Playing farce in the history of the Cinco de Mayo Week '08 to the tragedy of the possible conquest of Lebanon by Iran Hezbollah, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is fighting off allegations that he accepted bribes from American Jewish businessman Morris Talansky to help fund his wife's art career, and unlike previous Olmert scandals, this one credibly threatens both Olmert's political career and the viability of his Kadima party.

Toni O'Loughlin: "The scandal threatens to demolish the already shaky coalition government and raises questions about whether a general election would be required if Olmert resigns. It also risks overshadowing next week's visit by the US president, George Bush, who has scheduled the trip to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary and to shore up the faltering peace talks with the Palestinians."

Avi Green: "I see that Ehud Barak is still stalling and biding for time...All he's doing is stalling out of his apparently being more interested in a government seat than in true responsibility. I suggest he start to rethink his position, because his colleagues are getting very restless."

Nathan Guttman: "The [Talansky] case is being described in the Israeli press as the most serious of three investigations currently being conducted into Olmert’s affairs...Talansky and Olmert first crossed paths when the Long Island businessman directed the American fundraising operation for Shaare Tzedek Hospital and the then-mayor was a guest at events organized by the group in the United States."

Amir Oren: "The investigation into Olmert's relationship with the man dubbed 'Mr. T' has once again proven two ancient truths about the media. One is that 'the medium is the message,' as Marshall McLuhan averred in his classic work, entitled Understanding Media. The other is that the presence of the observer alters the outcome of the experiment he is there to observe. The proof can be found in the surprising twists that the press has woven into the story's plot by reporting on it. The media midwifed the affair, kept it from dying and has turned itself into the arena for the coming rounds."

Bernard Avishai: "Indeed, the best scenario is not unlikely --- not if the Bush administration supports it actively, and helps keep restless ministers (like former Likud defense minister Shaul Mofaz) bailing water instead of abandoning ship. It is that Livni and Barak will govern together for a year or so, and reconstitute the Israeli center, while putting the taint of corruption behind them. Only this will deny Netanyahu his second act. Something must."

Tzipi Livni, Soon-To-Be-PM?: Certainly beats the hell out of Bibi Israeli journalists are pre-celebrating Israel's sixtieth with a big, compelling story, yet another police investigation of Ehud Olmert over possible bribes he accepted from an American Jewish businessman. But their tone, this time, is subtly different from the past. The reports of interrogation (of Olmert himself, former staffers, etc.,) are less sassy. Ministers are keeping their counsel instead of rushing to Olmert's defense. There are confident leaks that the "situation is grave." The police seem to have got their man -- anyway, if their case is not bullet-proof, it is they who should be investigated for doing this to the public, of all times, now.

So reasonable people are preparing themselves for the possibility that Olmert will soon have to resign. This would be bad news -- and good.

First, the bad: I have not hidden my personal fondness for Ehud Olmert, which makes me completely unremarkable. Olmert is a likable, glad-handing centrist, a poster-child for Israel's rising professional and entrepreneurial élites, who has cultivated Western journalists and back-and-forth Israelis like myself for years. But this is not personal. It is business. Waiting in the wings, liking the polls, is the worst government imaginable, a Bibi Netanyahu coalition of Likud's hardest-liners, back-to-the-Land-of-Israel cultists, ultra-Orthodox claustrophiles, Russian reactionaries and oligarchs, and general opportunists. Resignation could bring the demise of the Kadima Party, as former Likud people scurry back to the fold.

True, Olmert's prosecution would be a tribute to Israeli democracy, in a way --- to the rule of law and the procedures for electing what's next. But new elections would almost certainly bring to power the most antidemocratic coalition in Israel's history, just at a time when negotiations with the Palestinian Authority hang by a thread, a new administration is coming to Washington, and Israel's own Arab minority is inching toward wholesale alienation. I am not sure Israel could take five more years of this. I am sure the West, Arab moderates, etc., cannot take five more years of this Israel.

The good news, however, is that there is an obvious replacement for Olmert, who has always stood a much better chance of holding Kadima together by the force of her popularity. I mean, of course, the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, a straight-talking, very bright, and evolving politician (profiled here by the New York Times' Roger Cohen).

Livni, unlike Olmert, was not tarnished by the 2006 Lebanon fiasco. As Akiva Eldar implies, she might well revive Kadima and draw new, younger forces to it. She is also more likely to advance the peace negotiations (which she nominally runs), or at least bring them to the national agenda. She provides Labor's doves a leader to rally to while their own leader, Ehud Barak, continues to posture as the new Ariel Sharon, the IDF's real commander, the scourge of terrorists. She could add the leftist Meretz Party, which said it would never join a government led by Olmert after Lebanon.

