Ehud Barak (Hebrew:
אהוד ברק (help·info); born Ehud Brog on 12 February 1942) is an Israeli politician who served as Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001. He was leader of the Labor Party until January 2011[1] and holds the posts of Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister in Binyamin Netanyahu's government.
He is a graduate in physics, mathematics, and economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Stanford University. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces. Following a highly decorated career, he was appointed Chief of General Staff in 1991, serving until 1995.
He was born on 12 February 1942 in kibbutz Mishmar HaSharon in Israel.[2] He is the eldest of four sons of Esther (née Godin) (b. 1913) and Yisrael Mendel Brog (1910-2002).
His paternal grandparents, Frieda and Reuven Brog, were murdered in Pušalotas (Pushelat) in the northern Lithuania (then ruled by Russian Empire) in 1912, leaving his father orphaned at the age of two. Barak's maternal grandparents, Elka and Shmuel Godin, died at the Treblinka extermination camp during the Holocaust.
Ehud hebraized his family name from "Brog" to "Barak" in 1972. It was during his military service that he met his future wife, Nava (née Cohen). They had three daughters together. Barak divorced Nava in August 2003. On 30 July 2007 Barak married Nili Priel in a small ceremony in his private residence. In his spare time, Barak enjoys reading works by writers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.[3]
In 2005, he was voted the 61st-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.[4]
Barak earned his bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1968, and his master's degree in engineering-economic systems in 1978 from Stanford University, in California.
Barak joined the Israel Defense Forces (I.D.F.) in 1959. He served in the IDF for 35 years, rising to the position of Chief of the General Staff and the rank of Rav Aluf (Lieutenant-General), the highest in the Israeli military. During the Yom Kippur War, Barak commanded an improvised regiment of tanks which among other things, helped rescue paratrooper battalion 890 commanded by Yitzhak Mordechai who were suffering heavy losses in the Battle of the Chinese Farm.
During his service as a commando in the elite Sayeret Matkal, Barak led several highly acclaimed operations, such as: "Operation Isotope", the rescue mission to free the hostages onboard Sabena Flight 571 at Lod Airport in 1972; the 1973 covert mission Operation Spring of Youth in Beirut, in which he was disguised as a woman in order to assassinate members of the Palestine Liberation Organization; Barak was also a key architect of the June 1976 Operation Entebbe, another rescue mission to free the hostages of the Air France aircraft hijacked by terrorists and forced to land at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda. These highly acclaimed operations, along with Operation Bayonet led to the dismantling of Palestinian terrorist cell Black September. It has been alluded that Barak also masterminded the Tunis Raid on 16 April 1988, in which PLO leader Abu Jihad was assassinated.[5]
Later he served as head of Aman, the Military Intelligence Directorate (1983–85), head of Central Command (1986–87) and Deputy Chief of the General Staff (1987–91). He served as Chief of the General Staff between 1 April 1991 and 1 January 1995. During this period he implemented the first Oslo Accords and participated in the negotiations towards the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace.
Barak was awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service and four Chief of Staff citations (Tzalash HaRamatkal) for courage and operational excellence. These five decorations make him the most decorated soldier in Israeli history (jointly with close friend Nechemya Cohen).[6] In 1992 he was also awarded the Legion of Merit (Commander) by the United States.[7]
On 7 July 1995 Barak was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs by Yitzhak Rabin. When Shimon Peres formed a new government following Rabin's assassination in November 1995, Barak was made Minister of Foreign Affairs (1995–96). He was elected to the Knesset on the Labor Party list in 1996, and served as a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Following internal elections after Peres' defeat in the election for Prime Minister in 1996, Barak became the leader of the Labor Party.
