Israel’s former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he now believes his country’s relentless assault on the Palestinian people amounts to “war crimes” and must be stopped.
Addressing the people of Israel in an article written in Hebrew and published by Haaretz on Thursday, Olmert, who served from 2006 to 2009, 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.
While Olmert wrote that he had previously defended his country against “accusations of genocide and war crimes,” the Israeli politician said he can no longer see the widespread slaughter of civilians, including women, children and the elderly, or the campaign to starve Gaza as mere 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.”