Olmert turning bitter

Haaretz: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was interviewed for the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Bakehila, and complained bitterly that the ultra-Orthodox had forgotten "all the tremendous achievements enjoyed by the ultra-Orthodox community thanks to my personal initiative, in the context of the close cooperation that prevailed between me and the ultra-Orthodox community during the 10 years I served as mayor of Jerusalem." Olmert said of himself: "There has never been a secular leader who has proven leadership of such tremendous sacrifice to the ultra-Orthodox as I. Has it all been forgotten? Have all the schools that I helped built for ultra-Orthodox children disappeared? Have all the mikvehs [ritual baths], synagogues and Torah institutions that I established evaporated into thin air?" In late October, Olmert was also interviewed for the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Mishpacha, where he complained about the ultra-Orthodox political activists who were ignoring "the decisive contribution I made, which paved the way for Uri Lupolianski to be elected mayor of Jerusalem after I resigned. After I left City Hall, great pressure was placed on me to appoint a secular replacement. Every child knows that during the months when Lupolianski served as my replacement, the road to the mayoralty was paved for him, and he won the legitimacy that he had lacked among the non-ultra-Orthodox public." The reason why the ultra-Orthodox have tended to forget Olmert's achievements is that they attribute a central role to him in the establishment of the Sharon-Shinui government (Olmert: "To claim that I was the architect of the coalition without ultra-Orthodox is a combination of ignorance and a little wickedness"). But the question that is no less interesting, and perhaps more so, is how secular voters - and particularly the hundreds of thousands of Shinui voters - who now support Kadima have so easily forgotten the fact that Olmert was the one who sold Jerusalem to the ultra-Orthodox. What is the state of relations now between Olmert and the ultra-Orthodox? Not bad, it turns out. Olmert told Mishpacha that "I often visit Rabbi Elyashiv [the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Degel Hatorah party, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv], and I am happy that I worked to stop the flood of abomination in the telephone calls systems (referring to the restriction of sex calls on mobile phones), on his request." He told Bakehila that "At this very time, I am working tirelessly to find solutions to ensure that the ultra-Orthodox public will not be shortchanged."......