Israel’s former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he now believes his country’s constant attack on the Palestinian people amounts to “war crimes” and must stop.
According to Reuters, Olmert, who served from 2006 to 2009, spoke to the people of Israel in an article written in Hebrew that Haaretz published on Thursday. He condemned current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for “waging a pointless war, without a clear goal or plan, and with no chance of success,” according to Google’s translation of the piece.
Olmert wrote that he had previously defended his country against “accusations of genocide and war crimes.” However, the Israeli politician said he can no longer see the widespread killing of civilians, including women, children and the elderly, or the campaign to starve Gaza as just collateral damage in “a brutal war.”
“What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians,” he said.
“We are doing this not because of an accidental loss of control in a particular sector, not because of a disproportionate outburst of fighters in some unit — but as a result of a policy dictated by the government, knowingly, intentionally, viciously, maliciously, recklessly,” Olmert’s op-ed continued. “Yes, we are committing war crimes.”
Olmert also wrote that the current administration can no longer dismiss criticism of the military attack or the monthslong blockade of food and medical supplies as antisemitism, as Netanyahu did again last week.
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When French president Emmanuel Macron, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney and UK prime minister Keir Starmer issued a joint statement calling for Israel to “stop its military operations in Gaza” and “immediately allow humanitarian aid” into the region, Netanyahu accused the trio of “emboldening Hamas” and its aims to “annihilate the Jewish people.”
“When mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers thank you, you’re on the wrong side of justice,” he wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Olmert called such responses from Netanyahu and his “gang of criminals” dishonest. He wrote, “The Netanyahu government’s chorus of thugs and the poison machine it operates will immediately leap up with characteristic shrieks of rapprochement: The gentiles are anti-Semites. They hate us. They have always been against us. They support terrorism — and we fight terrorism.”
“The truth is, these governments are not anti-Israel, they are anti-the Israeli government,” he said.
At the end of his piece, Olmert warned that Israel must listen to these warnings “before we are all ostracised from the family of nations and summoned to the International Criminal Court for war crimes, and a good defence won’t stand a chance against us.”
The International Criminal Court is an international tribunal that prosecutes individuals for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.
After Israel blocked food and medical aid from coming into Gaza for two-and-a-half months, the country began allowing a limited amount of supplies into the region last week.
