by Dror Eydar
For years now, Channel
2's Friday night news panel "Ulpan Shishi" (Friday studio) has served as
a nature reserve for a dying breed on Israel's political map — a breed
that dominates Israel's radio and television stations (as well as
Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz). This past Friday, two fascinating
representatives of this breed joined the tribe: Former Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert — who crossed political lines and converted his faith in
exchange for the questionable honor of speaking at the Saban Forum — and
tribe elder Amnon Abramovich, a veteran Channel 2 commentator.
Neither one of them is
in favor of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, and neither one of
them likes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both of them have a bad
habit of conceding important territories in exchange for dubious peace
deals. They both think that in the scandal surrounding the forged Harpaz
document (which involved a bitter rivalry between then-IDF Chief of
General Staff Lt. Gen. (res.) Gabi Ashkenazi and Defense Minister Ehud
Barak) the bad guy is Barak, and not the military personnel whose
conduct in defiance of elected government officials was unacceptable.
Both of them being
strongly affiliated with Yedioth Ahronoth, they also don't like Israel
Hayom. Israel Hayom changed the rules of the game on them, you know.
Until we came along, the dying breed tribe kept a stranglehold on all of
our privates by way of Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon (Noni) Mozes'
empire. That is where they marked the true enemies: Settlers, religious
Israelis, ultra-Orthodox Israelis, Likud and other such demons – the
ones who stood in the way of their efforts to brainwash the public with
delusions of false diplomacy. These delusions still exist in full force
at the President's Residence, in Yedioth Ahronoth's headlines and on the
Channel 2 news.
What did Channel 2's
interview with Olmert teach us that we didn't already know? First off,
we heard Olmert talk about "foreign money" and "corruption" while
wearing a righteous expression – that was entertaining, especially
coming from a man who was convicted of breach of trust and was charged
in four different corruption cases. Other than that, not much. He
preached to the public to vote for Kadima Chairman Shaul Mofaz (sure,
we're all running to vote for him); he voiced support for recent remarks
by former Israel Security Agency chief Yuval Diskin against Netanyahu
and Barak, published in Yedioth Ahronoth (like he would ever go against
Yedioth Ahronoth); he repeated remarks made by President Shimon Peres
and Hatnuah Chairwoman Tzipi Livni and other left-wing figures, which
boiled down to fear mongering and more fear mongering. All this man, who
once led the country, has left to say is this: A forecast of another
intifada unless peace talks are resumed (indirectly legitimizing
terror), warnings of global isolation and promoting American sanctions
against Israel over "the Israeli government's and Netanyahu's
provocative, confrontational policy of defiance against the world."
It can drive a person
crazy to look at this reckless group that has been stringing us along
for 20 years with empty slogans of peace and reconciliation and
diplomatic arrangements and other such sweets that earn them
international honors but have so far yielded five wars, thousands of
dead, countless suicide attacks, tens of thousands of Qassam rockets and
an Iranian outpost in Gaza. All this while we seek peace and get
nothing but war and the world — how surprising — sides with the
Palestinians. Does the world have a choice? Even Olmert and Peres side
with the Palestinians and claim that Israel is at fault. The world media
can also quote Abramovich's clever quip about how Netanyahu "is pulling
one over on the entire Western world." This sums up how the Israeli
Left feels about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: We are the problem.
Just like with Pharaoh only in reverse: Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas is righteous, and my people and I are the evil ones.
But Olmert was there,
and he offered Abbas more concessions than any previous Israeli leader.
He offered far too much: To divide Jerusalem, to place holy sites under
international supervision, to withdraw from nearly 100% of territories,
to recognize the suffering of the Palestinian people, to partially allow
Palestinian right of return, and more. When speaking to Ulpan Shishi on
Friday he said that "a lot has come out of [this offer], and it is
possible that if [I had offered] just a little bit more, we could have
achieved peace."
Here is the truth that
was revealed by Wikileaks through Al-Jazeera, and ran in Israel Hayom as
part of research conducted by Boaz Kantor: The chief Palestinian peace
negotiator at the time, Saeb Erekat, told his team to reply to Olmert's
offer in one of three possible ways: Make a "counterproposal" involving a
map that "would be shown but not given"; give "an ambiguous answer that
doesn't actually answer"; or an "outright no.”
Erekat instructed his team to devise another response that would meet the
following conditions: “(a) we are not blamed, (b) negotiations are
uninterrupted, and (c) no submission is made that we cannot retract.”
Maybe someone should notify Olmert of the Palestinians' real reaction to
his offer. While they're at it, someone should tell Shimon
I've-known-Abbas-for-30-years Peres that his so-called partner for peace
is laughing at all of our expense.
In the interview,
Olmert also hinted that the outgoing government unnecessarily spent
billions of shekels on the Iranian nuclear issue, or "adventurous
delusions that never materialize," as he put it. This from a man who
went to war "hastily and without thoroughly investigating the
battleground… without a well-formulated plan and without a clear
strategic outline…without ensuring that the army was prepared… all these
led to a massive failure having to do with exercising judgment,
responsibility and caution" (taken from the Winograd report, issued by
the committee that investigated the Second Lebanon War).
Olmert concluded the interview by
calling for the diplomatic process to become a priority, saying "I hope
very much that the Israeli public will display the necessary
responsibility and act accordingly." Exactly. Let's hope that this
election will leave the Oslo gang and its delusional supporters where
they belong: in History's dustbin.
Dror Eydar
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3232
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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