Former prime minister Ehud Olmert attacks many of his former political rivals in a new book that he wrote while he was in prison.
Olmert, who will be speaking at The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on April 29, wrote that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “waste and hedonism screams to the heavens.”
Olmert also complained about Netanyahu’s potential successors.
“All of Netanyahu’s competition is too similar to him and soon will look like him,” he lamented.
About Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, who is employed by the Jerusalem Municipality as a child psychologist, he wrote that “the children of Jerusalem are lucky that she barely shows up to work.”
Regarding his former Kadima colleague MK Tzipi Livni, he wrote that she “lacks leadership and the ability to make decisions.”
Olmert bashed Gilad Schalit – the soldier kidnapped into the Gaza Strip when he was prime minister and released five years later in a highly publicized prisoner-exchange deal – saying that he “is not a hero or an example – not as a fighter, not for courage or for valor.”
He accused his then-defense minister Ehud Barak of torpedoing a deal to bring Schalit home, by visiting a protest tent calling to bring the soldier home outside the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem, when Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin was in Cairo to negotiate a deal that could have brought Schalit home.
Olmert also wrote that Barak begged to let him into Kadima ahead of the 2006 election.
Barak responded on Twitter by calling Olmert a “documented serial liar” and a “known scoundrel.” He said visiting the protest tent was a “simple humane step,” and that Schalit was not released when Olmert was still prime minister because Hamas is a cruel and sophisticated enemy.
“I am proud that I forced him to quit [the premiership],” Barak said of Olmert.