Among the regular reports, features and columns in today’s Jerusalem Post, presenting a wide range of perspectives and views, a new voice appears and will begin appearing on a regular basis: that of former prime minister Ehud Olmert. Considering the intense passion that the former prime minister elicits, we expect that not all our readers will be thrilled. But we also do not believe that it is a newspaper’s role to strive to make people happy. Nor, by the same token, are we looking to gratuitously annoy. Newspapers have many roles. Among them, to act as a watchdog to ensure those in power act transparently; to serve as a check on the judiciary, legislative, and executive branches of government; to inform about what is happening in the country and the world; to entertain with columns, crosswords and puzzles; and to provide readers with a wide array of different perspectives and opinion – including some they might not otherwise encounter. We take this latter role very seriously and we believe that it is increasingly important in the digital age when people gravitate to cable news stations and news feeds on social media platforms that mirror exactly what they think. Increasingly, citizens in the modern world live in their own cocoons – pulled towards people who think like them, reading opinions that reflect their own, associating with those of a like mind. This is especially true in Israel, where we live in separate bubbles: the Tel Aviv bubble, the haredi bubble, the Arab bubble, the settlement bubble, the Jerusalem bubble. The pages of the newspaper are one place where people from all those different bubbles can interact and exchange ideas. It’s what makes newspapers exciting, interesting, and – from time to time – maddening. It is comfortable living in an echo chamber, where one’s opinions and beliefs are reinforced by others who believe exactly as you do. But is it productive? Comfort is nice, but should not be the goal. In this complex and nuanced world, it is important to come across and be challenged by opinions unlike one’s own, by ideas coming from people outside one’s own secure bubble – even by people we may not like very much. Which is why this newspaper runs pieces from those on the Left, and those on the Right. From Jews, Muslims and Christians. From those who are fervently secular, to those in the national religious camp, to those who are ultra-Orthodox. That is what a newspaper worthy of its calling does: provides a window to a multi-colored world, a world that is not monochromatic. Olmert, who served as this country’s prime minister from 2006 to 2009 before stepping down on charges of bribery and fraud and serving 16 months of a 27-month jail sentence, is a lightning rod. Some loathe him for his political opinions, others can never forgive him for his conviction, while others miss and respect him for some of the actions he took while in office – for example, fighting Hezbollah, fighting Hamas and bombing a Syrian nuclear reactor. Regardless of one’s opinion, two things are certain. First, Olmert paid dearly for his actions, falling from the height of power and influence to the depths of a jail cell. And, secondly, he has a unique insight and vantage point into the challenges facing this country and its prime minister that only someone who has sat in the premier’s chair can have. If, following the Watergate scandal in the US, Richard Nixon – within a matter of years – became an in-demand speaker on world affairs, and one whose advice was sought out by presidents and prime ministers, than surely Olmert – a man convicted of much less than what Nixon was accused of before being pardoned by Gerald Ford – can at least be heard. You don’t have to like Olmert or even agree with him. But we urge you to read what he has to say with an open mind and to judge the arguments on their own merits – not on a preconceived notion of the person who is making them.
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