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Like Nixon, But Less of a Crook

Today on Tablet

by
Marc Tracy
January 18, 2011

Yesterday’s surprise news that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak bolted the historic Labor Party while staying in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government means it’s a good time to learn more about the former prime minister. If you know him just from American reports, you think of him as a highly successful soldier (one of the three most decorated in IDF history) turned ultra-competent administrator, Israeli diplomat-in-chief, and close professional and even personal acquaintance of Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates.

What you may not know, and what top Haaretz reporters Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff explain today in Tablet Magazine, is that, in addition to the above distinctions, Barak is “Israel’s most widely loathed public figure,” broadly viewed as aloof, corrupt, and partly responsible for numerous Israeli errors over the past decade or two, including the failure to make peace at Camp David and the Second Intifada.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.