Ehud Olmert, the brash former prime minister who was on the brink of a peace deal with the Palestinians when he was forced from office on corruption charges, on Tuesday became the most prominent former Israeli leader to be sentenced to prison, with a judge giving him six years for taking bribes while likening him to a traitor.

The stiff sentence stunned the political and legal establishment in a country where prosecutors’ anticorruption crusades have been condemned as overzealous and inefficient. In a lengthy indictment against Israel’s top political and financial echelon, Judge David Rozen of Tel Aviv District Court made clear that no leader would escape the law, declaring of public corruption, “The cancer must be uprooted.”

Mr. Olmert, 68, who is known equally for his expensive appetites and warm generosity even to political opponents, promised to appeal to the Supreme Court. Before the 9 a.m. sentencing, he issued a statement calling Tuesday “a sad day, on which a severe and unjust verdict is to be handed down to an innocent man.”

It was a striking denouement for a man who up until his March conviction had been openly planning a political comeback. Once a right-wing stalwart, Mr. Olmert helped create the centrist Kadima Party in 2005, and was prepared to yield nearly all of the West Bank to the Palestinians before he resigned in 2009. He had lately fashioned himself as a savior of Israel’s waning left, eviscerating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in speeches abroad and imagining that he alone could unite a fragmented field to unseat him.

“He combines everything, power and intelligence. He really was untouchable,” said Anshel Pfeffer, a columnist at the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz who has covered Mr. Olmert — and clashed with him — for years. “He’s very talented, very charming, and also very corrupted. He could have been Israel’s best prime minister. Now he’ll be remembered as Israel’s worst.”

The two bribery counts dated to Mr. Olmert’s time as mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003, and concerned the construction of a hulking and hated apartment complex called Holyland, which looms over the city’s southern landscape like, as one analyst wrote Tuesday, “a row of rotten teeth.” Nine other former government officials and business moguls were convicted alongside him, and on Tuesday seven of them received prison sentences of three to seven years, set to start Sept. 1.

“It’s proof that Israel does have an ambitious, independent, courageous judiciary, and this is very important for any democracy,” said Gad Barzilai, dean of the law faculty at the University of Haifa. “For the Israeli politicians, it’s a red light. The court is saying, ‘Listen guys, we know that you have temptations to do criminal acts, we are going to punish you, we are not going to be intimidated.’ ”

Corruption has become an increasing public concern in Israel as the state has matured, echoing protest cries in many parts of the world where citizens are increasingly demanding a level playing field and rule of law. Three former ministers were sent to prison for taking bribes or embezzling funds, and a former president is serving time for rape as well as obstruction of justice. But prosecutors failed to press charges after police investigations into Mr. Netanyahu and two other prime ministers, fueling frustrations that Israel’s most powerful were insulated.

Mr. Olmert, whose supporters suspect that forces infuriated by his political transformation pressed the prosecution against him, beat back election-financing fraud charges in 1998 and escaped jail with a minor breach of trust conviction in 2012 in a separate matter. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s current and former foreign minister, was acquitted in November of charges that dogged him for a decade, dashing public confidence in the campaign against corruption.

“Many parts of Israeli society were thinking that the police and prosecution were running after politicians, persecuting them without enough basis, and that the whole war against corruption is not really justified,” said Mordechai Kremnitzer, vice president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute. “This is now sending a signal in the opposite direction. It’s an important message that the enforcement of law in Israel is not biased in favor of important people.”

Mr. Olmert was an accidental prime minister, inheriting the top job in 2006 when his patron, Ariel Sharon, was felled by a stroke. He oversaw the 2006 war in Lebanon that many see as a stain on the Israeli military, a brutal 2008-9 campaign in the Gaza Strip, and a secret 2007 attack on a nuclear reactor in Syria.

A lawyer with prominent immigrant parents, he was first elected to Parliament at 28, and developed a large cadre of loyalists with an endless flow of favors to journalists, police officers, financiers and sports fans. Not only did Mr. Olmert never forget a name, he never failed to recall a favorite hobby or personal plight.

He also kept a vast collection of expensive fountain pens and had a hundreds-of-dollars-a-day cigar habit. He flew frequently to New York, and could often be found in the best seats at elite European soccer matches.

Lior Chorev, a former adviser, recalled that Mr. Olmert tirelessly raised money when the leader of the opposition to his Jerusalem mayoralty needed a heart transplant and, as health minister from the Likud Party, scoured the world for the finest brain surgeons to help a colleague from the Labor Party.

“At times like this you have to look not only at what he was accused of but the things he has done that should be considered,” said Mr. Chorev. “I really hope that his appeal to the Supreme Court will at least lower the burden of punishment.”

Professor Barzilai said there are two legal issues vulnerable on appeal. The first is that the main prosecution witness, Shmuel Dechner, died before Mr. Olmert’s lawyers had completed their cross-examination. The second is whether there is enough evidence that Mr. Olmert knew about the bribes — about $150,000 that Judge Rozen found Mr. Dechner had funneled to Mr. Olmert’s brother in a series of postdated checks.

“I never asked for and never received a bribe, neither directly nor indirectly, for myself, my associates, or my family,” the former prime minister said in a pre-sentencing hearing last month.

But Judge Rozen said Tuesday “it does not matter if it went to his brother or his pocket.”

Judges in Israel are appointed by committees where legal professionals outnumber politicians. Three years ago, Mr. Rozen — who has been on the bench for two decades — sentenced a senior tax official to six years for bribery, and on Tuesday some lawyers took issue with his harsh language and extensive denunciation toward those convicted in the Holyland case.

“The taker of bribes disgusts us, with his power to make the institutions of the state hateful to the public,” Judge Rozen said during a hearing that stretched over an hour. “The taker of bribes smashes the foundation stone of his work and betrays the trust given him.”

Israeli politicians from across the spectrum echoed Mr. Olmert in calling Tuesday “a sad day,” but most added that it was an important one for ensuring equality before the law. David Landau, author of “Arik,” a biography of Mr. Sharon published in January, noted that “you don’t hear, at least publicly, any celebrating from his many political rivals.”

“The entire political community, I think, is gulping at this sentence,” Mr. Landau said. “What you hear out there is that gulp, and really, the sense is clear that politicians are going to have to be very, very careful in the future, because this sentence is a precedent.”

Myra Noveck contributed reporting.

Source: NYTimes