Ehud Olmert Finally Pledges To Step Down From Prime Ministership

Ehud Olmert said Wednesday evening that he will not run in the upcoming Kadima party primary. Kadima's election committee decided on Tuesday to set an August 24 deadline to join the race, which it scheduled for September 17. The bad news is that this means there is stil going to be over six more weeks of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The bad news is also that there may not actually be a new election as to who should replace him, but Kadima may decide to mantain the current coalition propping them up in the Knesset and replace Olmert with Tzipi Livni or Shaul Mofaz. The departure of Olmert should be a chance for Israelis to decide who their leader will be, not for Kadima to choose for itself.

Ehud Olmert should have resigned and called for new elections ages ago. The 2006 summer war against Hezbollah was a complete debacle, both tactically and also in its failure to achieve stated objectives. Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah and Hamas in Israeli territory and they were never retrieved as a result of that war. The Prime Minister vowed that Hezbollah would be finished, but Hezbollah is even stronger now than they were two years ago. Hezbollah faced the IDF and lives to tell the tale. Hezbollah only a couple months ago achieved complete veto power over decisions of the government of Lebanon after killing dozens and dozens of fellow Arabs in Beirut. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was never killed during the 2006 battle, and now lives to continue his leadership and rant and rave in front of thousands of his loyal followers. It was also on Ehud Olmert's watch, as a result of the withdrawal from Gaza, that Hamas won the most seats in the Palestinian parliament and went on to forcibly take over all of Gaza. Gilad Shalit, one of the three Israeli soldiers kidnapped in the summer of 2006 while in undisputed Israeli territory remains in Hamas captivity. Olmert's responses to bloodthirsty terrorist attacks such as the attack by an Israeli-Arab on the young Jerusalem yeshiva students earlier this year were so weak as to be sickening. During his tenure rockets and mortars have fallen on cities in undisputed Israeli territory from Gaza in huge numbers. For example, rockets have fallen not only on the city of Sderot on the border near Gaza but also on Ashkelon, Israel's largest southern city. In March of this year Ehud Olmert had the gall to tell Ashkelon's City Council that "this is the reality of the past 60 years and we must show restraint and strength." Restraint in the face of a enemy dedicated to your destruction is weakness. Olmert further negotiated a cease fire with Hamas. Shin Bet Chief Yuval Diskin recently described the cease fire by saying that "we are not attacking them and we have lifted the blockade, while they have not taken upon themselves a commitment to stop their arms buildup. From the point of view of Hamas, it is the winner in the conflict, as the side that managed to hold its ground during the Israeli blockade. The lull in fighting is depicted as an impressive achievement for it." He described temporary calm as "an illusion. In our assessment, the rocket firing will start again at some point in the future." Negotiating with Hamas and allowing it to build up its arms and prepare for the next assault is a very dangerous policy for Israel, yet the Olmert government has done just this. The Israeli government under Olmert have also negotiated with Hezbollah. As you no doubt remember, Israel recently made a prisoner exchange with that terror group. In exchange for the bodies of two dead IDF soldiers the Israeli government handed Hezbollah a child killing terrorist named Samir Kuntar along with four of Kuntar's terrorist cohorts. The insanity of exchanging live terrorists for dead bodies can only seem rational in the mind of someone like Ehud Olmert. In fact, Olmert described this exchange as somehow showing "the moral and ethical power of Israel." Samir Kuntar was welcomed in Lebanon as a hero, vowing on Al-Jazeera to join Hezbollah and kill more Israelis. He was greeted by Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut in front of a crowd of thousands of cheering Arabs. Nasrallah declared after being kissed by Kuntar that "the age of defeat has passed and the age of victory is upon us." Ehud Olmert is responsible for providing incentive for the future kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers. Olmert has also been dogged by corruption charges for quite some time now.

His legacy is one of immense failure and weakness in the face of a radical Islamoterrorist enemy. This is what Ehud Olmert will be remembered for. No rational person could possibly bemoan the future loss of a leader whose poll numbers in Israel make Dick Cheney look like a rock star, poll numbers so low that his supporters must be made up of only his immediate family and staff. I hope that in six weeks time the new Israeli Prime Minister will be one dedicated to confronting and not cowtowing to the terrorist enemies that constantly threaten Israel.

The following picture was taken very recently. It shows Hamas terrorists marching in a training mission conducted in Gaza City:

The following links you to the "wedding-funeral" of the first female suicide bomber broadcast on Lebanon Al-Jadid TV on July 26. This is the mindset, the death cult, that Israel faces: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1824.htm


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