The pundits are shattered: Ehud Barak confounded them again. Only a few minutes before his press conference on Monday, they were confidently predicting on live television that he would be running with Tzipi Livni, that he would unite the center-left, that he would resign from his post immediately – and then he dropped the bombshell: He would be retiring in two months from political life.

But even this bombshell really isn’t one. In Israel, every retirement merely heralds the next big comeback. In the revolving door of Israeli politics, people go in and out and back in again, as if there were no replacement for politicians such as Ehud Olmert, Tzachi Hanegbi and Aryeh Deri. And when they come, marvelous people – from Barak to Livni, through Ehud and back - they do the same things and make the same fateful mistakes; they’ve learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The only one who came back to make amends and try to effect change was Moshe Dayan, whom Barak aspires to resemble. Barak, of course, did not reject the possibility of returning as well.

We are ostensibly looking at an elderly man, who has achieved much, who is retiring at a relatively high point in his career, as Mr. Security after another “successful” Gaza operation, and who wins our sympathy when he says he wants to start “enjoying life” and spend more time with his family. But in reality, Ehud Barak fled yet again – from having to attend small election-campaign parlor meetings, about which he complained twice during the press conference – abandoning his flock, including Agriculture Minister Orit Noked, to their fate.

Ever since his commando days, when he stalked around Beirut wearing women’s clothes and climbed onto the wing of the hijacked Sabena plane wearing a technician’s uniform, Barak has been the champion of fraud, cunning and deceit – the big star of the Israeli costume party. But Barak, of the elite reconnaissance unit, didn’t only succeed in tricking the enemy; he also tricked us, all of us, and never hid his satisfaction in doing so. Take note of the sly smirk on his face that could even be seen during the press conference.



Even I was ensnared. In March 1998 I asked him in a television interview what would happen if he had been born a Palestinian. The then-candidate for prime minister answered with directness and honesty that at the time impressed me: “If I were a Palestinian of the right age, I would have at some stage joined one of the resistance organizations,” he said. The remarks caused no small stir in Israel.

After he was elected prime minister despite this and declared his “dawn of a new day,” he went to Shepherdstown to make peace with Syria and to Camp David to make peace with the Palestinians.

Peace? Well, almost. Only a few meters and a pinch of courage stood between him and peace with Syria. As for Camp David, he later admitted after the fact that he’d actually gone to expose the true face of the Palestinians – and we all ended up paying for this bluff.

Now, with his retirement, which is not his first and may not be his last, I’ve been looking over some of the things I’ve written about him over the years, and the signs of delusion and disappointment are evident: From “Only Barak” in January 2007, through “Minister of war,” in March 2008, to “More harmful than Lieberman and more dangerous than Netanyahu” in January 2011. The great hope turned out to be no less a bitter disappointment. Barak turned into a hacker, a computer worm that infiltrated the Israeli left and destroyed it from within, disseminating with incredible success the canard that there is no partner, no one to talk to, on the other side. And the left, flaccid in any case, was quashed and has not recovered to this day.

But it’s Barak, the same Barak who conducted such daring undercover operations in enemy territory in disguise, who proved the terrible weakness of this deviousness. He had everything he needed to be a world-class statesman of historic proportions –intelligence, a broad education, erudition, charisma and even cruelty, which is necessary for an Israeli statesman. He knew what needed to be done and was not short on personal courage, but his guile was his undoing.

If he had only spoken the simple truth and followed it, he could have become the most important Israeli statesman since David Ben-Gurion, which perhaps he aspired to be. If he had only pursued the straight and narrow path, he could have been at least Yitzhak Rabin. But he chose to engage in intrigues and deceptions, in the finest tradition of “the unit.” Everything had to be done crookedly and underhandedly. Even the government he set up was twisted, with Shlomo Ben-Ami as police minister and Yossi Beilin as justice minister. Barak was always the cunning fox who never became the lion he could have been.

But why am I rambling on summarizing his career and eulogizing him? In midwinter he’ll be back with us again, treading the same deceitful path – if only he’s called upon to serve.

