Plenty of knacks to one single petit man
Il Giornale, November 27th, 2012
Ehud Barak is neither a politician nor a career soldier, though he even served as Prime Minister as well as Chief of Staff. Ehud Barak represents all of Israel’s history, summing up the utopia of daylight work combined with night study, staunch pacifism with a handy Uzi. Such utopia is ambitiously, genially, industriously, and condescendingly embodied by the boy born to a Polish mother, Esther, who came from Europe in 1936 in the same socialist group as my father Aron; like crazy they crossed Europe on flame, in order to finally build the free and Socialist land of the Jews.
Ehud Barak, with his round face, his peculiar petit features which enabled him to disguise himself as a woman to take part in the elite special forces unit that should have killed Yasser Arafat in Lebanon, what else is he not? A scholar who holds three degrees; an expert pianist; a collectivist from kibbutz Mishmar Asharon with its poor houses and communal dining room where I met him on several occasions; a millionaire who, having worked as a prestigious international private advisor for a couple of years, succeeded in paving the way new initiatives and made a lot of money; a pacifist whose offers to Arafat would have never been matched by Rabin, including half of Jerusalem; un untamed warrior, a fearless highly decorated soldier, who took part in all most unlikely raids in Israel’s history, including Entebbe.
The 1972 photograph says it all, where he is pictured as he’s about to jump from the wing of the Sabena plane that had been hijacked; he was the leader of the elite Sayeret Matkal, with Bibi Netanyahu under his command, during the raid that rescued the hostages. Barak is friends with Obama, unlike Bibi who doesn’t socialize. He leaves as a Defense Minister after having completed the missile shield and certainly also a possible attack on Iran. He’s smart, he’s a lone wolf to the extent of being disliked by all of his party members, he’s left wing to the point that his stepping down is making the right breath a sign of relief, he’s so right wing to the point that other leaders on his own side consider him a renegade pro-Netanyahu. Oh, I think I like him no matter what, but I might be biased, because as soon as he sees me from afar he shouts chuckling “Nirenstein!” only because I so look like my father.