Ex-Israel PM Makes Stunning Accusation: We Are Committing War Crimes in Gaza
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert delivered a blistering attack on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, accusing it of presiding over a “criminal” military campaign in Gaza that he says no longer bears moral or strategic justification.
The one-time leader, who governed from 2006 to 2009, said in an op-ed for Israeli newspaper Haaretz Monday that he can no longer defend Israel against accusations of war crimes, pointing to an 11-week blockade on humanitarian aid and soaring Palestinian civilian deaths.
“What is it if not a war crime?” he wrote. “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.”
Since the start of the war, Olmert has acted as an unofficial envoy defending Israel abroad from charges of genocide and ethnic cleansing. But after 19 months of conflict, he said the war should have ended a year ago and now serves no strategic interest.
Speaking to CNN anchor Bianna Golodryga on Tuesday, Olmert, once a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party before joining a breakaway party, slammed Netanyahu’s cabinet as a “thugs” prolonging the war for “political purposes.”
I’ve been speaking for a long period of time and I criticize the Israeli government and particularly the lack of any vision about what comes next. What are we going to do in order to end the war, release the hostages and start to move it towards some kind of a political horizon that will start perhaps a process that will end the military confrontations?
What happened particularly in the last few days was the statements made by Israeli cabinet ministers, the leading cabinet ministers, that say we should starve Gaza. What is it if not a war crime? I mean, how can a serious person representing the Israeli government spell it out in such an explicit manner that we should starve Gaza, that there should be no supply of basic, fundamental humanitarian needs to a couple of millions people living there?
There are terrorists that we need to fight, but this is not a war against Hamas, this looks more and more like a political war of the Israeli prime minister and the cabinet and the group of thugs which are now representing the Israeli government inside Israel and across the world are committing actions which can’t be interpreted in any other way.
Continuing, Olmert spoke of the international pressure on Israel from Western leaders and, in particular, President Donald Trump, who he demanded drag Netanyahu into an Oval Office showdown before “TV cameras”:
President Trump is held by most of the Israelis to be a great friend of the state of Israel. He also says that we should supply the basic fundamental needs of the people of Gaza, they can’t starve. And I think that the international condemnation of the policies of Netanyahu and the group of ministers, the messianic extremist right-wingers that are now leading the government and dictating to Netanyahu what should be done and how it should be done, I think that they have to listen to what the international community says and to change direction, and I personally hope that President Trump will take the lead in making this effort.
I think that no one but him can actually summon Netanyahu to a place they both love very much, which is the Oval Office facing the TV cameras, and he should do it and say to Netanyahu: ‘Enough is enough. It’s time to end the war. It was time a long time ago, but it certainly is today – to end the war, to supply all the humanitarian needs of the people that are uninvolved in terror, and there are many of them, and release the hostages and move forward. It’s time.’
Watch above via CNN.
