In a different time and in a different Israel, another premier - Golda Meir
- prepared to step aside after an official inquiry criticized her for not
having foreseen the surprise attacks from both north and south that stunned
Israel at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Even though that same
report also pointed to her steadfastness after the onslaught began. (It was
said at the time in Israel that Golda had proved herself the only real man
in the Cabinet.)
What a contrast with the mod Israel: After an official inquiry into Israel's
last war detailed Ehud Olmert's multiple failures as a wartime leader, it
took him over a year to announce his resignation. And then it wasn't because
of his manifest inadequacies in that conflict but because of still another
investigation of his tangled finances.
Ehud Olmert is all too representative of mod, upwardly mobile Israel. Is it
only Ariel Sharon, the Israelis' last great general, who's fallen into a
comatose state, or has the spirit of the whole country done so as well? A
once pioneering, almost spartan society seems to have developed a disease at
its psychic core. Call it Olmertism.
Thanks to the byzantine rules of Israel's semi-parliamentary,
semi-constitutional but always raucous democracy, Ehud Olmert will remain in
office for an uncertain while, the timing of his exit as cloudy as most
other things in the always hazy Middle East.
If there was one success of the Olmert Years, it was the virtual completion
of the wall - excuse me, security barrier - that now has prevented all but a
few suicide attacks within most of the Jewish state. And, oh yes, one more
thing: Ehud Olmert can also take credit for making the hawkish leader of the
opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu, the popular favorite to succeed him.