went so far as to declare on Twitter that the “two state solution is dead” as a result.

But the reality of the papers themselves turns out to be incredibly boring. Yes, during the months surrounding the Annapolis summit in 2008, there were negotiations. Yes, these negotiations concerned issues such as borders, Jerusalem, refugees, security, and settlements. Yes, the two sides discussed land swaps that would enable Israel to retain major settlement blocs. Yes, in private, the Palestinians acknowledged that the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is not going to be handed over to them, and that Israel will not consent to being flooded with millions of Arab refugees. Yes, in private, the negotiators treated each other with respect and even graciousness. No, the talks did not succeed. This is news?

The “Palestine Papers,” however, come off badly for the leader of Israel’s opposition, Tzipi Livni, who was then-PM Ehud Olmert’s foreign minister at the time and one of the dramatis personae of the negotiations. Livni’s political liability is that too many Israelis think she isn’t tough enough to be prime minister. She has a tendency to denigrate her own side as a way of ingratiating herself to hostile audiences. To this day, she forcefully criticizes her own country and government while abroad and in front of audiences who have little affection for Israel (see her recent appearance with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour). She seems to think this wins her points for impartiality.

The Palestine Papers show her doing much the same in private, offering to collude with the Palestinians to invent pretexts for letting terrorists out of jail and dismissing Israel’s claim to the Golan Heights (“We’re giving up the Golan”). These indulgences may stick in voters’ minds in Israel and make it that much harder for her to dispel the fear that if awarded the premiership, she’ll give the store away.

But the biggest loser in the Palestine Papers is someone who was not even on the scene at the time. That is President Obama, who chose to make Israeli settlements the centerpiece of the peace process. The papers show that one of the only areas on which the sides had come close to an agreement was the acceptability of land swaps as a solution to the settlements controversy. Today, at Obama’s behest, the Palestinians insist on a complete settlement freeze before they’ll even talk—including in areas that just two years ago they had agreed were already de facto Israeli. Thus did Obama turn back the clock on one of the only points of relative consensus and progress between the two sides. The opener to this Jerusalem Post story captures the absurdity of the situation:

With the Palestinian Authority making an international incident over every plan to build in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem beyond the Green Line, a cache of some 1,600 documents—mostly form [sic] the Palestinian Negotiating Unit—shows that in 2008 the PA was willing to recognize eventual Israeli control over all those neighborhoods, with the exception of Har Homa.

This is actually unfair to the Palestinians. They didn’t make construction in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem an “international incident.” That was Obama, who has criticized construction in these neighborhoods repeatedly. There is not much news in the “Palestine Papers” to anyone familiar with the Annapolis-era negotiations. But they do provide another example of how badly the Obama administration has handled the peace process.

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