Is Israel’s Prime Minister Going Out on a High Note?

Investigations into Israeli PM Ehud Olmert’s predilection for cash-filled envelopes reached a new milestone today with the testimony of Morris Talansky. New York-based Talansky confirmed that he had “transferred Olmert some $150,000 over 15 years, and that Olmert had tried to aid a Talansky business venture”, but that “he [Talansky] never had any personal benefits from this relationship whatsoever.” As more information is made public in this case the pundit-class is increasingly adamant that Olmert will not be able to politically survive this storm.            

Fairly or not, Ehud Olmert is likely to be tagged as Israel’s most dishonest Prime Minister—yet in many ways he has been more honest to his public about Israel’s regional predicament and the steps it needs to take than almost any of his predecessors. In his latest outpouring of home truths, Olmert yesterday told one of his detractors that anyone who believes that it’s possible to hold onto the greater land of Israel, the territories captured in ’67, is “delusional”. With the resumption of talks with Syria last week, despite a distinct lack of enthusiasm from the Bush administration, it seems that Olmert maybe going out on a high and is leaving an interesting diplomatic legacy.

First a note of caution—it is not over yet for Olmert. Talansky will be cross-examined by Olmert’s lawyers in July and the Prime Minister will try to struggle on and may even succeed. But that is increasingly unlikely. My friends high up in Kadima are telling me that this is over, Olmert’s possible successors are revving up for a leadership campaign. The ultra-religious Shas party, sensing early elections, is threatening to quit the coalition, and the Labor party is as usual in disarray.    

Ehud Olmert is obviously far from being a model Prime Minister. His mistakes are numerous and his arrogance legendary. The 33-day Lebanon II war in the summer of ’06 tops the list of bad judgment calls. The imposition of a siege and collective punishment on the 1.4 million inhabitants of Gaza is unforgivable. The man Olmert personally appointed to be Justice Minister, Daniel Friedmann, is waging a dangerous and disturbing campaign against the Supreme Court, and there has been precious little positive on the socio-economic front.

In many ways, the alleged Olmert misdemeanors are a less damning chapter of his premiership—at least from a comparative perspective. In terms of what Olmert is being accused of, the material is similar to the investigations conducted against his predecessors Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, and Ariel Sharon. Netanyahu’s successful campaign in 1996 was helped over the line by a sudden, huge in-flux of funding for a “Bibi’s good for the Jews” campaign that clearly contravened campaign finance regulations. Bibi was also investigated for receiving various gifts and favors, most recently for a lavish trip to London during that same Lebanon conflagration in ’06 (see my piece about that here). Barak and his associates were also investigated for the use of NPOs and tax-deductible donations to those NPOs for direct campaign expenses. Insufficient evidence was found—Barak got away with it. A series of investigatory clouds hovered over the Sharon premiership. Most notably the setting up of fictitious straw companies through which monies were funneled to finance election campaigns. Ariel Sharon denied knowledge and his son Omri Sharon was the fall guy, and Omri is now serving a 7-month prison sentence for fraud. The difference with the Olmert investigation, it seems, is that one or more of Olmert’s confidantes are singing—and that is a huge difference. By the way, Talansky is literally singing—in his police-questioning he started humming the tune of the old Likud revisionist song “The Two Banks of the Jordan”, which aspires to a state of Israel in all of what is today Israel, the West Bank, Jordan and beyond. There are in fact suspicions that Talanksy’s right-wing political affiliation is what has motivated him to bring down Olmert, although his actions more resemble those of a spurned suitor, complaining in one interview that his great beneficiary Mr. Olmert had only deigned to meet him twice since becoming Prime Minister two years ago. Look—with all these bruises, Ehud Olmert is hardly the guy you want out there selling a peace deal to the Israeli public. For many commentators his continued pursuit of peace negotiations is no more than an attempt to distract attention away from the investigations. His credibility is shot and he looks jealously at Bush’s approval ratings—so to be clear, Olmert cannot deliver on peace, not with Assad and not with Abbas.     

Yet Olmert has done something unusual for which he deserves credit: he has occasionally, and unusually for an Israeli leader, shared some hard truths and realities with a public that has grown used to being told that they can have their cake and eat it too. Israelis may have known better and their previous leaders almost certainly knew better, but maintaining the illusion that Israel could continue confidently into the future while retaining the occupation seemed convenient for all concerned.

Olmert’s push back yesterday was only the latest in a number of frank, myth-shattering pronouncements that he has made. Yesterday’s contribution included the following: “Today we are faced with a cruel choice between the undivided Land  of Israel and a Jewish state. These two cannot coexist, except in the delusions of the hallucinatory.”  

Responding on behalf of the hallucinatory, National Union-NRP MK Aryeh Eldad called for Prime Minister Olmert to be sentenced to death for committing the act of treason of ceding sovereign state territory. One can look forward to Mr. Eldad perhaps being part of a future Netanyahu government.

