Free Republic

... Olmert, who is today one of the leaders of the protest against the planned judicial reform, was interviewed on Channel 12 News. During the interview, Olmert definded National Security Minister MK Itamar Ben Gvir as "a terrorist".

My words: "OOOH! LET'S SWORDFIGHT!" A senior Likud source on Saturday responded to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The meeting took place in France. "Olmert, who offered Abbas the Western Wall, has now turned into his faithful mouthpiece," the source said. "In the US and many Arab countries, they already understand that Abbas is the true obstacle to peace, and that the reason for his extreme demands is not peace but rather the elimination of the State of Israel." MK Moti Yogev (Jewish Home) also responded to the meeting. "Olmert met with...

Army Radio reporter Hadas Shteif at a Shabbatarbut event in Ness Ziona claimed former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sexually harassed her several years ago. Speaking to Amalia Dwek, the event organizer, Shteif said the incident occurred when she worked at the Israel Broadcasting Authority's studios. After the Shabbatarbut event, Shteif tweeted, "It is all true. I spoke the truth to many people. I was grossed out. I have not forgotten. Because of what I went through, I believe the words of every woman who dares to speak up 30 years later." .....

Jerusalem (CNN)Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been sentenced to eight months in prison for taking cash from an American businessman. He was also fined $25,700. Police said Olmert received the money from 1993 through 2006, during his tenure as Jerusalem's mayor and while holding ministerial positions under former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He took over as prime minister in 2006 after a stroke incapacitated Sharon. The new sentence is in addition to the six years in prison Olmert is already facing for taking bribes related to a controversial Jerusalem housing project -- also while he was mayor. Olmert was...

Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday postponed the start of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s prison sentence pending appeal on his conviction on corruption charges. […] Olmert, 68, was convicted in March in a wide-ranging case that accused him of accepting bribes to promote a controversial real-estate project in Jerusalem. He was charged for acts while he was mayor of Jerusalem and national trade minister, years before he became prime minister. …

Legal experts agree that the state is likely to seek several years in prison for Olmert following his conviction in the Holyland affair; the fact that he has served in high government positions may work against him. With Ehud Olmert having been convicted Monday of bribery in the Holyland trial, attention will now turn to whether or not the former prime minister will serve time in prison for his crimes, and if so, how much time. Judge David Rozen said at the conclusion of the reading of the verdict against Olmert and nine others in the Holyland trial in Tel...

ormer Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Friday that if talks he held with Palestinians in 2008 had produced a peace deal, it would have forced tens of thousands of Jewish settlers to leave their homes in the West Bank. If a deal had been reached at the time, it would also not have included an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, Olmert said. More than five years on, the fate of the Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley, along with recognition of Israel as the Jewish national homeland, are key sticking points in the ongoing Mideast peace talks brokered...

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert on Monday insinuated that his successor Binyamin Netanyahu was an “idiot” and that his predecessor Ariel Sharon was revered only after lapsing into a coma. “In times of peace, even an idiotic prime minister can come out looking good,” he said during a lecture at Hebrew University on Monday. “Of course, an idiot prime minister cannot make peace, and if he makes peace he’s not an idiot,” after the audience laughed at his veiled tongue-in-cheek reference to Netanayhu, Olmert was quick to backtrack and added, “I mean that only generally, of course. Really!” The Prime...

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's handling of current disagreements with the United States, regarding the deal the US negotiated with Iran over its nuclear weapons program. "We've declared war on the United States administration,” Olmert said at a special debate at the Institute for National Security Studies on Sunday. "First and foremost,” said Olmert, “we must steer clear of anything that might give the impression that we want to lock horns with our biggest ally." Disagreements with the US must never be handled in a way “that might give the impression, G-d forbid... of a...

As the civil war in Syria enters its third year, there is much discussion of the regimeÂ’s chemical weapons and whether SyriaÂ’s Bashar al-Assad will unleash them against Syrian rebels, or whether a power vacuum after AssadÂ’s fall might make those horrific tools available to the highest bidder. The conversation centers on SyriaÂ’s chemical weaponry, not on something vastly more serious: its nuclear weaponry. It well might have. This is the inside story of why it does not. Relations between the United States and Israel had grown rocky after IsraelÂ’s incursion into Lebanon in 2006, for Secretary of State Condoleezza...

