Ehud Barak

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Ehud Barak, 2012 Ehud Barak Signature.svg

Ehud Barak ( Hebrew אהוד ברק; Born on February 12, 1942 in Kibbutz Mishmar Hasharon as Ehud Brog ) is an Israeli politician and former general . From 1999 to 2001 he was Prime Minister of the State of Israel.

From 1997 to 2001 and from 2007 to 2011 Barak chaired the labor party Avoda , then left his party and founded Ha'Atzma'ut (independence) with four other group colleagues . From 1995 to 1996 Barak was Foreign Minister under Shimon Peres and from 2007 to 2013 Defense Minister under Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu . From 1991 to 1995 he was Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces .

Barak studied mathematics and physics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with a bachelor's degree in 1976 and received a master's degree in industrial engineering from Stanford University in 1978 .

Military career

Barak joined the Israel Defense Forces in 1959 and served there for 35 years. He was a soldier and commander in the elite Sajeret Matkal unit , served as a commander of a reconnaissance unit in the Six Day War and in the 1973 Yom Kippur War he commanded a tank battalion on the Sinai and at the front on the Suez Canal , north of the Great Bitter Lake . During this time he rose to major general (1982, also head of the planning department of the Israeli army), head of the central command of the Israeli army (1986) and chief of staff (deputy chief of staff from 1987, chief of staff from 1991, at the same time promotion to lieutenant general) and thus to the highest rank in the Israeli army. In 1982 he was deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon. He was in charge of preparation in the military intelligence service during Operation Entebbe and became head of the Israeli military intelligence service in 1983. Barak was honored with the Order of Extraordinary Service and four other awards. He is considered to be the most highly decorated soldier in Israel.

In 1972 Barak became the commander of the Mossad special unit "Caesarea" , which had been formed by order of the Israeli security cabinet to carry out retaliatory actions for the fatal hostage-taking in Munich . In this role, he coordinated numerous assassinations from Israel, in which two of the three surviving assassins from Munich and numerous - in some cases supposed - backers were killed. In the course of the publicly discussed retaliatory measures under the non-Mossad title “Wrath of God” or “Operation Bayonet”, Barak was also responsible for the Lillehammer affair . In Lillehammer, due to a false identification, a Mossad detachment killed the innocent and innocent Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchiki in an attempt to assassinate the leader of Black September Ali Hassan Salameh . After Ephraim Kahana, however, he was not in the Mossad, but still in the military when he carried out the retaliatory measures attributed to Caesarea. He led some of the most dangerous operations within the Sajeret Matkal elite unit , such as Operation Spring of Youth (Beirut 1973), and the killing of Chalil al-Wazir, aka Abu Jihad, in Tunis in 1988, the PLO deputy head and thus a representative of Arafat . He was responsible for the reorganization of the Israeli army in Gaza and Jericho after the Gaza-Jericho Agreement with the Palestinians in 1994, negotiated with Syria in the same year and played an important role in the 1994 peace agreement with Jordan.

politics

After his military career, Barak was appointed to the cabinet by Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 , where he served as interior minister and was soon traded as a possible successor to the prime minister. After the assassination of Rabin, Barak became Foreign Minister under the new Prime Minister Shimon Peres (1995-1996). In 1996 he was elected to the Knesset , where he worked on the Foreign and Defense Policy Committee. After Shimon Peres' defeat in the elections, Barak became head of the Labor Party in 1997 and thus leader of the opposition against the government of Benjamin Netanyahu .

Barak (l.) With Jassir Arafat (r.) And Bill Clinton , Camp David , summer 2000

In the elections on May 17, 1999, Barak was elected Israeli Prime Minister in a direct election with 56.08% of the votes cast against Netanyahu. He tried to restart the peace process with the Palestinians , which had stalled. However, there was no breakthrough due to the distrust on both sides. The negotiations at Camp David with Yasser Arafat failed. During his tenure, the Israeli army withdrew from southern Lebanon, which it had occupied since the Lebanon campaign in 1982. When the then opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount on September 28, 2000 and the second Intifada or Al-Aqsa Intifada broke out, Barak's policy had failed and had little support from the population. In the prematurely scheduled premier election on February 6, 2001, Barak was defeated by Likud candidate Ariel Sharon.

Barak is today u. a. Partner of the investment company SCP Private Investment Partners (Pennsylvania, USA ).

