Chutzpah

If there was any residual doubt about just how incompetent Ehud Olmert truly is as the head of Israel, no one is left with any illusions except for a few tree snails in the Amazon rain forest. Defying five millenia of political science, Olmert has announced he is going to surrender the entire territory of Israel claimed from 1948 to the present.

Okay, not all. He wants to keep his apartment.

The traditional political ploy when domestic policy closes in on the head of a government (like the police with search warrants) it to distract everyone with a new war or a daring military rescue. Sometimes the ploy works wonders and growing scandals (like sons embezzling funds or brothers playing fast and loose with the floozies) like the Faukland Islands, the first Gulf action, and tossing a whole bunch of cruise missles at empty tents in Afghanistan. Sometimes it fails abysmally like the Somalia adventure or the daring Tehran hostage rescue. The tactic, apparently consistently worth the gamble, plays out nicely giving the tarnished leader a rise in the polls and winning a whole bunch of nodding and approving heads from the greyhairs.

No one has ever dreamed of coming up with the novel idea that such a moment of leadership and decisive action calls for unilateral surrender.

Until now, that is.

When I was a kid, my father taught me the meaning of the word Chutzpah with the following story: a man kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.

With the police banging down his door on bribery and money laundering charges, Olmert has finally shown his complete political saavy--not--he's going to surrender. The Syrians are jubillant and the only thing missing is Olmert supplying the Iranians with the GPS coordinates for Tel Aviv.

So what is Olmert saying? You can't get rid of me now! You need me!