Ruth King

Last week, the Israeli press reported that Ehud Olmert took a few days off to have his lids surgically lifted to “improve his vision.” Cosmetic surgery only permits Nancy Pelosi to see to the left, so there is scant hope that Israel’s Prime Minister will be helped.

Under his befuddled stewardship, Israel’s enemies have learned that those who fire rockets and kill Israeli civilians will be treated with "restraint"; that tunnels burrowed to bring advanced artillery to terrorists will be ignored; that agreements can be violated with impunity and only result in more phantom agreements; that big concessions will be followed by even bigger ones.

There is not a single self-respecting Jew who did not feel pride in Israel’s military and its combination of proficiency, determination and discipline, but today the Arab world and Israel’s detractors gloat over Hezbollah's victory over Israel in Lebanon.

In The Beirut Star (Dec. 30) Arab journalist Rami G. Khouri wrote an article with the stinging title “Israel's Dominance May Be Going Into Slow Reversal: “…[A]fter the United States had given Israel weeks of extra warfare to hit Hizbullah….Israel…failed to make the Arabs cough up the soldiers.…Israel swallowed its words, put away its ultimatums and threats, and accepted cease-fires in both cases...Olmert met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, where it was announced that Israel would release $100 million of withheld Palestinian tax revenues and remove some checkpoints in the West Bank reversing his previous refusal to make such gestures or meet with the Palestinians before Shalit was released. Olmert met, talked and made concessions to the Palestinians, with Shalit and the captured soldiers still nowhere in sight.”

That comes from an enemy but on January 2, 2007 Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, (formerly the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies), issued an equally scathing summation: “The Lebanon war eroded Israeli deterrence among Arabs and others in the Middle East… underscored the problematic and fluctuating nature of Israel's strategic environment, damaged Israel's deterrent image, and exposed weaknesses in the Israel Defense Forces and the decision-making process in Israel."

Even Jordan's spurious kinglet, in an interview in Japan on December 28th, mocked Israel, repeating several times that Israel is no longer as strong as had been thought and declaring: “More and more countries in the region will now believe that the only way to get Israel to listen is through force and not negotiations.”

On the very day that the kinglet was deriding Israel, Olmert surprised the Israeli public by an unprecedented act....even by the high bar he had already set…. when the flags of the State of Israel and the terrorist Palestinian Authority flew side-by-side at the official Prime Minister’s Residence.

While the flag of Israel's enemies was fluttering and Olmert was kissing the posterior of Abbas, Israeli civilians in Sderot continued to be victims of daily and deadly rocket fire and have sued to withhold taxes because the government does nothing….absolutely zilch…to protect them. Well, really, Olmert has no time to visit Sderot….he’s on his merry way to China to see a less controversial wall. He has no time to deal with Israel's enemies, other than to offer them wider swaths of Israel's heartland.

On January 4th, 2007, he finally noticed the victims of Sderot. His spokes-lackey Miri Eisin, assured journalists that the al-Aqsa Brigades members firing the deadly rockets from Gaza are not affiliated with Fatah and don't take orders from Olmert's pal Abbas. This does not square with the fact that the leader of Al Aqsa, Abu Ahmed told Aaron Klein of World Net Daily: "The al-Aqsa Brigades is the military wing of the Fatah and the President Abu Mazen (Abbas) is the chairman of the movement…..All our activity is in accordance with the political line of Fatah, which consists of fighting the occupation until the creation of a Palestinian state. The rocket shooting is part of this vision."

What accounts for Olmert's behavior? Turpitude? Corruption? There is the questionable deal with American millionaire S. Daniel Abraham who had contributed large sums to his campaign and whose charities and goals mirror those of George Soros. Olmert sold his home to Abraham for $2.7 million, a sum way above market value, and arranged to lease the home for below market rates. In December 2006, Abraham was Olmert’s liaison for a meeting with the Syrian ambassador in the United States.

Is it that he avoided military service, a fact that has never been examined by Israel’s media? Even disabled people serve in Israel’s citizen army.

Have his pacifist wife and his seditious children influenced him? One son avoided the draft altogether and lives in the United States. The other promoted a group that paid recruits to refuse service in the “occupied territories.” The daughter serves as watchdog at check points to make sure that would be suicide bombers are not hassled entering Israel.

Could it be a form of Oblomovism? Oblomov was a character in Ivan Goncharov’s novel of that name written in the 1840’s. Oblomov is passive and inert while his financial advisers cheat him, servants steal from him and his friends betray him and steal his fiancé. As Goncharov describes him "All his anxiety resolved itself into a sigh and dissolved into apathy and drowsiness." Even before he became Prime Minister Olmert did say he was tired….really tired.

Now it transpires he has taken leave of reality altogether. On January 15 he rallied a meeting of his Kadima faction, telling them: "There has never been a more comfortable period for the State of Israel than the present period. We have to understand that reality is good and only the polls are not -- and thank God this is so." A tsunami of anti-Semitism is washing up over Europe; under Olmert's "leadership" Israel's fine army has suffered defeat at the hands of a terrorist militia; the Arab states, smelling blood, hover for the kill; the U.S. gears up to sell out Israel for the mere hope of dampening the chaos in Iraq -- and Olmert thinks Israel's condition has never been more "comfortable?" Will we next see Olmert riding naked in a chariot through the streets of Jerusalem inviting the public to admire his golden garments?

On February 14th, 1949 when the first parliament was convened in Jerusalem. Chaim Weizmann, the President of Israel, opened the ceremonies by reminding Israel’s newly elected legislators of their mandate.

“No nation in the world has suffered as we have, but at last the vision of redemption has been fulfilled. It is our lot to bear the heavy burden of responsibility for filling the gap which has been created within the ranks of our people with the murder of the best of its sons, the bearers of its standard and the carriers of its culture. Remember that the eyes of the whole Jewish world are upon us, and that the yearning and prayers of past generations accompany us. May we all be worthy of this great moment and this immense responsibility.”

Olmert remembers nothing of Jewish hopes or destiny. The Rorschach test for that imperiled people is if they recognize Olmert and everyone associated with his government as a national blot and drive them permanently out of public life.