EHUD OLMERT'S resignation speech reached us on our way back from a demonstration.
We were protesting the death of Ahmad Moussa, aged 10, who was murdered during a demonstration against the Separation Fence at Na'ilin village - the fence that robs the village of most of its land in order to give it to the nearby settlement. A soldier aimed and shot the child with live ammunition at close range.
The protesters stood under the windows of the Minister of Defense's apartment in the luxurious Akirov Towers in Tel-Aviv and shouted: "Ehud Barak, Minister of Defense / How many children have you murdered so far?"
A short while later, Olmert spoke about his strenuous efforts to achieve peace, and promised to continue them until his last day in office.
The two events - the demonstration and the speech - are bound together. Together they provide an accurate picture of the era: peace speeches in the air and atrocities on the ground.
I AM not about to join the choir of retrospective heroes, who are now falling upon Olmert's political corpse and tearing it to pieces.
Not an attractive sight. I have seen this happen several times in my life, and every time it disgusts me.
This phenomenon is not particular to Israel. It can be found in the history and literature of many times and places: "The Rise and Fall of…"
It's an old story. People grovel in the dust at the feet of their hero. The ambitious and avaricious prance around him. Court-poets and court-jesters sing his praises, and their modern successors - the media people - extol his virtues. And then, one day, he falls from his pedestal and they trample all over him without mercy and without shame.
This is the mob that idolized Moshe Dayan after the Six-day War, and then smashed his statue into pieces after the Yom-Kippur war.
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1217719725/
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