Feiglin: Olmert = Amona

Israeli television in Russian interviewed me yesterday about Ehud Olmert. They asked if I think that his guilty verdict is because of his support for the Expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif. “I don’t know what is going on in Heaven and G-d does not report to me about His decision making,” I answered. But when the broadcaster asked me his question, I understood that this gut feeling - that whoever was involved in the despicable act of driving Jews off their land was ultimately punished - is also shared by the less traditional public.

To me, Olmert is synonymous with Amona. Olmert is the PM who saw how Sharon halted the investigations against him by destroying Gush Katif and expelling its inhabitants and decided he wanted to do the same - just bigger and better. He called it ‘Convergence’.

Afterwards, Olmert went to war in Lebanon, so that he could return from there victorious, “which would provide the tailwind for the Convergence,” in his words.

In other words, Olmert brought about the deaths of soldiers and civilians in a war that had no logic: No missiles were being fired into Israel at that point and nobody thought that the war would help the IDF find its soldiers, who had been captured by the Hizbullah. The former PM assumed that the IDF would win, he would be crowned a war hero and gain the full legitimacy he wanted to destroy all the settlements, bring ‘peace’ and like Sharon - merit world-wide fame and the pardon of those who decide against whom to press criminal charges.

For the Israelis, however, the trauma of the Expulsion from Gush Katif was quite enough. Israel was defeated in Lebanon and that was the beginning of the end of the despicable man who had been Prime Minister.