A post about Olmert that we probably didn’t publish

Ehud Olmert, you are a convicted thief. This is a legal fact, confirmed by Israeli courts after years of proceedings, retrial, and appeal. As mayor of Jerusalem and minister of industry, you accepted bribes to advance a luxury real estate development in one of the largest corruption scandals in Israeli history. You were sentenced. You appealed. You were convicted again to six years in prison for your crimes. You went to prison. You are the first former prime minister of Israel ever to have been incarcerated. We say this not to relitigate the past. We say it because it is the foundation of everything that came after.

When the courts closed the door on your political future, you forced your way back into the limelight. The world needed an Israeli to say the things it couldn’t say itself, because saying them would make it antisemitic and you were available.

You understood exactly what you were doing. You are a lawyer and a former head of government. Naivety is not available to you.

Then Nicholas Kristof called. And you gave him exactly what he wanted. And he placed your words, your name, your title, your cheap credibility as a former Israeli prime minister at the end of a column containing claims of extraordinary gravity. That Israeli authorities directed the rape of children. That dogs were used as instruments of sexual assault. That systematic sexual torture is official state policy.

Your words were the final seal. A Jew said it. A former Israeli prime minister said it. Textbook blood libel, and you handed them everything they needed.

The article you effectively endorsed has already driven mobs to besiege synagogues and sent a young Jewish girl to the ground outside her own house of worship. And it is only gathering momentum. It spread faster than any blood libel in modern history, and as it spread, it buried something. That same week, an independent commission released its report documenting the systematic sexual atrocities of October 7th, the rape, the mutilation, the deliberate targeting of women and children. Drowned out. Erased. Your column stole the recognition they deserved.

You issued a statement. Small. Quiet. Published not in the New York Times but in a minor outlet, read by few, retracted by no one. You said the placement misrepresented your views. You said you had no knowledge supporting those specific claims.

One would expect outrage. Remorse. Instead, your response was the whisper of an accomplice, or at best, a coward. You, who have never needed an invitation to speak, who spent two years forcing yourself into every studio that would have you, went quiet.

Anyone else would have screamed from the rooftops. You issued a statement no one read, retracted by nothing, and disappeared.

If there is no malice in your actions, just vanity, then you must demand a full, public retraction from the New York Times.

A formal, public demand that the New York Times retract the framing that used your words to legitimise claims you explicitly told Kristof you could not verify. The same New York Times that has not responded to your complaint. The same New York Times whose columnist called you not to seek truth but to find a Jew willing to lend his name to a story already written. You have more standing to make this demand than almost anyone alive.

Your name is in the article. Your credibility was the commodity. You are the witness who was put on the stand without consent, or so you claim. If that is true, then act like it.

We are telling you what history will record if you do not. A man who spent two years feeding the international media machine that produced this column does not get to step back with a whisper when the machine goes too far. Your media tour built the room that Kristof walked into. Your escalating accusations gave that column its atmosphere. You do not get to be surprised by the fire when you spent two years bringing the kindling.

That you would even claim you could not verify these allegations speaks volumes about your treachery.

If you do not demand a full public retraction, your quiet correction will be read for what it is: the move of a weasel and a coward, paying lip service to wash your hands while leaving Kristof intact, avoiding the confrontation that would reveal the truth.

Blood will be spilt because of this column. You are not even willing to stand up and say my hands have not spilt this blood. Of all the Jews in the world, of all the Israelis, you were the only one Kristof could find to quote by name. No other Jew was named. No other Israeli lent his title to these pages.

You were the sole stamp of Jewish credibility on the greatest blood libel of this century.

Do everything in your power to remove that stamp. Demand a full public retraction from the New York Times. Now. Loudly. Or be remembered as the Jew who handed the weapon to our enemies and did nothing when the blood flowed.

Silence is complicity. Silence is a noose around our people’s neck.