Now he tells us

Ehud Olmert suddenly endorses the only viable solution, just as he becomes powerless to implement it:

"We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories," Olmert said. "We will leave a percentage of these territories in our hands, but will have to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace." ...

At another point, Olmert said: "In the end, we will have to withdraw from the lion's share of the territories, and for the territories we leave in our hands, we will have to give compensation in the form of territories within the State of Israel at a ratio that is more or less 1:1."

I look forward to Olmert's upcoming award-winning documentary film on this topic: An Un-Kosher Truth.

In the same interview Olmert also said, “Part of our megalomania and our loss of proportions is the things that are said here about Iran."  Presumably he was talking about people like this raving loon who called Ahmadinejad "a psychopath of the worst kind" who "speaks as Hitler did in his time of the extermination of the entire Jewish nation."

Yuks aside, I give Olmert credit for statements like this: "I am not trying to justify retroactively what I did for 35 years. For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at reality in all its depth."  Just once, though, I'd like to see a major political figure in the US or Israel have (or reveal) one of these epiphanies while they're still in a position to do something about it.

Comments

[Quin]

"For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at reality in all its depth."

Is it just that, as Jonathan Schwarz hypothesized, power makes you stupid?

"An Un-Kosher Truth". That's funny.

[John Caruso]

I'd say it's more that having power makes you want to keep having power, and so people in positions of power voluntarily (and no doubt largely subconsciously) constrain themselves to the set of viewpoints they think will maintain that position. It's groupthink of one. That's why the daydreams you hear so often about the paradise we'd all be living in if Al Gore had won in 2000 are pure fantasy—because if Gore had won, none of the words that make liberals so weak in the knees would have passed his lips over the last eight years.

So as soon as Olmert knew there was nothing he could do to save his political hide, he was suddenly free to have (or reveal) epiphanies which would have been political dynamite (and in his view, political suicide) had he announced them while he was in power.

There's an element of self-deception there as well, I'd say; people are remarkably proficient at convincing themselves that the actions they take out of self-interest are in fact the results of careful consideration, done in the best interests of others, God's Holy Will, etc, etc.

[Quin]

What we really need is for one of these big time politicians to realize how completely they've sold out their younger idealism, and in a fit of depression, (after buying a big life insurance policy to benefit their children) take out a hit on their own life. Then, manically buoyed by the knowledge that they're going to die in a few days anyway, they can speak their inner mind to the world WHILE they're still in office and, you know, create peace in the Middle East or solve global warming or something.

[Save the Oocytes]

I think they made a movie out of that.

[Quin]

DAMN! There goes my screenplay...