Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Thursday attacked Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the wake of the Likud’s campaign against Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz.
In recent days, the Likud has released several videos portraying Gantz as incapable of running the country. The videos depict him as incoherent, suffering from mental health problems and as a failed businessman.
Blue and White, for its part, has responded in kind with videos portraying Netanyahu as incoherent.
Speaking on Radio 103FM, Olmert claimed that only one side of the political map is to blame for the mudslinging.
"There are not two people playing this way, there is one person who has turned the entire State of Israel into an arena of grime, violence, brutality, incitement, and insults the likes of which we have not seen since the establishment of the state," said Olmert, who added that there is no precedent for such a discourse.
"I was on the political stage for 50 years, I remember political fights, but even Golda Meir and Menachem Begin did not behave this way. There was nothing then that ever came close to the level of filth and incitement being led by one man and his family,” he continued, in a reference to Netanyahu.
"It's a crazy family with promiscuous people in an atmosphere of incitement and a willingness to destroy anything, undermine any agreement and value in order to save a person in a matter that has nothing to do with the state's interests."
Later in the interview, Olmert commented on the death of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and said, "I last saw him at a meeting after I stepped down from office years ago. We had a regular model, most meetings took place in Sharm el-Sheikh, I would go to the yacht club and that’s where he was most of the time. We would sit and talk for an hour and a half or two hours, face-to-face. We had fascinating and sometimes surprising conversations in their sincerity. He was very distraught over the attacks against him regarding democracy in Egypt."