Commentary on the commentary: Howling over Olmert

The 'Post's op-ed editor wraps up the past week: From Olmert's acquittal to Iran’s genocidal ambitions.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
newspaper laptop pencil 311 (photo credit: Thinkstock/Imagebank)
newspaper laptop pencil 311
(photo credit: Thinkstock/Imagebank)
The week opened with shouts and howls about the acquittal of Ehud Olmert, and ended with the fall of Israel mega-coalition as Shaul Mofaz took his Kadima party into opposition. Our columnists took the Olmert verdict in stride, as revealed in articles by Liat Collins, Susan H. Rolef, Isi Leibler and Yitzhak Klein. As Klein writes, “the Olmert case merely underscores the steady erosion of public confidence in Israel’s law enforcement system.”
Conscription, one of the central issues that scuttled the coalition, was also a hot topic. Anet Haskia, an Israel-Arab woman from northern Israel wrote about her three children that have served the country and advocated that the Arab community serve equally. Rabbi Shalom Hammer also wrote an op-ed arguing about the importance that the national religious community has in Israeli society, especially in terms of its commitment to doing their duty in the IDF. But questions of service are not all that weighs on the public. Columnist David Newman passionately argued that despite the Levy Report’s claim that the settlements might be legal, the occupation must end. Josh Hasten, who lives in the West Bank, asked whether the Palestinian security forces could be trusted to keep their guns aimed in the right direction.
Several interesting articles, one by the President of Bar-Ilan University, Moshe Kaveh and another by venture capital expert Yoel Haron, also graced the pages of the opinion section this week and are well worth a read. As the week drew to a close a number of Assad’s closest advisers were killed in a bombing and five Israelis (as well as one Bulgarian) were murdered on a bus in Bulgaria. The hands of Iran are seen in the Bulgarian attack. Thus Environment Minister Gilad Erdan’s op-ed was quite prescient in condemning Iran’s genocidal ambitions. At the same time Alon Ben-Meir was also forthright in writing on Thursday that there can be no reconciliation with the “butcher in Damascus.” Sherri and Seth Mandell demanded in their op-ed that Israeli victims of terror be given a voice at international conferences on victims of terror.
One hopes, in the wake of yet another attack on Jews abroad, falling on the anniversary not only of the roundup of French Jews in the Holocaust but also the bombing in Argentina in 1994, that the suffering of innocent Jewish victims will be recognized abroad. Judging by the coverage in some major media, labeling the attack in Bulgaria “revenge” or ascribing it to a “war” between Iran and Israel, it seems the victims will once again be forgotten, tragically.
The writer is The Jerusalem Post's opinion editor