Indeed, the best scenario is not unlikely -- not if the Bush administration supports it actively, and helps keep restless ministers (like former Likud defense minister Shaul Mofaz) bailing water instead of abandoning ship. It is that Livni and Barak will govern together for a year or so, and reconstitute the Israeli center, while putting the taint of corruption behind them. Only this will deny Netanyahu his second act. Something must.

Olmert alludes to apartheid South Africa in describing Israel and its future.

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said failure to negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinians would spell the end of the State of Israel.

He warned of a "South African-style struggle" which Israel would lose if a Palestinian state was not established.

[...]

"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," Mr Olmert is quoted saying in Haaretz newspaper.

[We asked cousins Mimi Asnes and Ben Keller to cover yesterday's peace conference at Annapolis, Mimi from the outside and Ben from within. Read all their coverage here.]

Not a happy camper: Here's Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today admitting that both Israel and Palestine must make a "painful sacrifice" in order to weave their way down a "long path" to peace.

It's not life-threatening, though:

“I will be able to function fully before the treatment and a few hours after it,” he said. “I will be fully able to carry out my role.”

Rumors about the state of Mr. Olmert’s health swirled throughout the morning following the unexpected announcement of the news conference, and, according to Israeli radio, the uncertainty had pushed down the Israeli stock market. After the news conference, the market stabilized.

Imagine having a 3% approval rating and still being able to influence the stock market.

Dihydrotestosterone: It causes male-pattern baldness, prostate enlargement, and tough ethnic conservative responses to terrorism.

Agence France-Presse: Pakistani security forces began their assault on the mosque compound before daybreak on Tuesday, just hours after talks broke down to end the eight-day siege in central Islamabad.

Olmert calls for Syria to resume peace talks with Israel; Blair pushes for greater authority in his peacekeeping role; Iranian executions for rape, adultery, insulting religious sanctities, and homosexuality; The Jewish Agency will house 58 Sudanese refugees near Sderot. [Jewish Telegraph Agency] [The New York Times]

Bloody battle ends, leaves 82 dead at Red Mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan. [The Washington Post]
Craig Cohen, deputy chief of staff at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, discussed the deadly military raid at Pakistan's Red Mosque -- which ended an eight-day standoff with anti-government, pro-Taliban forces -- and the impact it will have on President Pervez Musharraf's control of the U.S.-allied country. [The Washington Post] [The Los Angeles Times]

Abbas convenes the Palestinian legislature; Hamas boycotts. [The New York Times]
According to Abbas, “thanks to the support of Hamas, Al Qaeda is entering Gaza.” [The New York Times]

The IDF thinks that Iran will go nuclear about 5 years sooner than the date projected by a United States National Intelligence Estimate. This doesn't come as a shock (the IDF is probably only weeks away from handing down a report that they've spotted split hooves under the Grand Ayatollah's robe and horns under his headgear). What's actually bizarre is that Mr. Olmert seems to believe that Ahmadinejad speaks for his country:

Iran, through the voice of its president [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, calls almost daily for the destruction of the State of Israel.

Considering that the only people who like Ahmadinejad in Iran are roughly equivalent to the people who still like Bush in the U.S., a statement like the one above is hardly different from saying that the United States, through the voice of its president, speaks like a rodeo cowboy. Clearly, most in the U.S. despise their president. Easy to do, really--although I will say those Bushisms sometimes merely show a fellow who, for better or for worse (usually for worse), doesn't mince words.  Sometimes cutting to the chase is necessary and refusing to do so can make you look even more like an idiot.

Mr. Bush only a few months ago astutely noted:

There's a lot of blowhards in the political process, you know, a lot of hot-air artists, people who have got something fancy to say.

How right he was. The Italian premier Prodi, with whom Olmert was meeting to discuss the Iranian problem actually said the following:

Because Iran is a regional power, it must act responsibly, and give up any nuclear military program

According to the illogic of this rhetorical sidestep, the reason for abandoning nuclear program would also be incidentally the only precondition for acquiring such a thing! He should have just reminded us that clerical fascists like Kahmeni and wacked out populist nobodies like Ahmadinejad are blowhards. That would have made some sense. No nukes for blowhards. Simple as that.

[Note: Benjamin is the Shvitz's new Israeli-based correspondent. He'll be blogging here on a regular basis about politics and culture in the Middle East. --MW] 

Living in Beersheva has its advantages and its disadvantages. Usually the latter loom larger than the former, the heat, the sandstorms, the relative distance from the all-important mercaz, the neighbors who slaughter their own Passover dinner...but I digress. One of the good things, in fact the best thing, at least from the point of view of a recent arrival (five years and counting) is the lack of a bubble mentality.

