Campaign to Lead Israel Pits Soldier vs. Survivor

The letter home, sent 36 years ago, is written in Ehud Barak’s very organized, methodical script. He addresses a brother, but he might as well be talking to himself.

“Approach life when you are prepared for it emotionally,” Barak writes. “Everything will wait for you. You belong to the type of people who will get what they wish and will do it in the best possible manner. Dare to swim against the tide. . . . Never compromise. . . . Keep to the same path, climbing up the mountain, with all its dangers.”

It is this determination and calculated ambition that have helped take Barak, a legendary soldier-turned-politician, to within striking distance of becoming the next prime minister of Israel.

The 57-year-old head of the opposition center-left Labor Party has taken a commanding lead in polls in the final days before Monday’s national elections. His principal rival, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the center-right Likud Party, is trying to mobilize his traditional religious and new-immigrant supporters to hold on to power.

Barak, the brainy son of Zionist pioneers who was raised on a kibbutz and studied at Stanford, appears to smell victory. At his latest campaign stops, he exudes fresh confidence.

“In just . . . a short time,” he told a gathering of Russian immigrants this week, “we will go hand in hand to unite this country.”

A certain folklore has grown up around Ehud Barak, “Israel’s most decorated soldier,” as everyone associated with him is quick to note. The stories are well-known to most Israelis, creating a kind of mystique in contrast with his short, no-neck build and awkward public style.

In 1973, dressed as a woman and wearing a wig--and packing explosives in his purse--Barak led a hit squad on a mission to Beirut to kill members of a Palestinian group whose murderous attack on Israeli Olympic athletes the year before in Munich, Germany, claimed 11 lives. Barak and his team landed in rubber dinghies on the Lebanese shore, executed the Palestinians and escaped unharmed.

He commanded Israel’s Sayeret Matkal commando unit; ran logistics for the daring 1976 raid in Entebbe, Uganda, to free Jewish hostages; and rescued passengers from a hijacked Sabena jet after dressing as an airline mechanic--pictures from that 1972 escapade are featured prominently in campaign propaganda. He planned the 1988 assassination of Khalil Wazir (Abu Jihad), a senior aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and schemed to kill Arafat too, although that plot was shelved.

He rose to be army chief of staff, the highest military post in Israel, before retiring in 1995 to conclude a 35-year career.

His credentials as tough warrior and keen tactician earned Barak, once a political protege of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a place as head of the Labor Party just two years after joining it. And despite his record as a killer of Arabs, he sat down to peace talks alongside Rabin and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

Today Barak portrays himself as champion of the more centrist tendencies of the Labor Party.

Many of his positions do not sound very different from his more right-wing opponent, Netanyahu. He promises to be tough with Israel’s Arab enemies and to preserve Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem.

A Vow to Pursue Peace Settlement

But Barak also vows to revive the pursuit of a final peace settlement with the Palestinians, a process all but frozen under Netanyahu, and concedes the inevitability of a Palestinian state. He argues that Israel can negotiate from its position of strength.

“Israel is a nation stronger than any of its neighbors,” Barak said. “[Netanyahu’s] government believes that only after security becomes a reality in the Middle East can you make peace. I say the opposite. We cannot advance toward any security until we first make peace.”

Barak also emphasizes social issues that Netanyahu would prefer to ignore: rising unemployment and growing poverty. Most of all, he promises to unshackle the state from ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects which, he argues, have been allowed under Netanyahu to squeeze the government for benefits while imposing their way of life on other Jews.

Netanyahu and his Likud Party countercharge that Barak and Labor would give away the store to the Palestinians and sacrifice the ultra-Orthodox minority to Israel’s secular majority.

Barak, according to friends and family, sees himself as heir to an Israeli political culture, part of a generation that descended from the nation’s founding fathers and whose vision of Israel is under threat. If Netanyahu is the defiant outsider--or, at least, casts himself that way--Barak is very much an insider, another of the Ashkenazi, or European, Jews mistrusted by the Sephardic Israelis who trace their roots to the Middle East.

He comes from the macho world of an Israeli army that takes pride in its unconventional daring and abundant self-confidence. Yet he also defies stereotyping. A classical pianist who can perform concertos from memory, he grew up on the kibbutz practicing his music and reading, in contrast to the more rustic, outdoorsy pursuits of most kibbutzniks.

The young Ehud was also a master at picking locks, according to his brother Avinoam Brog. With an acute curiosity for how mechanical things worked and the mind of a mathematician, Ehud counted the assembling of grandfather clocks as a hobby. Hand him a lock or a watch, Brog recalled, and he’d take it apart, put it back together and design instruments for doing both.

Ehud changed “Brog” to “Barak” in the army tradition of Hebrew-izing last names.

In the kind of scenario only possible in such a small, compact country, both Barak and Netanyahu--and their brothers--served in the same commando unit. Barak was Netanyahu’s commander during the Sabena rescue operation. Netanyahu’s much-loved brother Yonatan also served in the unit and was the only Israeli soldier killed at Entebbe.

It was another military adventure, a 1992 exercise practicing to assassinate Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, that haunts Barak. An accidental missile firing killed five soldiers, and a newspaper expose later accused Barak of failing to help the wounded. He was cleared of wrongdoing a few weeks ago.

Prideful Candidate Undergoes Make-over

Friends and foes alike say Barak’s self-confidence often veers into arrogance. He can be contemptuous of fools and bristles at criticism. Associates thought he lacked both the patience and the ability to schmooze that politicians in Israel need these days. And he certainly lacked the telegenic qualities of the glib and articulate Netanyahu.

It came as a blow to his ego, friends say, when he was encouraged to change his style if he wanted to become prime minister. Bearers of that advice were primarily a team of American consultants, led by James Carville, the Democratic image-maker who helped Bill Clinton win the presidency in 1992.

Carville and his team told Barak to streamline his message and to speak in something closer to sound bites. He would have to forgo his usual methodical habit of analyzing and reanalyzing, of presenting contingencies, and instead give simple answers. This was politics, he was told, not a raid on Entebbe.

“He entered the campaign not fully understanding, emotionally, that the appearance is what counts,” his brother said. “He is digesting that.”

With chipmunk cheeks and thin lips that all but disappear when he smiles, Barak will never be your pretty-boy type of candidate. His Hebrew is spoken with a slight lisp.

But his campaign delivery has improved. Entering auditoriums or meeting halls, he shakes the hands of as many people as his security detail will allow. He cracks jokes and looks more comfortable than he did just two months ago.

Barak had served as campaign manager in Peres’ narrow 1996 loss to Netanyahu, known universally by the nickname Bibi; he saw the many mistakes up close and was determined not to repeat them. He has applied an almost military-style discipline to the current campaign. Many of his old paratrooper buddies are volunteer shock troops.

“Politics is very strange for a man who spent 35 years in the army, where there wasn’t this kind of leaking, undermining and back-stabbing,” said Doron Cohen, formerly a soldier under Barak’s command in Sayeret Matkal. Cohen’s sister Nava is married to Barak.

“Even in bad times, when everyone was saying, ‘Barak isn’t going anywhere,’ he remained very determined,” Cohen said. “He never thought he wouldn’t beat Bibi.”