Prime Minister Ehud Olmert barely uttered a word of his speech at a Rosh Hashana toast for Kadima activists on Wednesday before reserve soldiers and bereaved parents started heckling him and calling upon him to resign. Security guards struggled to reach the hecklers, who shouted throughout the prime minister's speech. Fights broke out at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds between the protesters and Kadima activists. Standing in front of a stage set up for television cameras in the middle of the hall, the hecklers unveiled flags with symbols of elite IDF units and shouted, "Olmert go home" and "Where are the kidnapped soldiers?" One protester even called the prime minister a murderer.
Olmert addressed the protesters in his speech, calling upon them to stop attacking Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz and to leave the army outside the political battlefield. "It is permitted to protest and provoke, but the majority of the people here think differently than you do," he told the hecklers. "I know that there are people who are angry and disappointed. I am sure the majority of the people of Israel agree with our path and believe that Israel won the war."
Olmert's associates accused the protesters of being part of a right-wing conspiracy against the prime minister. They noted that the reservist movement is advised by Spin, the same public relations firm that ran the settlers' campaign against disengagement. "We know who sent them and who is advising them," an Olmert associate said. "The unruly bullying and disgusting heckling of the prime minister reveals the true face and the blatantly political intentions of the people calling upon him to quit. Whoever calls the prime minister a murderer loses his legitimacy and becomes part of the extremist fringes of Israeli society."