Isi Leibler - who used to admire him once - explains how former Prime Minister Ehud K. Olmert sunk so low as to accept an invitation to address J Street next week.
Since his ouster as Prime Minister, Olmert has engaged in a campaign to revise history, blaming Netanyahu for the breakdown of peace talks with Abbas and insisting that had he remained in office, he could have consummated a final peace settlement with the Palestinians.If the government would get its act together and finish his trial already, he could be locked up for a long time to come.
Desperate for any platform, Olmert’s fall from grace reached its nadir when he stooped to the depths of accepting the role of keynote speaker to J Street.
J Street is an organization comprised of American Jews who do not consider it unconscionable to canvass the president of the USA to pressure Israel. It justifies this on the grounds that Israelis need “tough love”, comparing us to children on drugs who must be pressured to do what is good for them or impounding car keys from a drunken friend. These trendy American Jews have the gall to canvass the Obama administration to force the democratically elected government of Israel to act contrary to its will in relation to national security issues impacting on the life and death of its citizens.
But beyond this, in the midst of the Gaza conflict -orchestrated by Olmert – when all sections of the Israeli political spectrum,including the far leftwing Meretz,were united in support of the war, J Street refused to back Israel. Applying moral equivalence to Israel and Hamas it claimed “that there are many who recognize elements of truth on both sides of this gaping divide” and reproached Israel for launching “a disproportionate response”. J Street stated that “we recognize that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have monopoly of right and wrong” and accused the Israelis of “lacking sanity and moderation” in their attitude towards Hamas.
Only last week as hundreds of missiles were being launched against Israeli civilians, J Street, again applying moral equivalence, expressed “concern” on attacks on Israel and IDF “airstrikes on Gaza that killed over a dozen Palestinian civilians”. They were subsequently obliged to retract and apologize as all but two of those killed were terrorists.
For Olmert to be so desperate as to appear before such a discredited body which had even maligned him, reflects his pathetic desperation for a platform in order to fabricate a contrived historical legacy. One would feel sorry for him were it not for the anti-Israeli propaganda that, as a former prime minister, he provides to our adversaries.
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