This article was written before Ehud Olmert's sentence in the Holyland case was announced on Tuesday morning. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's supporters have yet to stop and think that maybe, despite their opinions, Judge David Rozen, who was privy to all the evidence and the testimonies, made the right decision. Attorney Dov Weissglass has, predictably, already gone on the record as saying that Rozen convicted Olmert without proof, and that the former prime minister should have been acquitted not only in the Holyland corruption case, but also in the Talansky and Rishon Tours cases, despite what the tapes given to the State Attorney's Office by Olmert's former bureau chief Shula Zaken as part of her plea bargain might reveal. Nothing will change the top one percentile's mind. Its members have rejected the verdict and will likely reject the sentence as well, in the spirit of Louis XIV of France, who said, "I am the state." Weissglass' legal claims have been translated by Olmert's peers to a three-word narrative: "It's so sad." What is so sad? Why, that Olmert is facing prison time, of course. Not that he took bribes, not that he corrupted others, not that he was found unequivocally guilty by the Tel Aviv District Court and halfheartedly by the Jerusalem District Court -- but that he will have to be held fully accountable for his actions. It was Olmert's choice not to end his misery via a plea bargain, but to fight the charges against him in the courts. It is his right and it has been his choice, and his journey, it seems, is far from over. Olmert still stands to listen to what Zaken has to say, and it is unlikely he will find it pleasing -- and nor will the Jerusalem District Court judges, who had acquitted him of the majority of the charges in the Talansky and Rishon Tours cases. He also still has to explain away the alleged obstruction of justice by one of his attorneys. But that is not the point. The real problem is what lesson will the public take away from all of this? Will the public simply accept the fact that Israel is a corrupt country treading in muddy waters, or will it demand that proper norms, in which bribery is a grave offense, be reinstated? There was a time when the harsh words of a judge could get the message across even if the sentence was lenient, but rogue criminal elements have turned the tables on that practice. It no longer matters what the judges had to say about the four counts of breach of trust for which Olmert was convicted -- as long as all he received was a light sentence, he could spin the ruling as an acquittal. It is the criminals who have turned the severity of a sentence into the litmus test gauging the severity of the crime, and any decent judge now feels that his ruling must be backed by a hefty fine and a substantial prison sentence. That will be the court's true test on Tuesday, when the doors open from Rozen's courtroom and the media burst out and spread the word. Only then would we know if the sentence matches the verdict rendered. What happened to Olmert really is sad. It is sad that a person who was once a champion in the war against corruption was eventually overtaken by it. It is sad that his family's reputation has been dragged through the mud by no fault of their own, and it is also sad that they will now have to be separated from a loved one. This, of course, is understandable.
