EHUD THE BONEHEAD

I have often referred to Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, as "Ehud the Idiot." Olmert's inept leadership during the armed conflict in Lebanon weakened Israel and strengthened Hezbollah. Then he freed Samir Kantar, a Palestinian terrorist who was serving a 542-year sentence for the 1979 brutal murders of two men and a four-year-old girl, in exchange for the return of two dead Isaeli soldiers.

The cardinal rule in international diplomacy is that you never ever show your hand before you sit down to negotiate with your adversary. Ehud the Idiot has broken that rule at least twice.

(1) Israel has long maintained that it has a right to construct new settlement housing to account for normal population growth. Such construction is explicitly prohibited by the "Road Map to Peace" as laid out by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. Israel tentatively agreed to "The Quartet's" plan.

One year ago, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Olmert admitted that Israel is violating the peace plan by continuing to construct new homes in the existing settlements. In the interview, Olmert stated: "There is a certain contradiction in this between what we're actually seeing and what we ourselves promised. Obligations are not only to be demanded of others, but they must also be honored by ourselves. So there is a certain problem here."

That idiotic statement did nothing more than weaken Israel's bargaining position and strengthen that of its adversary in any upcoming negotiations with the Palestinians. But the idiot didn't stop there.

(2) Olmert publicly stated that he wants Israel to give up "almost all" of the occupied West Bank and to give part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians. Last September the idiot told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanot: "The decision we are going to have to make is a decision we have been refusing for 40 years to look at open-eyed. Israel must withdraw from the lion's share of the territories. The time has come to say these things. The time has come to put them (the withdrawal from the West Bank and the division of Jerusalem) on the table."

Here the idiot showed his hand, albeit a suicidal one for Israel, before any serious negotiations have taken place. When the Palestinians heard this, they must have jumped up and down with overwhelming joy. Once again, Olmert has strengthened their position at the bargaining table.

Olmert has been thoroughy discredited by his conduct of the war with Hezbollah and by the corruption charges brought against him. Now he has committed the worst boner of all. As Israel began the third week of its war with Hamas, Olmert embarrassed the President of the United States and the American Secretary of State in a speech he gave in Hebrew to a crowd in Ashkelon, an Israeli town near the Gaza border.

Olmert, trying to overturn his reputation for ineptness, bragged to the crowd about his influence over President Bush. In yesterday's Townhall.com, Pat Buchanan devoted a whole column to what the idiot told that crowd in Ashkelon. Here are some excerpts from Buchanan's description of Olmert's speech:

He had, said Olmert, whistled up George Bush, interrupted him in the middle of a speech and told him to instruct Condi Rice not to vote for a U.N. resolution Condi herself had written. Bush did as told, said Olmert.

"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a cease-fire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favor.

"I said, 'Get me President Bush on the phone.' They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now.' He got off the podium and spoke to me.

According to Olmert, Bush was clueless.

"He said: 'Listen. I don't know about it. I didn't see it. I'm not familiar with the phrasing."

"I told him the United States could not vote in favor. It cannot vote in favor of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favor. ...

"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favor."

According toBuchanan, Olmert is happily describing the egg on Rice's face: "He (Bush) gave an order to the secretary of state, and she did not vote in favor of it -- a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organized and maneuvered for. She was left pretty shamed. ..."

It must be noted that Buchanan, the late President Nixon's speech writer, is hardly a neutral observer in any controversy about Israel. From the very beginning, he has strongly opposed America's support of Israel. Buchanan insists that our support of the Jewish state does not serve the interests of the United States because it has turned the oil rich Middle East against us. Buchanan has also written a number of books and columns which contained anti-Semitic overtones.

Because Olmert's speech was poorly translated from Hebrew into English, Buchanan's description may not be very accurate. For instance, Olmert could not have interrupted Bush because the idiot's phone call was made quite a while before the President gave his speech. But if only half of Buchanan's description is true, and it probably is, a shameless Olmert has stuck his thumb right in America's eye. If he had any sense at all, he would not have given a public speech which was insulting and embarrassing to the president and secretary of stae of the only real friend Israel has had.

Calling him Ehud the Idiot is a monumental insult to idiots. "Ehud the Bonehead" is what I am going to call that bonehead from now on.