Former defense minister says Israel would have received more in military aid, if not for Netanyahu’s attempts to meddle in American affairs
Former prime minister Ehud Barak tore into Benjamin Netanyahu and his current Israeli government during a speech at an event for the left-wing Darkenu organization on Wednesday evening, painting an image of a prime minister whose inept governance has cost Israel dear.
Barak, who also served as Netanyahu’s defense minister from 2009 to 2013, accused the premier of bungling the negotiations with the United States over the defensive aid package, known as the memorandum of understanding.
He also accused Netanyahu of “directing a discourse of hatred, silencing, cronyism, intimidation, division, internecine hatred and xenophobia.”
This was Barak’s second major condemnation of the prime minister. In June, the former prime minister decried what he said was Israel’s “budding fascism,” saying the country was on track to becoming “an apartheid state.”
According to Barak’s calculations, Netanyahu’s “failings” in the negotiations of the US aid package means Israel stands to receive hundreds of millions of dollars less than it would have otherwise been given by its key ally.
“When the American military aid package is signed for the next decade, the full extent of the damage from Netanyahu’s gamble with our relations with the White House will become clear,” the bearded Barak told the conference in Rishon Lezion, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
“Instead of the $4.5 billion that was expected and feasible a year ago, immediately after the signing of the [Iran nuclear] deal in Vienna, Israel will get $3.8 billion and that will be subject to the demand that we not request additions from Congress,” he said.
According to the former defense minister, that $700 million loss will result in “essentially projects being stopped or canceled and thousands of layoffs in the defense industries.”
In response to Barak’s comments, the Likud party said the former prime minister would be the “last person who can speak” about the defensive aid package, taking aim at the abrupt withdrawal of the army from southern Lebanon during his stint as leader of the country.
“While the prime minister is about to bring in an unprecedented aid package worth close to $40 billion, we’re still waiting for the $1 billion in defense aid that Barak promised we’d get during his hasty pull-out from Lebanon,” the party said, referring to a claim made by the then-prime minister ahead of the IDF’s withdrawal in May 2000.
According to Barak, the cause of the breakdown between Jerusalem and Washington was Netanyahu’s poor relationship with US President Barack Obama, the result of the prime minister “butting into the inter-party conflict there.”
As a recent example, Barak cited the hastily retracted comments by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, who compared last year’s Iran nuclear deal to the 1938 Munich Agreement signed by then-British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler, which preceded World War II.
Netanyahu quickly distanced himself from Liberman’s comment, saying he was not informed of his defense minister’s intention ahead of time.
Barak all but called Netanyahu a liar, saying: “No one in the world believes that insult was lobbed at [US President Barack] Obama without Netanyahu knowing. Due to the fact that in no normal government could such a thing happen without its leader knowing and also because the text sounds exactly like Netanyahu’s own statements.”
The fallout of the Jerusalem-Washington feud had other effects, which because of “the sensitivity of the issues” Barak would not detail.
“But anyway I will repeat: This isn’t how you build a wall. This isn’t how you bolster national security,” Barak said.
“Among our best friends, the government of Israel appears to not know what it wants, or the opposite, that it does want something — the creeping annexation of the West Bank — that will encourage the rise in international ostracism and therefore it tries to pull wool over the eyes of world leaders, thinking this won’t have any cost,” he said.
A culture of fear
The former Labor Party leader, once seen as an heir to Yitzhak Rabin, also took Netanyahu to task over an indifference to what he described as a culture of fear that had taken root in the country.
“Israel is surrounded by real, serious and constantly developing threats. There’s no belittling even the smallest of them. But you cannot forget that despite [those threats], the State of Israel is militarily the strongest country for 1,500 km (930 miles),” he said, presumably referring to an area that reaches as far as Russia.
“Fear is a bad adviser,” he added.
According to Barak, that fear has permeated the government, displaying itself in the passage of recent laws and actions, including the so-called NGO bill, a law that allows Knesset members to suspend their peers, and Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev’s new grip on cultural institutions.
As a recent example, Barak cited the hastily retracted comments by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, who compared last year’s Iran nuclear deal to the 1938 Munich Agreement signed by then-British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler, which preceded World War II.
Netanyahu quickly distanced himself from Liberman’s comment, saying he was not informed of his defense minister’s intention ahead of time.
Barak all but called Netanyahu a liar, saying: “No one in the world believes that insult was lobbed at [US President Barack] Obama without Netanyahu knowing. Due to the fact that in no normal government could such a thing happen without its leader knowing and also because the text sounds exactly like Netanyahu’s own statements.”
The fallout of the Jerusalem-Washington feud had other effects, which because of “the sensitivity of the issues” Barak would not detail.
“But anyway I will repeat: This isn’t how you build a wall. This isn’t how you bolster national security,” Barak said.
“Among our best friends, the government of Israel appears to not know what it wants, or the opposite, that it does want something — the creeping annexation of the West Bank — that will encourage the rise in international ostracism and therefore it tries to pull wool over the eyes of world leaders, thinking this won’t have any cost,” he said.
A culture of fear
The former Labor Party leader, once seen as an heir to Yitzhak Rabin, also took Netanyahu to task over an indifference to what he described as a culture of fear that had taken root in the country.
“Israel is surrounded by real, serious and constantly developing threats. There’s no belittling even the smallest of them. But you cannot forget that despite [those threats], the State of Israel is militarily the strongest country for 1,500 km (930 miles),” he said, presumably referring to an area that reaches as far as Russia.
“Fear is a bad adviser,” he added.
According to Barak, that fear has permeated the government, displaying itself in the passage of recent laws and actions, including the so-called NGO bill, a law that allows Knesset members to suspend their peers, and Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev’s new grip on cultural institutions.
Barak quoted Likud’s Minister for Social Equality Gila Gamliel, who accused Regev of making comments that “border on fascism.”
Some of the former prime minister’s harshest criticism, however, was levied against Israeli rapper Yoav Eliasi, known almost exclusively by his nickname The Shadow, who joined the Likud party earlier this month.
The Shadow, who is closely connected with young far-right activists, quickly drew criticism from long-time Likud member Benny Begin, the son of former Likud prime minister Menachem Begin.
In response, The Shadow made an inaccurate remark about Begin’s daughter, which he intended as an insult.
“While [Begin] and his family have sewage heaped upon them, who is silent? The prime minister,” Barak said.
“And so I ask, how weak is the prime minister? Who is he afraid of? Certainly not Benny Begin, a role model in the Likud,” he said.
Barak, repeating a similar statement from his equally incendiary June speech, called on the Israeli people to rise up and seize back control of the country.
“We don’t exist to serve the government. The government exists to serve us,” he said. “It needs to give accountability to us. Not us to it. As long as it increasingly appears to serve itself, or some dangerous and covert agenda, or — heaven forbidden — the caprices of the person leading it, its sentence is to be removed from the country.”
As reported by The Times of Israel