Monday, June 1, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
MIDEAST: Another Corruption Scandal Pursues Olmert
Peter Hirschberg
- Badly tarnished by his management of the Lebanon war in the summer of 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had begun, in recent months, to resurrect his public image. But a new corruption scandal in which he is being questioned by police has again undermined his credibility, and raised questions about his ability to govern effectively.
In what is now the fifth corruption-related affair in which the Prime Minister has been implicated since taking office two years ago – he has not been indicted in any so far – Olmert faces accusations of illicitly receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. According to the allegations, the money was transferred to Olmert by Moshe Talansky, a 75- year-old U.S. businessman and fundraiser, starting in the early 1990s.
Olmert has not denied receiving the funds, and has said he has known Talansky since 1993, but he insists that the money was used for legitimate purposes and went to cover his various election campaigns – as mayor of Jerusalem in the 1990s and when he ran in the primaries of the centre-right Likud party in 2002.
“I look in the eye of each and every one of you and say: ‘I never took a bribe. I never took a penny into my pocket’,” he said in a television address late last week just minutes after a court-imposed gag order on the details of the case was partially lifted.
Police investigators, who have already questioned Olmert once and plan to question him again, want the Prime Minister to account for the money, which was in cash.
On the lowest rung of street workers are the beggars. Some might object that what defines them is precisely the fact that they don't work. Nonetheless they are at their posts when conventional workers arrive at theirs. They are diligent. And they are organised. In the capital they form rings, each with its own Fagin and zone of operation. In the provinces, the arrangement is looser and clannish.
Since the earthquake, the mass of beggars in the provincial towns has grown considerably, though no one as yet knows their numbers with any certainty. Dominican paranoia about the growing Haitian population as a whole has people citing exorbitant figures as high as two million for all immigrants, of which the beggars would form a small but very visible portion.
Julíta stands in front of a Pizza House restaurant window, staring at a family eating at the benches inside. It is an old trick: stare them down, guilt them into coughing up a few pesos. Her mother Cecile has taught her well.
She says she is eight years old – her mother says nine, but she looks barely big enough to flesh out seven. Ask where she is from and she answers, "La Ocho", a low rent neighbourhood in Bonao where Haitians have settled.
Ask her origin and she perks up, "Haiti!" But what town? "The 'campo' (countryside)." She has no idea what her hometown is called. Haiti is her symbolic home and as such it exercises a powerful allure. But it remains a dream of home.
Wearing a dusty black dress, she treads the hot pavement barefoot. She clutches a purse with a broken strap, an accessory of which she is obviously proud. She fiddles with it, keeps it tightly secured at her armpit.
"Dame algo (give me something)," she repeats all day long, jutting her hand in the face of prospective Samaritans. She doesn't take no for an answer.
But she doesn't play the sorrowful waif. She is disconcertingly cheerful. If the mark ignores her, she launches a sermon: "Why are you like that? Jesus loves you. Give me something."
She is obviously bright and has made the best of the lessons that the street has taught her. But she has never stepped inside a classroom and cannot read or write. What math she knows she learned by adding up the pesos she cadges.
"I earn 50 pesos a day," she claims proudly. Not quite a dollar and a half, but a solid contribution nonetheless. It guarantees that the family will have enough plaintains for the evening meal.
With such simple calculations, one survives but the loaves and fishes never multiply.
In a bid to stave off demands that he resign immediately, Olmert told Israelis that he would step down if the attorney general decided to indict him. “I hope and believe we will not reach this stage, but if, God forbid, that is what’s decided, I will not require goading or preaching from anyone,” he said.
There have been calls across the political spectrum for the Prime Minister to resign, with some right-wing politicians suggesting that in a desperate bid to survive politically, Olmert will be ready to make major concessions in order to reach a deal with the Palestinians or the Syrians. “Israel cannot afford to be led by officials who accept bribes,” said Arieh Eldad, a member of the hardline National Union party. “Moreover, Israel cannot afford to have these leaders take the country on questionable diplomatic adventures in order to escape punishment.”
Despite the calls for him to quit, Olmert’s political demise is not imminent. Police investigators have said that the probe could go on for months, and leaders of the Labour Party – the senior coalition partner – have suggested they will not leave the government unless the Prime Minister is indicted. Most members of his ruling Kadima party are also backing Olmert, but if opinion polls show that he continues to be an electoral liability – as they currently do – that will change.
Both Labour and Kadima members are also not in a hurry to dismantle the government: opinion polls indicate that if elections were held now, Likud chairman and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu would win, and they might find themselves on the opposition benches.
But the most serious question being raised in the wake of the latest allegations against the Prime Minister is whether he can continue to govern as he battles yet more corruption allegations. Can he contend with a sensitive security situation in Gaza, a highly complicated situation in Lebanon where deadly sectarian violence has erupted, and indirect contacts with Syria, while at the same time prepare for police investigations, consult with his lawyers and wage a PR campaign to limit the damage to his image?
Considering his tarnished credibility, it is difficult to see how Olmert would be able to win the type of broad public support that would be required for an agreement with the Palestinians or the Syrians. For their part, Palestinian officials fear that Olmert’s predicament will make it impossible for him to progress in peace talks, or might lead to new elections, which would then render unrealistic the end-of-year deadline set by U.S. President George W. Bush for a peace agreement between the sides.
It’s also unclear how foreign leaders will relate to the Prime Minister. When President Bush arrives in Israel this week to mark the country’s 60th anniversary he will no doubt publicly embrace the Prime Minister, but he will almost certainly be asking himself whether he can still do business with him.
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