In the 1999 Prime Ministerial election, Barak beat Binyamin Netanyahu by a wide margin. However, he sparked controversy by deciding to form a coalition with the ultra-Orthodox party Shas, who had won an unprecedented 17 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Shas grudgingly agreed to Barak's terms that they eject their leader Aryeh Deri, a convicted felon, and enact reform to "clean up" in-party corruption. Consequentially, the left wing Meretz party quit the coalition after they failed to agree on the powers to be given to a Shas deputy minister in the Ministry of Education.
Ehud Barak shaking hands with
Yassir Arafat, joined by President Clinton (1999)
In 1999 Barak gave a campaign promise to end Israel's 22-year long occupation of Southern Lebanon within a year. On 24 May 2000 Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon. On 7 October, three Israeli soldiers were killed in a border raid by Hezbollah and their bodies were subsequently captured. The bodies of these soldiers, along with the living Elhanan Tenenbaum, were eventually exchanged for Lebanese captives in 2004.
The Barak government resumed peace negotiations with the PLO, stating that “Every attempt [by the State of Israel] to keep hold of this area [the West Bank and Gaza] as one political entity leads, necessarily, to either a nondemocratic or a non-Jewish state. Because if the Palestinians vote, then it is a binational state, and if they don’t vote it is an apartheid state.”[8] As part of these negotiations, Barak took part in the Camp David 2000 Summit which was meant finally to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but failed. Barak also allowed Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami to attend the Taba Summit with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, after his government had fallen.
In August 1999, Barak appointed the Tal committee which dealt with the controversial issue of ultra-Orthodox Jews' exemption from military service. Riots in October 2000 led to the killing of twelve Israeli-Arabs and one Palestinian by Israel Police and one Jewish civilian by Israeli Arabs.
In 2001 Barak called a special election for Prime Minister. In the contest, he was defeated by Likud leader Ariel Sharon, and subsequently resigned as Labor leader and from the Knesset. He left Israel to work as a senior advisor with United States-based Electronic Data Systems. He also partnered with a private equity company focused on "security-related" work.
In 2005, Barak announced his return to Israeli politics, and ran for leadership of the Labor Party in November. However, in light of his weak poll showings, Barak dropped out of the race early and declared his support for veteran statesman Shimon Peres. Following his failed attempt to maintain leadership of the Labor party, Barak became a partner of the investment company SCP Private Equity Partners, Pennsylvania. He also established a company "Ehud Barak Limited" which is thought to have made over NIS 30 million.[9]
After Peres lost the race to Amir Peretz and left the Labor party, Barak announced he would stay at the party, despite his shaky relationship with its newly elected leader. He declared, however, that he would not run for a spot on the Labor party's Knesset list for the March 2006 elections. Barak's attempt to return to a prominent role in Israel politics seemed to have failed. However, Peretz's hold on the Labor leadership proved unexpectedly shaky as he was badly damaged by negative views of his performance as Defense Minister during the 2006 Lebanon War, which was seen as something less than a success in Israel.[10]
In January 2007 Barak launched a bid to recapture the leadership of the Labor party in a letter acknowledging "mistakes" and "inexperience" during his tenure as Prime Minister.[11] In early March 2007, a poll of Labor Party primary voters put Barak ahead of all other opponents, including Peretz.[12] In the first round of voting, on 28 May 2007, he gained 39% of the votes, more than his two closest rivals, but not enough to win the election.[13]
As a result, Barak faced a runoff against the second-place finisher, Ami Ayalon, on 12 June 2007, which he won by a narrow margin.[14]
Barak has been critical of what he sees as racist sentiments that have recently been expressed by some Israeli rabbis and rebbetzins; he views such statements as a threat to Israeli unity and that they may lead Israeli society into a "dark and dangerous place".[15]
After winning back the leadership of the Labor party, Barak was sworn in as Minister of Defense on 18 June 2007, as part of Prime Minister Olmert's cabinet reshuffle. However on 1 July 2007, Barak led a successful effort in the Labor central committee to stipulate that Labor would leave the government coalition if Olmert did not resign by September or October 2007. At that time the Winograd Commission would publish its final report on the performance of the Israel Defense Forces and its civilian leadership. The preliminary Winograd report released earlier this year laid most of the blame on Olmert for poorly planning, executing, and reviewing war strategies in the 2006 conflict against Hezbollah.[citation needed]
During December 2008 through January 2009, Barak led (as defense minister) Operation Cast Lead.
