Text: Haaretz Magazine Expose on Ehud Olmert
Excerpts;
“It is the year 2000. The mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, is sitting in his office with his feet on the desk and a cigar in his mouth. Also in the room are his eternal bureau chief, Shula Zaken, and a guest. Suddenly the door opens and into the room steps someone who obviously feels at home in the office. Olmert leaps out of his chair and rushes to embrace the man. It is a brotherly embrace. ‘Who is he?’ the guest asks, taken aback by the emotional intensity. ‘It’s Benny Tavin,’ Zaken tells him in a whisper.”
“In this period, Benny Tavin should have been the least desirable visitor in Olmert’s office. When Olmert was treasurer of the Likud party, Tavin was the man who supplied the movement’s donors with fictitious invoices to the tune of a million shekels. That stunt almost cost Olmert his political career. He underwent a prolonged and expensive trial and was exonerated only after the judge was persuaded that he had not known about the fraudulent behavior of Tavin and the others on the treasurer’s staff. Tavin was sentenced to eight months in prison and fined. Olmert might have been expected to be furious at people like Tavin, who embroiled him in the affair, and to keep his distance from them. Instead, he embraced Tavin.”
“According to the polls, on March 28 Israel will elect, of its own free will and deliberate choice, a very forgiving politician as its leader. In the course of his political career, Olmert has interceded on behalf of convicted criminals more than once…”
“MK Olmert’s image was of a shining warrior doing battle against organized crime. He even asked the Knesset for personal security against criminals who were threatening his life. On December 28, 1976, MK Olmert stated from the Knesset podium, ‘I have received information that the Israel Police believe they have sufficient material to launch a criminal investigation against housing minister Avraham Ofer.’ Less than a week later, Ofer shot himself in his car on a Tel Aviv beach. After his suicide the investigation was shelved. His son, attorney Dan Ofer, in his first public response since then: ‘I accuse Ehud Olmert. In the days preceding the suicide of my father, of blessed memory, Olmert used cheap demagoguery in the Knesset and did a character assassination of my father, an act of McCarthyism. He sought cheap publicity at the expense of my father’s blood.’”
“A year ago, in March 2005, no one dreamed that Olmert would become prime minister. A poll that month in Haaretz showed Olmert as the fourth most popular Likud candidate for prime minister among the general public. First was Ariel Sharon with 50 percent, followed by Netanyahu with 30 percent and then Shaul Mofaz, the defense minister. Olmert had only a 13.3 percent popularity rating, and even that was due to left-wing support. Among Likud voters, his own turf at the time, his popularity rating was only 7.3 percent.”
“The disengagement, followed by the political big bang, changed the picture. Olmert’s insistence that he would remain acting prime minister and Shimon Peres would be vice premier – in the unity government with Labor at the time – turned out to be the most brilliant move of his political career. Does anyone still remember that in the last primaries held in the Likud Olmert finished in 33rd place?”strong>
Commentary;
The portrait perceived from this expose’ on Ehud Olmert is that of an unfeeling, insensitive, heartless, hateful opportunist who stretched the letter of morality and of the law to it’s maximum for his own self-interest, self-aggrandisement and accumulation of power and influence.
His hatefulness and heartlessness showed again and again; during the expulsion, his appearance with the Nefesh b’Nefesh group which arrived during the expulsion, his actions in unleashing Yassamnikim upon women holding children in Mitzpe Shalhevet in Chevron and his crowning act of Sinat Chinom, his Yassamnikim cut loose against hundreds in Amona wreaking police violence and brutality for political gain.
But also take note of what Aaron Lerner of IMRA writes about Olmert’s approach to Hamas with the election less than 5 weeks away;
Weekly Commentary: Israel’s Rapidly Closing Window of Opportunity to Respond to the Hamas Victory
This blog is not meant as “All Olmert, all the Time”, but the fact is, that with the exception of a comatose Prime Minister, he (Olmert) represents a chief ongoing cause of the “All-Encompassing Consequences for Israel and World Jewry” of the Sin of Expulsion. MB