The survival of Israel's inept and arrogant prime minister may have devastating consequences for Israeli society.
The good news about Ehud Olmert is that he is not a willful murderer of Israeli soldiers. The bad news is that he is the most inept and arrogant Israeli prime minister in the country's history.
While the Winograd Commission investigating the Second Lebanon War has absolved Olmert of the worst accusation ever made against an Israeli prime minister--that he sent 33 soldiers to their deaths on a useless mission, whose only purpose was to bolster his image as a tough leader--the commission did confirm what the Israeli public has sensed since August 2006: that the Lebanon War was the worst military defeat in Israel's history, that the IDF missed an unprecedented opportunity to restore calm to Israel's borders and restore its shattered deterrence, and that Olmert's judgment was flawed at every crucial step.
Throngs of bereaved parents and reservist officers from the Lebanon war have been camped outside Olmert's office for the past few days. Despite their demands for Olmert's ouster in accountability for his failed leadership last summer, the prime minister will probably survive. Having been absolved of the most sensational accusation, the commission's indictment of Olmert's leadership comes as an anti-climax--especially given the fact that the commission's interim report, released nine months ago, already went public with that same conclusion. His continued political survival, however, could do irreparable damage toward the already weakened the bonds of trust that Israeli citizens have with their government.
Until Olmert's election, every Israeli prime minister could lay claim to the Zionist ethos of heroism. Israel's leaders were divided into two groups: the European-born founders like David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Menachem Begin who embodied self-sacrifice, and the native-born sabras like Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Barak who boasted first-rate military careers. Even Benjamin Netanyahu, the only one of the sabra prime ministers who didn't rise to the top of the security establishment, was an officer in Israel's most elite commando unit; his brother, Yoni, the fallen hero of the Entebbe rescue mission in 1976, added an heroic aura to the Netanyahu family.
Olmert, neither founder nor hero, is the first professional politician to serve as prime minister. Yet, in resisting calls for his resignation, he is insisting on being absolved of the standards for personal accountability in war to which other prime ministers were held. Golda Meir and her defense minister, Moshe Dayan, were forced from office by an outraged public because of failure in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, while Menachem Begin and his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, were compelled to resign because of failure in the first Lebanon War in 1982. Olmert, though, sees himself as immune from such archaic values as personal responsibility. Even before the release of the final version of the Winograd report, Olmert had announced that he wouldn't resign no matter what the commission concluded.