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of deliberately strengthening Hamas in order to convince the Israeli public that there is no Palestinian partner for peace. Olmert’s comments came after PA President Mahmoud Abbas made a rare verbal concession to Israel, saying he had no permanent claim on the town from which he left as a child during the War of Independence in 1948, in an interview with Channel 2. “The government has taken steps to strengthen Hamas and to weaken the PA, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, an organization which espouses non-violence and negotiations for...

To the catalog of missed opportunities for peace in the Middle East, we can add a tantalizing if also depressing chapter: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's secret offer in 2008 to create a Palestinian state that would feature international control of holy sites in a divided Jerusalem — a concession many Israelis have said was impossible. Condoleezza Rice discusses the Olmert proposal in her new memoir, "No Higher Honor." She writes that as she listened to Olmert's plan during a May 2008 visit to Israel, she asked herself (and the emphatic italics are hers in the text): "Am I really...

US Politicians Duped By The Brotherhood In the United States, one individual maintained a pretense of "moderation" which would later embarrass the left and the right. According to the testimony of Dr. Michael Waller to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Abdurahman Alamoudi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. A man born in Eritrea in 1951, he arrived in the US in 1979 and became a naturalized US citizen on May 23, 1996. From 1985 onwards he became involved in many Muslim groups. In 1990 he founded the Washington DC-based American Muslim Council (AMC), which Waller states "has...

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert revealed on Sunday that when he was serving as Prime Minister, he had reached an agreement with the United States and then President George W. Bush, in which the US agreed to absorb 100,000 Palestinian Arab refugees. Olmert added that at the same time he struck a deal with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that Israel would absorb only a small number of refugees. Speaking at a conference by the Geneva Initiative, Olmert said: “The numbers discussed were below 20,000, but this would require an end to the conflict and a Palestinian announcement...

Constructive Clarity in Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations Benny Begin • The PLO platform, as reaffirmed in the Fatah Congress in August 2009, states that their struggle will not stop until the Zionist entity is eliminated and Palestine is liberated. As a logical corollary, they refuse to accept Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. • This explains why, when Mahmoud Abbas was asked in a Washington Post interview in May 2009 why he had declined Olmert's far-reaching offer, he answered that "the gaps were wide." • The Palestinian leadership insists that negotiations now start at the point they had reached with...

Police will be at the airport to arrest former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert if and when he returns to Israel, sources told TIME magazine. On Saturday, he categorically denied any involvement with the latest and perhaps largest political scandal, centering on Olmert’s former legal aide and friend Uri Messer. Messer is one of several political, legal and financial leaders who have been charged with bribery in the huge Holyland apartment project in Jerusalem. Several steps in its approval coincided with Olmert’s tenure as mayor of the capital and when he was Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor in the Sharon...

When the Oslo process began in 1993, one benefit its adherents promised was a significant improvement in Israel’s international standing. And initially, it seemed as if that promise would be kept: 37 countries soon established or renewed diplomatic relations with Israel; a peace treaty was signed with Jordan; five other Arab states opened lower-level relations. But 16 years later, it is clear that this initial boost was illusory. Not only is Israel’s standing no better than it was prior to the famous handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat on the White House Lawn in September 1993, it has fallen...

When one looks around the world and its leaders, all too often someone absolutely devoid of experience and political smarts will be found occupying a position he/she is most unsuited for. How did they get there? Many a time they were the favorite of someone very powerful whose bidding they always did, or simply found themselves in the right place at the right time.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was indicted on corruption charges Sunday, becoming the first Israeli premier to go on trial and highlighting a series of cases that have shaken the public's faith in the political system.

A review of statements made by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert since kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped thee years ago today reveal that the government eroded its own position. Olmert vowed not to negotiate with Hamas and then gradually offered to free hundreds of terrorists, an action security and military officials prevented by warning that the entire country would be endangered.