Ehud Olmert’s address to the Knesset Monday — part how-I-won-the-war, part don’t-worry-we’ll-fix-everything, part hey-disengagement’s-gone-but-how-about-a-new-constitution? — lacked eloquence. But it ended graciously. Here are the final paragraphs of the speech:
As I conclude, I wish to use this opportunity, which perhaps will not reoccur in the coming weeks.
Because of the special date of this opening of the session, to say words of farewell from someone who announced his intention to leave the Knesset, from MK Natan Sharansky.
I wish to say in this house, but perhaps to the entire State of Israel — there is no one like him in this house.
Few of those who served here played such an important and central role in the modern history of our people as this man, Natan Sharansky.
He knows that I have felt this way for many years, because I told him so, even in private meetings. The status to which Natan Sharansky rose in the Knesset led to him vowing an oath to become a minister of Israel at this podium years ago, and was one of the most emotional moments of my life as I thought of where he came from, what he symbolized and what he represented to the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
Natan Sharansky announced his retirement from the Knesset, perhaps also from political life, and continues to serve as a man who symbolizes great pride and immense courage as a Jew and as a fighter for freedom.
On behalf of the Government of Israel, at this time, before the people of Israel, I wish to thank you.
Israel’s inability to use Sharansky — the embodiment of moral resistance to totalitarianism, an international hero of unquestioned integrity, the man who literally wrote the book on the case for democracy, a person admired by the President of the United States — as a strategic asset in a time of existential challenge (if not as prime minister, then as president or foreign minister or UN ambassador) is a major failure. Imagine if it were Sharansky rather than Olmert delivering this message to Putin this week.
But perhaps he will return in the next government, once the current accidental, patched-together one departs.
To see a couple paragraphs from the speech that Sharansky might have given last year, in place of Olmert’s famous “tired” plea for peace, go here. It is the message that Olmert should have delivered Monday.