Olmert has reminded Israelis that it is ok and even necessary to talk to one’s enemies with his re-launching of negotiations with Syria. Israeli and Syrian officials have conducted proximity talks, mediated by representatives of the Turkish Prime Minister last week in Istanbul. Of course in Bush-McCain land, that would make Israel’s Prime Minister a Chamberlain-esque appeaser who had forgotten the lessons of the holocaust. Indeed, the Bush administration is displaying a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the Israeli-Syrian talks, and shows no sign of encouraging or facilitating their success. So it took a degree of courage for an Israeli Prime Minister to pursue the negotiations regardless, and he has also reminded the public that the price for a deal is known—namely withdrawal from the Golan (to read why Netanyahu’s criticism of the Syrian negotiations and of any withdrawal from the Golan is so lacking in credibility, read this post and this text of a draft agreement between Netanyahu’s envoy and President Assad from1998).    

Olmert resumed final-status negotiations with the PLO after an almost 7 year hiatus and his opening negotiating positions have certainly been more reasonable than his Labor party processor Ehud Barak. Olmert has even been blunt about the necessity of a two-state solution, telling reporters after the Annapolis-November ’07 conference that “if the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.”

While Olmert’s handling of Gaza and the siege he has imposed is hardly praiseworthy, he has at least avoided the urgings of some of his more hawkish ministers and the Shin Bet heads to launch a re-occupation of Gaza, and he has authorized Egyptian-mediated efforts at a cease-fire with Hamas (again, rating high on the appeasement-ometer).

It is unlikely that anyone would want to claim the mantle of this Olmert legacy—that is a shame. It is even more unlikely that Olmert will speak these home truths when he addresses the AIPAC annual conference (if he still comes) next week in Washington, D.C. That is an even greater shame. Expect that speech to be a pander-fest and to forgo the opportunity of speaking truth to power, and expect this writer to feel rather embarrassed the following morning for having written these complimentary words.

Comments

[DE Teodoru]

In truth too many people now know what a fraud has become the once heroic Zionist dream. But no frauds are all my sabra friends who died defending their one and only homeland in war after war after war.... Perhaps they too should have taken their world-class high quality degrees from Israel's one product that is the best in the world--- higher education-- and run West with it to fine jobs, as did and do so many others in a mass reverse aliyah. The old farts who stay are not really staying, carrying multiple passports. Israeli Keneset Deputies that lose elections just come and run for office or take public sector jobs in the US using their Jewish connection. Almost every right wing "shoot-em-up" Likudnik has multiple passports and bank accounts abroad. They want sabras to die fighting to expend the Jewish state but, if the fight fails, they've gotten citizenship available where their US tax-payer money turned into shekles are banked. We now hear that in the midst of negotiations for a final settlement promissed by Olmert, Israel is building 700 new settler homes for non-existent settlers. Of the housing units built to date, according to the US State Dept, 74% are empty. So these, like the rest, are only a case of creating expationistic "facts on the ground" with empty buildings.

The old shysters and their neocon shyster friends meet eachother en-route in reciprocal back and forth money laundering trips on multiple passports. And that's the "Jeiwish state" that instead of "shedding light onto the nations" is shedding darkenss so it can wheel and deal unseen. Olmert is only the latest of every single other Israeli Prime Minister investigated for crooked deals with American largess supporting the shekle. But all the other PMs inestigation cases were suddenly dropped for "raison d'etat." This guy, Olmert, is deemed crazy because he really wants a solution where young Israelis and Palestinians are no longer cutting short eachother's future with bloodshed. He actually wants a two states solution fair to all. So his case goes all the way to the jail cell. For all we know his accuser is a Likud shill. Nothing, afterall, is to stand in the way of the Likud map of Israel as "the Jewish state between the two rivers, only for a Jewish people" like on the Israeli flag-- the Nile and the Euprates. That's a hell of a lot more than the West Bank and Gaza. But as late as 1976, that was openly depicted on Likud literature as its goal. Now it has just gone quiet as it is slowly created lot by lot with empty buildings at US tax-payers' expense. Israel could be a "light onto the [Arab] nations." If Iran goes nuclear the Sunni Arabs have nowhere to go for a deterrence umbrella but to Israel. And Iran only wants the bomb as a Shiite deterrence against the Sunnis. Technologic growing up would lead to diplomatic growing up by Islam as it was in its glorious days of the past. But no, Israel wants the US to pay the blood and treasure price of keeping it dominant over the whole Mideast by invading Iran; that was the "World War IV" scheme the neocons cooked up in their delusional "A New Begining" paper-- which even Netanyahu considered nuts.

I know Israel well and I knew very many Israeli sabras who died defending the only homeland they ever knew, so I wouldn't want their sacrifice to be in vain. But they knew nothing of the Holocaust Industry smaltz used by the shysyers with many passports to get rich through arms deals and land grabs. They only hoped that they could defend their LITTLE homeland long enough for the Arabs to see how good Israel is for their Arab cousins too: economically, educationally, culturally. My dead sabra friends thought of Israel leading the Arabs from one crop banana-type republics to high-tech regional democratic powerhouses and a wider distribution of wealth. Every Arab with a dream that I ever knew believed that only together--Arabs and Israelis-- could their dreams come through, for none trust the US or the EU as they trust their Jewish cousins. But the multipassport holder shysters have other plans: to turn the blood of Israeli sabras and Arabs into gold. These alchemists were rightly fingered by some of Zionism's elders, who named them: "Zeonazis."

Multipassport shysters, you can call me anti-Semite all night long; but tomorrow the sun shines and the light exposes your crooked schewmes. Can you hear the cris from under the ground of the dead sabra heroes: you owe us, you owe us...go straight or go to hell.