When former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently announced his bid to return to power, the general reaction was “oh no!”, mixed with a little “who do you think you are?”
The reactions of his Labor Party colleagues were even less enthusiastic.
Labor MK Ephraim Sneh, who served Barak as deputy defense minister, branded Barak’s abrupt return to the race for party leadership “an arrogant, impudent, immoral act.”“Four years after he failed as prime minister and as party chairman, he presumes to just continue as if nothing had happened. In all those four years, he did nothing, either for the country, the society, or the party.”—-“We all recall the plight we were in a little over three years ago, to the crash that Ehud led us to when we all believed in him, the wreckage that he left behind when he left, and there was nothing left to rebuild,” declared Labor leadership candidate Matan Vilnai told Israel Radio Thursday. “And he just went off on his way.”Histadrut leader MK Amir Peretz has already declared that “if Barak competes, I shall compete against him under any circumstances.”
So Barak could be forgiven for suspecting that his former colleagues might be trying to put him at a disadvantage. However, show a bit of dignity please…
The Labor Party’s central committee descended into chaos on Tuesday with former prime minister Ehud Barak at one point jumping on stage and grabbing the microphone to put across his point about a vote on the date of the party’s primaries.
The committee was discussing whether or not the vote should be a secret ballot and former MK Moshe Shahal, who was adjudicating the meeting, asked the members to vote for or against a secret ballot, when Barak suddenly jumped out of his seat and on to the stage.The session began with a series of routine speeches. But as the evening wore on, Barak became impatient, fearing that an attempt to prevent a secret ballot in the vote on the primary date was being planned, even though a party court had ruled the day before that the ballot must be secret.As Shahal began explaining that there were technical difficulties in conducting the balloting, Barak suddenly jumped from his seat, grabbed the microphone from Shahal and shouted: “I call on you all not to vote until Rafi Elul and the party’s legal advisor get up and explain what exactly was decided. Anything else is an attempt to steal the party, and it will not happen in 2004. Period.”A shocked Shahal remonstrated: “What you did just now turned the Labor Central Committee into the Likud Central Committee, and I am ashamed.”
Welcome to the world of Israeli politics: never a dull moment.
“Give me the mike…i said a hip hop the hippie the hippie
to the hip hip hop, a you dont stop
the rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie
to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat
now what you hear is not a test–i’m rappin to the beat
but Peres and his friends are gonna try to cheat
see i am wonder Ehud and i like to say I’m back
to the white, the red, and the brown, the purple, yellow and black
but first i gotta bang bang the boogie to the boogie
say up jump the boogie to the bang bang boogie
let’s rock, you dont stop
rock the riddle that will make your body rock
well so far youve heard my voice but i brought two friends along
go get ’em guys..start with old Shimon”*
* sung to the tune of Rapper’s Delight by the Sugarhill Gang