After the Labor Party's defeat in the Knesset elections in 2003 and 2006, Barak reapplied to chair the Labor Party Avoda . On May 29, 2007, Barak won the first round to elect a new party leader with 35.6 percent of the vote. In the second ballot on June 12, 2007 between Ehud Barak and Ami Ajalon , the former head of the domestic secret service Schin Bet , the decision was 51.3% in favor of Barak.

On June 18, 2007, he was elected by the Knesset to succeed Amir Peretz as Israel's new defense minister.

Under Barak's leadership, the Labor Party suffered heavy losses in the early Knesset elections in 2009 and was only the fourth strongest party in parliament with just under 10 percent of the vote and 13 seats. Despite opposition from within the party, Barak pushed for participation in a ruling coalition under Benjamin Netanyahu, which, along with Avoda, included the Likud party, the right-wing Jisra'el Beitenu and the religious Shas party . The accusation of his internal party opponents that the Labor Party is the left fig leaf of a right-wing coalition and that Barak is only concerned with his post as defense minister, Barak countered by pointing to the party's responsibility towards the State of Israel.

After persistent criticism of his party's participation in the government, Barak announced his resignation from the Labor Party on January 17, 2011 and founded a centrist - Zionist party called Atzma'ut (German: independence ). He was followed by four of the Labor Party's twelve Knesset MPs. The new faction continued to belong to the Benjamin Netanyahu government. In order to bypass bureaucratic hurdles in founding the new party, Barak agreed in May 2011 with Avigdor Kahalani , the founder and chairman of the HaDerech HaSchlischit party (1996–1999), to take over this party. After leaving the Knesset in 1999, she had de facto stopped her political work, but formally continued to exist. The independence party was officially founded in May 2011 just a few days after the 63rd Israeli Independence Day, Yom HaAtzma'ut  .

On November 26, 2012, Barak announced that he would end his political career and would no longer run for a seat in the Knesset in January 2013.

However, on June 26, 2019, Barak announced his return to politics and the formation of a new party called Democratic Israel . The party will run in the Knesset election in September 2019 . At the end of July, the party joined forces with Meretz to form the Democratic Union alliance. Ehud Barak, although he is one of the leading figures in the alliance, only appears in tenth place on the joint electoral list at his own request.

family

Ehud Barak was born to Polish immigrants. In August 2003 he was divorced from his wife Nava. They have three daughters together. In 2007 he married Nili Priel.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Israel's ex-prime minister leaves Labor Party in dispute Welt online, January 17, 2011, accessed on May 12, 2012
  2. ↑ a b c d Article Barak in Kahana, Historical Dictionary of Israeli Intelligence, Scarecrow Press 2006
  3. ^ John J. McGrath: Sinai 1973: Israeli Maneuver Organization . In the S. (Ed): An army at war. Change in the midst of conflict . Combat Studies Institute Press, Fort Leavenworth 2005, pp. 73-92, here pp. 80-81.
  4. ↑ Peter Maxwill: The two-decade campaign of revenge. In: Der Spiegel. July 9, 2013, accessed September 1, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Israel admits killing of Arafat vice-Abu Jihad Spiegel online, November 1, 2012, accessed on November 29, 2012
  6. ^ ORF of June 13, 2007: Israel: Barak elected head of the Labor Party
  7. ↑ FAZ.NET of March 25, 2009: Netanyahu's right-wing coalition is in place
  8. ↑ http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/ehud-barak-quits-labor-to-form-centrist-zionist-and-democratic-party-1.337493
  9. ↑ Yuval Karni: Barak readies to launch Independence Party Ynetnews, September 5, 2011, accessed May 12, 2012
  10. ^ Jacob Magid: Declaring Netanyahu's time is up, Ehud Barak announces formation of new party. Retrieved June 27, 2019 (American English).
  11. ↑ Raoul Wootliff, TOI staff: Meretz, former PM Barak, Labor defector Shaffir announce joint Knesset run. Retrieved July 25, 2019 (American English).

Web links

Wikiquote: Ehud Barak  - Quotes
Commons : Ehud Barak  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
predecessor Office successor
Dan Schomron Chief of Staff of Tzahal
1991–1995 		Amnon Lipkin-Shahak
personal data
SURNAME Barak, Ehud
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli general, politician and prime minister
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Mischmar Hasharon