By Stan Goodenough
Jun 13, 2007
“Only I can defeat Bibi [Likud Party leader and former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu],” Ehud Barak stressed to undecided Labor Party members as they went to vote for a new chairman Tuesday.
His “promise” to defeat the man still viscerally hated by many on the left may have been just what he needed to squeeze past rival Ami Ayalon by the skin of his teeth.
According to poll results, Barak won by just 3.6 percent the party chairmanship he relinquished in shame after being obliterated in Ariel Sharon’s landslide win in 2001.
His victory spells the end of the short-lived reign of Amir Peretz, who is expected to soon lose his Defense portfolio in the Olmert coalition to Barak as well.
Barak told celebrating supporters he plans to invest “all my energy and knowledge into strengthening the defense establishment and the Israel Defense Forces, and returning to Israel the power of deterrence."
Israel’s most decorated soldier, he is considered by many to be superbly qualified to do just that.
But Israel is still reeling from the disastrous consequences of Barak’s decision as prime minister to unilaterally pull the IDF out of southern Lebanon in 2000 – a decision that led directly to the establishment of a Hizb’allah terrorist mini-state in the vacuum left behind.
Israel has already fought (and lost) one war as a result of that withdrawal, and another conflict is believed inevitable, some say as early as this summer.
Nonetheless – in what some Israelis would call unabashed chutzpah – the new Labor leader exhorted party members this week to “remember” that no one was more able than he to lead Israel in the event of a war.