Unlike the Anglo bubble in Jerusalem, which sometimes seems obsessed with reconstructing Brooklyn in the middle of the Old City, or the Tel Aviv bubble, with its relentless cosmopolitanism and hipper-than-thou obsessions with sex, fashion and designer drugs, living in Beersheva forces you, for better or for worse, to confront the real Israel, such as it is. Which is to say, a rather dusty community of underpaid, overworked, family oriented, Hebrew (or sometimes Russian) speaking folks who find it utterly incomprehensible that you don't take sugar in your coffee. Beersheva sometimes feels like a microcosm of the under Israel, the Israel left behind by tourists, reporters and Biblical fetishists alike. This does not, however, imply that places like this are disconnected from the rest of the country.

Continue reading...

The J-Post on why another summer war is unlikely: 

Olmert and Peretz do not want a large-scale operation in Gaza. Any response to the continued Kassam attacks will be an effort to slightly impair Hamas's ability to perpetrate attacks, as well as demonstrate to the public that there is a government after Winograd and that it is doing something.

The pinpoint operations approved during the security assessment at Olmert's office Wednesday afternoon will not succeed in stopping the Kassam rockets. At the most, Israel can hope they will make it more difficult for terrorists to reach their launch pads in northern Gaza.

Here's a prediction that means absolutely nothing unless this gets linked elsewhere, in which case who needs plausible deniability when you've got the "Edit" button:  Wolfowitz keeps his job, Olmert loses his. (It's a low order for prophecy, but still -- hump day is all about rolling the dice.) 

The man currently ahead in opinion polls, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party, is keeping his silence for now, his aides say. But Mr. Netanyahu’s former aide Uzi Arad said Mr. Olmert would find it “exceedingly difficult” to stay on, given that the commission made it clear that its conclusions about the rest of the war were likely to be even harsher than those about the war’s start.

Kadima's been undone by obesity and a stroke.  

Enough to buoy our own head of state:

Olmert's popular support is nearing single figures in newspaper polls, mostly because of the Lebanon war, but also because of allegations of his involvement in alleged corruption including real estate deals and undue interference in government transactions to favor friends and backers. Olmert has denied any wrongdoing.

Jonathan PollardForget Eric Hunt and his obsession with Elie Wiesel. The latest peculiar story of quasi-nutjobs infilitrating hotel security comes to us by way of Jerusalem where activists supporting Jonathan Pollard managed to gain access to the floor of Condoleeza Rice's hotel room.

Around 8 p.m. the group of activists entered the hotel and several of them went up to the floor Rice is staying on. Near her room they were stopped by a metal detector, but two broke through and managed to get within several feet of her room and additional security personnel were called in to remove them from the scene.

The activists said: "Rice came here to preach to us that we should release terrorists who have murdered civilians, while the US has imprisoned Pollard for 22 years. His health continues to deteriorate and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert must demand his release before it's too late."

The Committee to Free Jonathan Pollard disassociated itself from this evening's incidents. "We only employ legal means for our cause, but we can understand those activists who could not take it anymore."

Harbin synagogueEhud Olmert is in China this week, discussing (among other things) the Iranian threat to Israel. But most people probably don't know that Olmert's grandparents fled to China from the pogroms in Russia. In fact, Harbin had a large Jewish population for some time. And Harbin sheltered thousands of Jews fleeing the Nazis during WWII.

Bein expressed her appreciation of the peaceful childhood she enjoyed in Harbin.

"During the war, when the whole of Europe was aflame, we enjoyed a comfortable life," she said.

By the end of the World War II, there were about 30,000 Jews in China.

"Thirty thousand people came and 30,000 people left China," said Teddy Kaufman, President of Association of Former Residents of China and Israel China Friendship Society.

"Nobody was killed," he said.

China is one of the few nations of the world that opened its doors to Jews fleeing the Holocaust. Today, China is preserving the buildings that housed the Jewish community, a thing that is almost unheard of.

Harbin has preserved the largest Jewish cemetery in East Asia, which has about 600 tombstones and includes the grave of the grandfather of the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The city's dozens of Jewish assembly halls, hotels, schools, hospitals, banks, shopping malls, dwelling houses, kindergartens and office buildings, some of which are nearly a century old, are protected by Harbin municipal government.

Some of buildings have been repaired and maintained in large scale, like the Jewish New Synagogue, which was restored in 2005.

How do you say "Thank you" in Chinese?

A rocket hit the town of Sderot late Tuesday and injured two teens, one is listed in critical condition. The rocket was the seventh to be fired from Islamic Jihad since Tuesday morning. In accordance, Defense Minister Amir Peretz is putting pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to respond to these attacks with a clear message:

"We cannot continue to restrain ourselves," Peretz told the prime minister. "We cannot let Islamic Jihad do whatever they want, and we need to take action to stop the Kassams."

Residents in Sderot, rightfully frustrated, had this to say:

"Our children are getting hurt over here and nobody's doing anything about this," one resident shouted.

"We can't go out anywhere, not to the shopping mall, or anywhere," another resident said.

Others vented their anger at the press members who were covering the incident. "You guys are going to interview us and maybe show a minute or two, but you don't really feel our pain," one resident accused.