does it surprise you that the Israeli prime minister has been accused of embezzelment and fraud?

No. Many jews are conditioned from childhood to the idea that they are above the law,above criticism,above everything.

The report says that this phenomena has been noticed since the 1990's . Actually it started when Mr. Rabin was assassinated by the far right . Since then every prime minister didn't want to have peace with Palestinians that can be seen as a concession to Palestinians . They are unable to reach a settlement with the Arabs for the fear of their lives . Personally , i think Israelis should apply capital punishment to stop this kind of threat . Israel can't go on forever unable to make peace and at the same time having the risk of a coup if the current situation started blocking the Israeli interests .

No, every politician is corrupt. In fact, I'm the president of japan and I accepted a year supply of jello in exchange for military secrets last week.

It's just becoming an issue now with olmert since he started saying he was gonna give the west bank to the palestinians and started talking two state peace or whatever so the people who dont want that to happen are trying to dig up dirt on him so they can eject him out and get another sharon-like guy who will be hard on all the arabs especially the lebanese cuz they all so sexy and they turn on all the israeli woman which pisses of the lesbians of israel.

No, is it ever surprising when a politician is found to be a criminal? 99% of them are. Olmert was a known criminal since the 70s, and Kadima is known as the party where all the corrupt politicians ran to when it was created. Think about it, why did people from all different parties, from Labour to Likud, with very different ideologies go and join Kadima? To unite in corruption

"The corruption case against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has earned Israel tremendous respect throughout the Arab world, where many have called on their leaders to benefit from Israel's democratic system and independent judicial system.

. . . Sami, commented: The Israeli regime . . . is better than all the Arab 'democracies' . . . .

A Saudi national named Abdel Karim urged his Arab brethren to stop criticizing Israel and learn something about its democracy. 'Before we curse Israel, we must learn from the democratic and judicial system in Israel, where no one is above the law,' he wrote.

Mahmoud al-Bakili of Yemen posted the following response on one of the Web sites: 'We want this kind of accountability and transparency in the Arab and Islamic world.'

And there was this comment from an Arab who described himself as a Syrian Voice: ' . . . In the Arab world, laws are broken every day and no one seems to care.'

. . . Ahmed in Jordan: 'Only a few thousand dollars? What a fool! This is what an Egyptian minister gets in a day or what a Saudi CEO gets in 45 minutes, or a Kuwaiti government official in five minutes. This is what the physician of the emir of Qatar gets every 30 seconds.'

Mohammed in Lebanon: 'Can you imagine if there was an investigation against an Arab or Muslim leader? Do you know how much money they would discover?'

. . . "

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JP...

No it doesn't. Israelis, surprisingly, do also have corrupt politicians. some of them as high up as Prime Ministers and presidents.

What does surprise me, is how do Palestinians(and all Arabs in general) let corruption run their daily lives, and are not voicing their views out of fear of being executed.

At least Olmert is going to be punished, without regard for his title.

Shouldn't surprise anyone. It isn't like it's the first time.

No.

Olmert was known to be corrupt in his days as mayor of Jerusalem.

He was not elected to the position of PM; he took over for Ariel Sharon.

Because of these two reasons, he remains extremely unpopular.

EDIT:

Your tone is very antisemitic and sarcastic.

You do not see us (Jews and Israelis) posting sarcastic comments and questions in the Ramadan section; so why do you post your hateful comments in the travel/Israel section?

LIVE AND LET LIVE!

does it surprise you that arabs don't even have elections for their leaders at all?

our leaders, if they are bad, are out in a few years.

your evil tyrannical murderous dictators never leave.

the ersatz israeli government seems to be quite corrupt. To discover at this point that the PM is a criminal, isn't really surprising. What is, is that he is still able to keep his job.