Ruth King

Rael Jean Isaac, editor of this publication, has asked me to avoid "disproportion" in discussing Israel's leadership vacuum. So I will let others describe Ehud Olmert, Israel's accidental Prime Minister, as an inept oaf, a pathetic excuse for a statesman, a man devoid of any sense of strategy, history or belief in Israel's legitimate rights. Let’s just focus on his actions.

On February 18th, 2005, at the annual Jerusalem meeting of the Conference of Presidents.of American Jewish Organizations, Olmert was questioned about the ability of Abbas to control Gaza, given the arms and terrorists pouring into the area. He angrily pounded on the lectern: "Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon is the model which Israel will apply to Gaza and Samaria." Although Hezbollah terrorists were stationed in the south of Lebanon, and had accumulated many weapons, he declaimed, "they have never, never, never used missiles against Israel on the northern border since Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in May, 2000."

As events have unfolded, it is clear Israeli governments were guilty of criminal neglect of a gathering threat. Nor was what Olmert said true. David Bedein reports that when Olmert was subsequently confronted with an IDF report documenting frequent missile strikes from Lebanon that had killed 28 people, Olmert walked away saying that he did not want to discuss it.

In his own words, Olmert is tired of fighting, of winning, even tired of negotiating…in May, he offered to withdraw from 90% of Judea and Samaria and “negotiate about the rest.” Midway into the current war, he reiterated his commitment to more withdrawals. Cut and run and more cut and run.

In his first speech to the Knesset following the cease fire, Olmert did gamely say "The responsibility for the military operation rests on my shoulders as prime minister” but then falsely claimed the war had changed the "strategic balance against Hizbullah which was no longer a state within a state.” Attempting to throw further dust in the public eye, he added "We will hunt Hezbollah down anytime, anywhere. We have no intention of asking anyone's permission." Did he even read the UN Resolution his government signed off on? He needs Kofi Annan's signed permission to move a muscle.

Olmert's approval ratings have plummeted. On August 16, a Teleseker poll in Ma'ariv found that 43% were satisfied with Olmert before the war, 78% during the war and only 40% after the ceasefire. The polls found that Peretz's situation was even worse. Teleseker found that 28% approved of his performance before the war, 61% during and 28% now. But many of those who revile these men were once enthusiastic supporters of their defeatist policies.

Why is it that Israel, an accomplished democracy with advanced cultural and scientific institutions, has been so eager to shed its patrimony? How did Israel permit the colossal identity theft whereby the words “refugee and Palestinian” came to mean Arab only? Why have they turned blind eyes to the naked truth that Arabs only enter into temporary agreements knows as hudnas which Islam specifically obliges them to abrogate when entered into with “infidels.?” Why have Israel's leaders betrayed their trust to protect the homeland and why do Israelis tolerate it? Why are they incensed when Ahmadenijad taunts the Jewish people by denying the Holocaust and yet call Mahmoud Abbas, a seasoned terrorist and documented Holocaust denier, "a friend of enlightenment and peace" (to quote Shimon Peres).

I love and admire Israel and like Jews throughout the Diaspora, my security and confidence are directly linked to its survival. I am enormously grateful that hundreds of thousands of young people are willing to sacrifice and die in order to protect it…..except, of course for the Prime Minister’s own children, who have either avoided military service, or accused the IDF of “war crimes” or urged their peers to disobey army rules. In fact Olmert himself avoided army service altogether, citing orthopedic problems. Could the problem have been spinelessness?

As I write this reports flood in of Hezbollah’s regrouping and rearming. In her own contribution to this Comedy of Errors, Condi Rice essentially said "Disarmament? What disarmament?" She said it in State Department-speak "I don't think there is an expectation that this force is going to physically disarm Hezbollah...You have to have a plan...and then the hope is that some people lay down their arms voluntarily." All this shreds Olmert’s pretense that anything at all was accomplished in Lebanon, and makes the Israeli diplomats who attempt to spin the debacle into a success a laughingstock.

In the final analysis, it is not Olmert or Peretz or Peres, or Bibi or Barak or Rabin or Sharon --the long line of those who substituted appeasement for deterrence -- who bear chief responsibility. It is the body politic of Israel which elected such terrible leaders and then supported their policies. Has the Israeli public finally learned something? Anything?