"No media spin aimed at discrediting the state comptroller can disguise the grave failures of the government, or spare the prime minister fromthe need to take responsibility and draw personal conclusions," head of the Knesset State Control Committee MK Zevulun Orlev said Wednesday.
Orlev said that the state comptroller's report on the government's handling of the home front during the Second Lebanon War was"one of the most severe reports in the history of the State of Israel .
"The findings unequivocallyconfirm the government's failure to treat the home front and its abandoning of the north's residents," he added.
Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik said she didn't think the report was tainted by personal motives, as suggested bythe Prime Minister's Office: "I don't think the comptroller is 'out to get' the prime minister… you can't expect a two-month old administration to take on deficiencies that had been building up for years…we are all at fault."
MK Avshalom Vilan (Meretz) said that "the prime minister and the government must stop shirking responsibility… and start correcting the mistakes."
Direct responsibility for failures
The Movement for Quality Government called on the prime minister to resign following the report's publication.
"Olmert bears direct responsibility for the deep failures exposed by the comptroller, which join the errors made during the war and revealed by the Winograd Commission ,"the movement stated.
MK Amy Ayalon (Labor), who headed the sub-committee in charge of looking into the government's handling of the home front during the war, slammed the way in which the various government authorities applied the lessons of war.
"Our report may not have been so blunt, but its essence was the same – the decision-making process was lacking to begin with… the government was completely unaware of the war's realities."
Chairman of the Likud faction MK Gideon Sa'ar said the government's failure was common knowledge, adding that "the worst thing is that nothing has been done over the past year to rectify the situation …thegovernment is simply unable to learn any lessons."
"The prime minister and his government have failed miserably," said MK Arieh Eldad (National Union). "Olmert is nothing more than an accident-ridden driver on Israel's road in history. The sooner we revoke his license the sooner we will be on our way to recovery."
Former MK Yossi Sarid, who headed a committee nominated by various social organizations to investigate the government treatment of the home front during the war, called Olmert "an impertinent brat that insists on damaging things further instead of accepting responsibility and stepping down."
The Legal Forum for the Land of Israel called Prime Minister Olmert's reaction to the report "hazardous to the government" adding that he was "slamming the comptroller's motives in order to distract the public from the report itself."
Aviram Zino and Attila Somfalvi contributed to this report