It's been a long time since I've felt so out of place. I stood in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square on Thursday evening listening to the painful words of Moshe Muskal, whose son Rafanel was killed in the Second Lebanon War. He spoke passionately about the failures of the war and called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign immediately. Around me stood people wearing yarmulkas, settlers and Likudniks, their eyes shining, chanting "Olmert go home."

They hadn't come to throw out the prime minister who failed in Lebanon. They came to take revenge on the man who was behind the Gaza disengagement plan, who supported former prime minister Ariel Sharon, who masterminded the convergence plan that has since died yet still talks about a Palestinian state.

They are still fighting for Pithat Rafiah and Homesh. They want to teach him and us a lesson: that the hand of anyone who dares raise a hand against the settlers will be lopped off.

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Uzi Dayan, who hopes to get the highest political dividend from the demonstration, waxed poetic over the new alliance forged in the square between right and left, religious and secular, supporters and opposers of the disengagement, Yossi Beilin and Effi Eitam. But there was no such alliance. There couldn't be. There was another, rather strange alliance, the kind that exists between a horse and its rider - and the left was the horse.

The rightists came to the demonstration not because they opposed the war. They came because they were enthusiastic about it. We have not forgotten Benjamin Netanyahu's cries of encouragement to Olmert in the Knesset, urging him to annihilate, destroy and exterminate Hezbollah and not to stop until complete victory was achieved.

The right wing came to the square only because it was disappointed with the way the war was carried out. It wanted a more successful, destructive war, that would wipe out the other side. It came to the square because it wants to crown Netanyahu already, alongside the National Union and the National Religious Party.

The word "peace" was not mentioned by most of the speakers, and when Meir Shalev dared to say that the IDF wasn't prepared for the war because it was "busy with roadblocks and arrests and guarding illegal outposts in the territories," the entire square roared with boos and whistles of protest.

I asked a Likudnik there: If the prime minister who failed in the war had been a proper right-winger, would you have cooperated with the left to throw him out? He looked at me with a little smile and said: "Not a chance. We're not idiots."

So what were people who believe in a peace process that involves the evacuation of territories doing in the square? What were people who believe it was possible to negotiate with Lebanon during the six years since Israel's withdrawal and to reach an agreement that includes Syria doing in the square?

Those who believe that we rush recklessly into war but deliberate a thousand times, searching our souls and spending hundreds of hours debating the other side's intentions if it dares announce it wants peace - what were they doing there?

The Winograd Committee, which brought the 150,000 people to the square, did not recommend the prime minister's dismissal in its interim report. It did say the democratic process must take its course and tellingly uses the word "fail" 160 times.

This is dangerous because it tells every future prime minister: Don't take a risk. Play it safe. Don't make waves. Because if you decide to do something dangerous and significant - like going to war or starting a peace process - you will be hurt. The inquiry committee that would be appointed afterward will find you guilty and then you will be thrown out.

Therefore, it's not worth taking risky decisions, whether on war or peace. Play it safe. Reject everything and remain in power undisturbed, like Yitzhak Shamir. Those who follow you will have to clean up the mess you leave them.

Not too long ago, when Hezbollah shelled the North and even killed soldiers, Sharon said he preferred the "peace for the Galilee's bed and breakfasts" to teaching Hezbollah a lesson. And no inquiry committee was set up.

Therefore, we need a leader who takes risks, who is capable of making unpopular decisions. I would have felt much better in the square if instead of the demonstration to throw Olmert out there had been a demonstration to renew the peace process, to resume the convergence plan, to negotiate with Syria to prevent the next war.