Free Republic

Former Justice Minister Haim Ramon spoke out against the proposed ceasefire-prisoner swap deal, saying that it is "the worst deal" that Israel could possibly agree to. In an interview with 103 FM Radio, Ramon said, "The deal proposed today is the worst of all worlds. In practice, we will end the war. Anyone who thinks that after 42 days, by pressing a button, we will restart the war - is making a mistake. People will return to the Gaza border area, to the north, and it will be very hard to continue the war." "Because it is this way, and...

Muslim Leader Advertises that 9/11 was ‘Israeli-Jewish Job’ Hamas and David Duke supporter, Sofian Zakkout, once again finds way to target Jews. June 8, 2016 Joe Kaufman    Sofian Zakkout, President of the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), is always looking for new ways to promote hatred of Jews. Recently, he advertised on his Facebook page an article about how the Nazi Holocaust was “faked.” Now, he is targeting Jews by posting onto social media a claim that they perpetrated the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Will any of the hate he...

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday began a 19-month prison sentence for bribery and obstruction of justice, defiantly proclaiming his innocence in a farewell video as he became the first Israeli premier to be placed behind bars. His imprisonment capped a stunning fall from grace that ended Israel’s last serious round of peace efforts with the Palestinians and ushered in the era of Benjamin Netanyahu, a hardliner widely criticized in the region and around the world.

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...

Judge blasts bribe-takers as ‘traitors’; former prime minister insists he’s innocent of corruption in Holyland case, will appeal conviction Ehud Olmert was sentenced to six years in prison, a two-year suspended term, and a fine of NIS 1 million ($289,000) in the Tel Aviv District Court on Tuesday, with the judge issuing a scathing rebuke of the former prime minister. The graft crimes for which Olmert was convicted, Judge David Rozen said, were “among the worst in the criminal code.” Rozen added that “without trust there can be no upstanding public service.” Olmert will have 45 days to appeal the...

Thundering ruling shakes country, Judge also convicts former Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski, former Bank Hapoalim Chairman Dan Dankner, Olmert's former chief-of-staff Shula Zaken and 10 out of 13 individual defendants.

No devotee of Yes Minister, yesteryear’s BBC’s classic, can forget St. Edward’s Hospital – that spanking new cutting edge facility that had no patients or medical personnel. Nonetheless, St. Edward’s hustled and bustled, a veritable hive of activity and creative energy. For 15-months since its much-ballyhooed inauguration, an administrative staff of 500 bureaucrats filled the hospital’s offices, pushed papers and generated red tape. Sounds exaggerated? A bit over-the-top for real life? Not really. John Kerry’s peace project, for example, replicates the parody’s blueprints with mind-blowing precision. It is for diplomacy what St. Edward’s was for health care – an incredible...

Israel's former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been found guilty in a bribery trial in a case which forced him to resign to office in 2008. Mr Olmert was convicted in what is known as the "Holyland affair" in which bribes were paid and received to speed up a luxury property development.

According to former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, Israel has already spent ten billion dollars on developing ways to either delay or completely neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat. Israel's military knows no bounds. When the very survival of the Land of Israel is at stake, Israel will not hesitate to surprise American policymakers and military experts. The last time this happened was not 1967, or 1976's Entebbe. It was September 6, 2007, when Israel destroyed the Syrian plutonium reactor at Al Kibar. American military experts had thought this was improbable, and some said – impossible. In September, 2012, the...

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...

Officials close to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday evening criticized former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who attacked Netanyahu for airing his objection to the deal reached by world powers last week on Iran's nuclear program. "Not everyone has experience as a continuous failure like Olmert does in the disengagement and the Second Lebanon War,” said the officials. “If we do not talk about the Iranian issue with the international community, what will we discuss with it?” “Does Olmert expect us to send faxes to Washington about the Iranian issue?” they added. …

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...

U.S. President George W. Bush has declined to meet with former Prime Minister and current Likud Opposition Leader MK Binyamin Netanyahu during his upcoming visit to Israel, slated to begin on Wednesday, according to the Jerusalem Post. Sources in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima party quoted in the report offered this explanation: “At the White House, they think [Mr. Netanyahu] is a liar because of his behavior when he was prime minister.” Outraged Likud officials accused Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of sabotaging what would normally be a routine meeting between a visiting U.S. President and an Israeli Opposition Leader, a...

Former Kadima chair Tzipi Livni held a news conference at 12:00 noon to announce that she is running for the 19th Knesset at the helm of an independent party, "The Movement – Headed by Tzipi Livni." Livni met Monday with another former Kadima chair, Ehud Olmert, and informed him of her decision. According to a Maagar Mochot poll published Thursday, a list headed by Livni would garner nine Knesset seats and "steal" seats from Labor, which would get only 19, and Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid (Future) party, which would get 4 seats. Lapid has offered Livni the Number Two position...

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has accused right-wing Americans of being responsible for the lack of peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Wealthy Americans ousted him from power and derailed negotiations, he told CNN. Olmert said he was committed to reaching peace, “But I had to fight against superior powers, including millions and millions of dollars that were transferred from this country [the United States] by figures which were from the extreme right wing that were aimed to topple me as prime minister of Israel.” Olmert left office amidst accusations of corruption involving several different affairs. His bureau chief...

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...

Israel's leaders have purposely obscured their war aims in Gaza. But there are only two possible endgames: (A) a Lebanon-like cessation of hostilities to be supervised by international observers, or (B) the disintegration of Hamas rule in Gaza. Under tremendous international pressure -- including from an increasingly wobbly U.S. State Department -- the government of Ehud Olmert has begun hinting that it is receptive to a French-Egyptian cease-fire plan... That would be a terrible mistake. It would fail on its own terms. It would have the same elements as the phony peace in Lebanon: ... a cessation of hostilities until...

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will hand in his resignation to President Shimon Peres at 7:30 p.m. Sunday to carry out an orderly transfer of power, Cabinet Secretary Ovad Yehezkel announced. Once Peres receives the letter, he will meet with the heads of the 13 Knesset factions to consult with them about whom he should appoint to form a new coalition before formally appointing new Kadima leader Tzipi Livni. She will then have 42 days to form a coalition - but her goal is to present a new government to the Knesset when it returns for its winter session on October...

Government and police spokesmen would have us believe that the carnage in Jerusalem on Wednesday was unavoidable. Husam Taysir Dwayat, the convicted rapist, burglar and drug dealer turned jihadist who mowed down innocent people with his bulldozer on Jaffa Road was not suspected of links to terrorist organizations. The sociopathic, violent criminal who had "returned" to Islam over the past month raised no red flags. There was nothing to be done. No one is to blame. If the protestations of the government and the police that nothing could have prevented Dwayat from using his bulldozer to murder three people sound...

On Sunday the Israeli cabinet voted 22-3 in favor of a “prisoner” swap with Hezbollah. Israel, on its side of the bargain, won’t be receiving any prisoners but instead the corpses of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, the two soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah in 2006, along with partial, inadequate information on Ron Arad, the airman shot down over Lebanon in 1986. Hezbollah, for its part, gets five live terrorists including child-killer Samir Kuntar, dozens of corpses of terrorists, information on four Iranian diplomats who were detained by Christian Phalange forces in Lebanon in 1982, and live Palestinian terrorists whose number...