9-14-08, 9:00 am

Ehud Olmert is on his way out, having agreed – under pressure from his coalition partners – to concede the premiership to whoever is chosen by his party to take his place. Olmert’s misbehavior was certainly sleazy, but still in the sphere of typical governmental corruption: kickbacks, influence peddling, padding expense accounts and that sort of thing. Many Israelis will now feel better over the impending removal of such a corrupt and immoral gentleman from the reins of power. But Israel might be breaking some sort of record by doing even better in the category of leadership by a known criminal.

Olmert’s successor will be selected this week in the Kadima party internal elections. Latest polls suggest that Foreign Minister, Tsipi Livni, or former IDF Chief of Staff, and current Minister of Transportation, Shaul Mofaz, have equally good chances of winning the race. Livni’s chief political asset seems to be a carefully crafted lack of clarity – but she is of minor interest to us at this point.

Gen. (Reserve) Shaul Mofaz, has been accused of committing serious war crimes back in May 2001 during the second intifada. The accusation appears in a book “Boomerang,” published in 2005 by two respected Israeli journalists, Drucker and Sela. Mofaz, who seems just a few party ballots away from being installed as the next Israeli Prime Minster, convened a high level military confab in May 2001 and ordered a daily quota of 70 dead Palestinians.

The British “Independent” wrote this month that David Kretzmer, a highly distinguished Israeli law professor, has urged the Israeli Attorney General to investigate charges of war crimes committed by Deputy Prime Minister, Shaul Mofaz. Kretzmer argues that Mofaz violated the law in 2001 by ordering Israeli forces to kill a daily minimum of 70 Palestinians. The Israeli professor also says that reports from Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, from 2001 and 2002 raise suspicions that Mofaz ordered Israeli soldiers to shoot at every armed Palestinian, irrespective of their threat to Israeli forces.

The Israeli political system may well “succeed” in replacing a petty criminal, Olmert, with a perpetrator of major war crimes. At any rate, Kretzmer’s initiative will have to be examined by the Israeli Attorney General, Mazuz. The international legal system will also devote increased attention to Mr. Mofaz’s record.

War criminal Mofaz, who may be Israel’s Prime Minister in a number of days, is the quasi-official leader of the ‘bomb Iran now’ lobby that refuses to wait out the result of the US presidential election. John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, in an interview with Charley Gibson of ABC this Thursday, when asked to explain what the country should do if Israel struck Iranian nuclear facilities, repeated three times that the United States cannot 'second-guess' what Israel must do to defend itself.

So we see, trigger happy hawks flock together.

--Reuven Kaminer lives in Jerusalem.