Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appeared on i24 News this week and once again accused the current Israeli government of pursuing a “mistaken,” “unnecessary,” and morally indefensible military strategy in Gaza. He implied that the civilian casualties occurring in a Hamas-controlled battlefield represent a deliberate or reckless Israeli choice, rather than the brutal consequence of Hamas’s explicit strategy of using its own population as cannon fodder.
It would be easy to write off Olmert’s remarks as just another case of a former politician settling scores, but this is far more serious. Do Olmert and others like him fail to grasp is that in 2025, their words are not contained within Israel’s internal democratic conversation? They are global weapons, instantly exploited by the very forces seeking Israel’s destruction and by the antisemitic wave now engulfing the world.
The Global Echo Chamber: When Israelis Criticize, Antisemites Celebrate
Immediately after Olmert’s interview aired, his comments were clipped, subtitled, and circulated across the world. TikTok accounts sympathetic to Hamas, Iranian state media, campus activists in the U.S., and even far-right antisemitic channels in Europe seized on his statements as “proof” that Israel is committing genocide.
The logic used by antisemites is always the same, “If even Israeli leaders admit it, then it must be true.”
Internal criticism is misinterpreted abroad as confession.
And the consequences are not theoretical. In the year following October 7:
- Antisemitic incidents worldwide surged more than 350 percent, according to the ADL.
- In the U.K., antisemitic incidents rose 589 percent after the Gaza war began.
- In France, Jewish institutions saw a threefold increase in attacks and threats.
- U.S. college campuses experienced the highest levels of antisemitic hostility ever recorded.
These are not random outbursts. They are fueled by a perception, engineered by Hamas’s propaganda machine, that Jews are collectively guilty of mass murder.
When Olmert reinforces that narrative, he is fanning the flames consuming Jewish communities from London to Los Angeles, from Paris to Melbourne. Does he not care?
The Unique Israeli Blind Spot: Mistaking Internal Debate for Global Discourse
Israel’s political culture is intensely self-critical. From Ben-Gurion’s clashes with Menachem Begin in the 1950s, to the Altalena conflict, to Golda Meir’s resignation after the Yom Kippur War, Israelis have always debated even during war.
But back then, these arguments stayed mostly inside Israel. It was considered out of bounds to badmouth Israel abroad. And there was no TikTok, no Instagram, no Qatari satellite channel with global reach.
Today, when a former prime minister speaks in English on an international network during wartime, he is not engaging in internal democratic debate. He is exporting ammunition into a hostile environment eager to weaponize his voice.
This is not a question of suppressing criticism, it is a question of responsibility. Timing, platform, language, and context matter.
Historical Parallels: When Internal Israeli Voices Derail the National Mission
Ben-Gurion vs. Begin, 1948-1952
Israel’s founders argued ferociously, but none of them conducted interviews in English for foreign audiences accusing the other of crimes during wartime. Their disagreements were internal because they understood the fragility of global legitimacy.
The Yom Kippur Aftershock, 1973-1974
Golda Meir was blamed for failures leading to the surprise attack, but even her harshest critics, like General Mota Gur or Yitzhak Rabin, did not go to international media accusing Israel of war crimes. They understood the stakes.
The Second Intifada, 2000-2005
Ariel Sharon faced intense domestic opposition when he responded forcefully to suicide bombings that murdered more than 1,000 Israelis, but the internal debate did not produce former leaders accusing Israel of mass murder in English-language interviews.
In all these cases, Israelis knew that externalizing internal dissent during war creates a strategic threat to the state.
Today, that lesson seems to be forgotten by those who should know it best.
The Anti-Government Protests: A Gift to Israel’s Enemies
Democracy is central to Israel’s identity. Protest is legitimate, but global perception does not interpret these protests correctly.
Images of mass demonstrations in Tel Aviv, motivated by complex internal grievances, are broadcast worldwide as:
- “Israelis are rejecting the war.”
- “Israelis see their own government as criminal.”
- “The government lacks legitimacy, the IDF is killing civilians against its own people’s will.”
This is how propagandists frame it. And the world, already primed to believe Israel is guilty, accepts it effortlessly.
The protesters cannot control how they are interpreted abroad, but Israel’s enemies know exactly how to exploit these images.
