Prosecutors in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s ongoing corrpution case have added taking cash bribes from a U.S. businessman to Olmert’s ever-expanding list of allegations:
State Prosecutor Moshe Lador, speaking at a Supreme Court hearing, said investigators suspected New York businessman Morris Talansky had given Olmert “dollars, in cash and in envelopes, during brief meetings from time to time”.
Olmert’s attorneys were petitioning the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court’s decision to hear preliminary testimony from Talansky, currently visiting Israel, before he returns to the United States.
[…]
Police have said Olmert is suspected of taking “significant sums of money from a foreigner or a number of foreign individuals over an extended period of time”.
A judicial source said the sums involved totalled hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Really, the only question that serious foreign policy thinkers should bring up about this case is: Why are the Israeli prosecutors so anti-Israel? Don’t they know that if they bring down the Prime Minister, then that will bring about a media frenzy that will embolden Hamas, weaken the Israeli public’s resolve and allow Iran to take over the whole Middle East?
I’ll bet they don’t wear flag pins, either.
