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Ehud Barak

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Ehud Barak
אֵהוּד בָּרָק
10th Prime Minister of Israel
In office
6 July 1999 – 7 March 2001
Preceded byBenjamin Netanyahu
Succeeded byAriel Sharon
Personal details
Born (1942-02-12) February 12, 1942 (age 82)
Mishmar HaSharon,
Mandate Palestine
Political partyLabor Party

Ehud Barak (Template:Lang-he, born Ehud Brog on 12 February 1942) is an Israeli politician, former Prime Minister, and current Minister of Defense, deputy prime minister and leader of Israel's Labor Party.

Barak served as the 10th Prime Minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001. After losing the 2001 election, Barak embarked on a business career. On 12 June 2007 he completed a political comeback by winning the Labor Party leadership election. He was appointed as Minister of Defense, replacing outgoing party leader Amir Peretz.

Prior to his political career he served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces. Following a highly decorated career he was appointed the 14th Ramatkal (Head of General Staff) of the IDF.

Biography

Barak was born on 12 February 1942 in kibbutz Mishmar HaSharon in Mandate Palestine. He is the eldest of four sons of Esther (née Godin) and Israel Brog. Ehud hebraized his family name from "Brog" to "Barak" in 1959, when he began his military service.

It was during his military service that he met his future wife, Naava. They had three daughters together. Ehud and Naava divorced in August 2003. On 30 July 2007 Ehud married Nili Priel in a small ceremony at his private residence.

Education

Barak earned his bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1968, and his master's degree in engineering-economic systems in 1978 from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

Military service

Ehud Brog joined the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1959. At that time he decided to change his name to "Barak", which means "lightning" or "shine" in Hebrew. He served in the IDF for 35 years, rising to the position of Chief of the General Staff and the rank of Rav Aluf, 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 572 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 and a decline in international terrorism for over 20 years [citation needed]. It has been alluded that Barak also masterminded the Tunis Raid on April 16, 1988, in which PLO leader Abu Jihad was assassinated.

Later he served as head of Aman, the Military Intelligence Directorate (1983-1985), head of Central Command (1986 - 1987) and Deputy Chief of the General Staff (1987-1991). He served Chief of the General Staff between April 1 1991 and January 1 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 HaRamatcal) for courage and operational excellence. These five decorations make him the most decorated soldier in Israeli history (jointly with Nechemya Cohen). In addition he was awarded in 1993 the Legion of Merit (Commander) by the United States[1]

Barak is also an expert in krav maga, the official martial art of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Barak at the Pentagon in 1999

Political career

As a politician, Barak served as Minister of the Interior (1995) and then as Minister of Foreign Affairs (1995-1996). He was elected to the Knesset in 1996, where he served as a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. In 1996 Barak became the leader of the Labor Party.

Ehud Barak was elected Prime Minister of Israel on 17 May 1999. When forming his coalition, Barak sparked controversy by deciding to form a coalition with the haredi party Shas who had received 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.

Arab-Israeli Conflict

In 1999 Barak gave a campaign promise to end Israel's 22-year long occupation of Southern Lebanon within a year. On May 24th, 2000 Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon. On October the 7th, 2000, three Israeli soldiers were captured by Hezbollah and then subsequently killed. The bodies of these soldiers were eventually exchanged for Lebanese captives in 2004. Barak inaugurated peace negotiations with the PLO, which ultimately proved fruitless. Barak also took part in the Camp David 2000 Summit which was meant to finally resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but failed. Barak, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, and US president Bill Clinton placed the blame on Yasser Arafat. Barak claimed he exposed "Arafat's true intentions"[citation needed]. Following the failure at Camp David, the Palestinian al-Aqsa Intifada (also known as the Second Intifada) erupted. 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.

Domestic Issues

Barak was in power during the appointment of the Tal committee which dealt with the controversial issue of haredi Jews' exemption from military service. Riots in October 2000 led to the killing of 12 Israeli-Arabs and 1 Palestinian by Israel Police and one Israeli-Jewish civilian by Israeli Arabs. In 1999–2000, Israel experienced high growth rates (GDP) relative to the economy’s past performance and by international standards.

Post-Prime ministerial career

Business career

After losing the 2001 elections to Ariel Sharon's Likud party by a landslide, Barak left Israel to work as a senior advisor with U.S.-based Electronic Data Systems. He also partnered with a private equity company focused on "security-related" work.

In 2005, 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 established a company "Ehud Barak Limited" which is thought to have made over NIS 30 million.[2]

Public speaking

Barak went on a public speaking tour of American colleges, expressing his view on the Middle East. During this tour in 2006, he said that “[Iraq] gradually deteriorates to civil war [and] the US presence is more and more a part of the problem and not the solution."[3]

Party leader, return to politics

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.

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.

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.[4] In early March of 2007, a poll of Labor Party primary voters put Barak ahead of all other opponents, including current leader Amir Peretz.[5] 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.[6]

As a result, Barak faced a runoff against the second-place finisher, Ami Ayalon, on June 12 2007, which he won by a narrow margin.[7]

As party leader, Barak would automatically be the Labor Party's candidate for Prime Minister in the next Israeli parliamentary election. This is currently planned for early 2009, since Tzipi Livni, the current Acting Prime Minister, has declared that she is unable to form a viable governing coalition.

Back in Government

After winning back the leadership of the Labor party, Barak was sworn in as Minister of Defense on June 18, 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]

See also

References

Wikiquote has quotations related to Ehud Barak.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ehud Barak.
  1. ^ An image of Barak receiving the award on January 14 1993 in The Pentagon. Note that according to IDF regulations foreign medals are not worn on the uniform.
  2. ^ Ehud Barak Ltd Haaretz
  3. ^ Ehud Barak’s Speech at IU from CampusJ
  4. ^ Former Israeli PM Barak in New Leadership Bid Reuters, 7 January 2007
  5. ^ "Poll: Barak, Ayalon lead Peretz in the Labor leadership primaries" Haaretz, 3 March 2007)
  6. ^ "Peretz loses Israeli party vote". BBC News. Retrieved 2007-05-30.
  7. ^ "Barak wins Labor Party primary election: party officials" International Herald Tribune, 12 June 2007
  8. ^ Dargis, Manohla (2005-12-23). "An Action Film About the Need to Talk". The New York Times. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • Bregman, Ahron Elusive Peace: How the Holy Land Defeated America.
  • Clinton, Bill (2005). My Life. Vintage. ISBN 1-4000-3003-X.
  • Dromi, Uri (Nov. 5, 2005). "Still craving peace 10 years after Rabin". New Straits Times, p. 20.


Political offices
Preceded by Leader of the Labor Party
1999–2001 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Leader of the Labor Party
2007– 		Succeeded by
incumbent


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