The Cruel Reality: What Else Could Israel Do?
Olmert accuses the government of “unnecessary killing,” but here is the unavoidable question, what else could Israel do when Hamas embeds itself inside hospitals, schools, mosques, and private homes, holding hostages underground and deliberately causing Palestinian civilian deaths for propaganda purposes?
This is not hypothetical. It is Hamas’s explicit strategy, documented repeatedly:
- Hamas leaders openly said, “We love death more than you love life.”
- They build command centers under maternity wards.
- They force families to remain in combat zones.
- They shoot at Gazans trying to evacuate.
- They turn the presence of civilians into a weapon.
No army in history has faced an enemy that insists its civilians die to help its propaganda campaign.
And no army has ever done more to avoid civilian casualties:
- 6 million evacuation notices
- The highest ratio of precision-guided munitions in modern warfare
- Ceasefires to allow humanitarian corridors
- Door-to-door clearing instead of leveling neighborhoods
- Tens of thousands of phone calls, texts, and leaflet drops
- Neighborhood-by-neighborhood evacuations based on real-time intelligence
The United States, Britain, Russia, or China never came close to such measures. In Mosul and Fallujah, the civilian casualty ratio was vastly higher.
Israel has done the impossible, fight an enemy hiding behind babies without harming babies. No military doctrine in human history solves this dilemma perfectly.
Olmert offers criticism but not a single operational alternative that would both destroy Hamas and avoid harming civilians Hamas forcibly surrounds itself with. Because no such alternative exists.
If Olmert Had Been Prime Minister on October 7
Let us speak plainly.
If Hamas had slaughtered 1,200 Israelis, raped women, burned families alive, kidnapped children, and dragged 240 people into tunnels while firing 5,000 rockets, no Israeli prime minister, left, right, or center, would have responded meekly.
Olmert himself ordered:
- the 2006 Lebanon War, with over 1,000 Lebanese civilian deaths
- extensive operations in Gaza
- airstrikes in densely populated areas
He did so because he understood then what he pretends not to understand today, you cannot defeat a terrorist organization by politely avoiding its human shields.
If Olmert had been in office on October 7, he would have mobilized the reserves, sent ground forces into Gaza, targeted Hamas headquarters hidden under civilian infrastructure, and accepted the tragic, unavoidable civilian casualties that Hamas designs intentionally.
To claim otherwise is hypocrisy - or political expedience.
The Responsibility of Former Leaders
Olmert, Yair Golan, and others know Israel is fighting for survival, not only physically but diplomatically.
They know the entire global antisemitic machinery is waiting for Israeli self-incrimination. They know that speaking in English makes their words instantly viral. They know Hamas uses internal Israeli dissent as proof of its own propaganda.
And yet they persist.
This is not free speech. Free speech carries no obligation to assist the enemy during wartime.
This is not democracy. Democracy requires responsible citizenship, not globally broadcast self-sabotage.
Their criticism is not constructive. It is destructive.
It is not internal debate. It is external ammunition.
And it is not harmless. It is deadly.
It endangers Jews everywhere.
A Final Appeal: Responsibility in a Time of Crisis
Israelis have every right to argue. It is part of who we are.
But when a former prime minister speaks in English during wartime and echoes the language of Israel’s bitterest enemies, he is not defending democracy. He is undermining the very foundations upon which that democracy stands.
There will be time for commissions of inquiry, for debates, for accountability. There will be time to question political decisions.
But not in the middle of a war for Israel’s survival, not when Jewish communities worldwide are being threatened, not when Israel’s enemies are harvesting Israeli voices as propaganda tools, and not when every irresponsible sentence becomes a spark in the global antisemitic inferno.
History has already taught us that when Israelis turn their internal quarrels into external weapons, the Jewish state pays the price.
Let us not repeat that mistake again.
Dr. Avi Perry is a former professor at Northwestern University, a former Bell Labs researcher and manager, and later served as Vice President at NMS Communications. He represented the United States on the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Standards Committee, where he authored significant portions of the G.168 standard. He is the author of the thriller novel 72 Virgins and a Cambridge University Press book on voice quality in wireless networks, and is a regular op-ed contributor to The Jerusalem Post and Israel National News.