Labor won only 13 out of the 120 Knesset seats in the 2009 elections, making them the fourth largest party. Barak and other Labor officials initially stated they would not take part in the next government. However, over the objections of some in the Labor party, Barak later[when?] reached an agreement under which Labor joined the governing coalition. Barak retained his position as Defense Minister.
In January 2011, Labor Party leader Barak formed a breakaway party, Independence, which enabled him to maintain his loyal Labor's MK faction within Netanyahu's government, and prevented the departure of Labor party as a whole from Netanyahu's coalition-government. Labor previously threatened to force Barak to do so. After Barak's move, Netanyahu was able to maintain a majority of 66 MK (out of 120 in the Knesset), previously having 74 MKs within his majority coalition.
In February 2011, Barak attended a ceremony at the UN for the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. Barak told the UN General Assembly: “an independent, strong, thriving and peaceful State of Israel is the vengeance of the dead. On this day, when we remember the six million victims, let us also remember two lessons: first, ‘the Holocaust – never again.’ And second – an independent, strong, thriving and peaceful State of Israel is the vengeance of the dead.”[16]
Barak stated during an American television interview that he would "probably" strive for nuclear weapons if he were in Iran’s position, adding "I don’t delude myself that they are doing it just because of Israel".[17] This comment has been criticized and compared to Barak's comment in 1998 during a television interview when he said that if he were a Palestinian he would probably have joined one of the terror organizations.[17]
- ^ http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=203937
- ^ Biography and Video Interview of Ehud Barak at Academy of Achievement.
- ^ 'All my rivals are gone' By Gidi Weitz, Published 10:54 09.05.11
- ^ גיא בניוביץ' (20 June 1995). "הישראלי מספר 1: יצחק רבין – תרבות ובידור". Ynet. http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3083171,00.html. Retrieved 10 July 2011.
- ^ Long history of Israel's 'covert killing' BBC News
- ^ Offer Drori, גיבורי ישראל מרובי העיטורים – צדק היסטורי, 04.02.2009 (Hebrew)
- ^ An image of Barak receiving the award on 14 January 1993 in the Pentagon. Note that according to IDF regulations foreign medals are not worn on the uniform.
- ^ New York Times, 12 April 2012, "Don't Give Up on Middle East Peace," http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/dont-give-up-on-mideast-peace.html
- ^ Ehud Barak Ltd Haaretz
- ^ http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MTA3OTE5NjI0NA==
- ^ Former Israeli PM Barak in New Leadership Bid Reuters, 7 January 2007
- ^ "Poll: Barak, Ayalon lead Peretz in the Labor leadership primaries" Haaretz, 3 March 2007
- ^ "Peretz loses Israeli party vote". BBC News. 3 January 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/default.stm. Retrieved 30 May 2007.
- ^ "Barak wins Labor Party primary election: party officials" International Herald Tribune, 12 June 2007
- ^ Mualem, Mazal (29 December 2010). "Barak: Anti-Arab letters by rabbis and rabbis’ wives leading Israel into dark place". Ha'aretz. http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/barak-anti-arab-letters-by-rabbis-and-rabbis-wives-leading-israel-into-dark-place-1.334093. Retrieved 1 January 2011.
- ^ "Barak on Shoah: Strong Israel is vengeance of the dead". Jerusalem Post. http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=207716. Retrieved 10 February 2011.
- ^ a b Irish Times, 18 Nov. 2011, "Barak Criticised over Iran Comments," http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/1118/1224307767384.html
- ^ Dargis, Manohla (23 December 2005). "An Action Film About the Need to Talk". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/movies/23muni.html. Retrieved 18 January 2009.
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