By Arieh Eldad

Sixty-six years ago, on the twenty-fifth day of the Hebrew month of Shevat 5702 (February 12, 1942), in a little rooftop room on Mizrachi Bet Street in Tel Aviv, British detectives shot and killed Avraham Stern (known as Yair) though he was manacled at the time. The British police told the press that Stern was shot while trying to escape.

Three days ago the Knesset held a special ceremony marking the one hundredth anniversary of Yair’s birth. The prime minister spoke, and he spoke well. He referred to Yair the fighter, the man of culture, who loved his people and his land, a fiery zealot and a poet. Afterwards, he spoke about Yair’s loneliness, the loneliness of a fugitive hunted by his brethren and the foreign enemy, by the Jews and by the British. The awful loneliness in that little room, knowing of the inevitable closeness of his death, burning with the belief that from that lonely room the spirit would go forth that would redeem the Jewish people and land. For a moment I thought the prime minister was speaking of his own loneliness, the loneliness of a leader in those difficult moments when he must reach tough decisions and take responsibility. And Olmert asked about Yair, and perhaps also about himself, “What was he hoping for? What was he praying for? What was he unable to give up?”

Yair was hunted for months, from one hiding place to another. All he owned was a cot that folded into a suitcase and a grand vision. He had no survival plan. He was offered refuge in a kibbutz if he would end his war against the British, but he refused to save his life if it meant surrender. Without possessions, with his hunters closing in, and the Jewish community cursing him, he wrote songs and The Eighteen Principles of Rebirth, and when he related to his death, it was only in order to turn it into a force in the war for freedom. When the British killed him, they were sure they had thereby eliminated the underground Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Lehi), but Yair had written before his death enough songs, and they and his Principles of Rebirth were a great force propelling forward the war for freedom. His life and death became legend and the fighters for the freedom of Israel who regrouped emerged from his songs and defeated the British Empire.

Two days ago, after months of investigation, Justice Eliyahu Winograd submitted his investigatory commission’s report. The commission’s interim report, which is part and parcel of the full report, had already stated that Olmert was responsible for the failure of the Second Lebanese War. That should have been enough. But Olmert, who then and now lacks all vision, does have at his disposal all the accoutrements of the prime minister of Israel: unlimited resources for political bribery and a local media willing to change its stripes. After demanding of him that he resign following the war, it is now prepared to call him the world’s best-ever prime minister, simply because he has promised to establish a Palestinian state more or less along the 1967 lines and with the state’s capital in Jerusalem. Olmert has no vision and no agenda. And as he says, he doesn’t need any. He has a personal survival plan, and top P.R. men and spin-masters, who inform journalists that “the commission’s report makes Olmert look good.” These guys are slick and rich enough to accomplish their task, and the journalists now say they admire Olmert’s staying power. They’re obviously not asking themselves how a man who at the Herziliya Conference declared that he had been wrong for 40 years, his entire political life, and of whom the Winograd Commission already said all that could be said about his warped decision making process during the war, how this man who has been unable to make one proper decision - will manage to fulfill their dreams.

What a chasm lies between the loneliness of Yair who fought to the death, with no plan for personal survival, knowing that his death would move armies to fight until victory, and this prime minister willing to fight to our death for his own personal survival. He knows that clinging to his office and refusing to take personal responsibility weakens an entire nation, erodes an entire country, causes hundreds and thousands of the best of Israel’s citizens and soldiers to despair of the country, of the values they have been taught, of Zionism, and brings the entire public to despair and cynicism. Olmert, who refuses to resign even after the issuance of the report, induces thousands of soldiers and their commanding officers, those who will have to protect us and fight the enemy in the next war, to pause and ask themselves if they really want to risk their lives in such a war. Are they really fighting for their homes, or perhaps for Olmert’s premiership? Is the target they are supposed to charge necessary for the people of Israel and the war effort, or is it a publicity stunt, a photo op, a spin, necessary for Olmert for whatever reason he has? How can they have confidence in the orders they are getting when they know who is issuing them and the quality of his decision-making process, and what was said about him by the government investigatory commission that he himself appointed and whose report he is now laughing at? In its final report, the Winograd Commission said, “Israel cannot exist without it and the surrounding countries knowing that it has a worthy leadership.” The citizens of Israel and the Arabs all know that Olmert is a failed leader.

There’s loneliness and there’s loneliness. Yair established the state from his loneliness, for his life was not more important than the state. He had no survival plan, only a willingness to be the match that would light the flames of the war for freedom. Olmert in his loneliness is prepared to destroy the country. The country is part of Olmert’s survival plan. Yair’s light shines ever more strongly 66 years after his death, for he used his life to light the nation’s way. Olmert’s light grows ever dimmer, for he is prepared to burn everything in order to retain power. Olmert is also lonely. He is surrounded by puppets, for only in complete solitude will Olmert find an environment that does not bring attention to his failures and demand that he take responsibility and resign. In some countries, a prime minister who received the likes of the commission’s report would ask forgiveness from the public and shoot himself in the head. Olmert prefers to stay where he is and sacrifice us.