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Dec. 8, 2006
Hillel hosts Ehud Barak
Israel is still strong, says its former leader.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
According to its former prime minister, Israel, though it has recently
faced one of the more challenging times in its short history, has
lost none of its staying power.
If anything, said Ehud Barak, who led the country from 1999-2001,
there is "a ray of light, even with the bad news. It is the
vibrancy of our society and the resilience of our economy."
Barak told a capacity crowd gathered at Schara Tzedeck Sunday night
for a presentation organized by Hillel Vancouver that part of the
reason for Israel's remaining unbowed was, "our real secret
weapon ... the solidarity with Jews within the mishpachah [family]
all around the world."
In a wide-ranging speech, Barak reflected on ways that Israel might
best have handled this past summer's conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah,
expounded upon Middle Eastern affairs and expressed his deep fondness
for Hillel – an organization he first joined more than 30 years
ago, while a graduate student at Stanford University. It was members
of that university's Hillel House, he noted, who took care of his
wife and infant daughter when he returned to Israel to fight in
the Yom Kippur War. He encouraged members of the audience to contribute
to Hillel Vancouver's capital campaign. The organization is still
seeking donations of more than $5 million to construct new facilities
at the University of British Columbia.
Barak was responsible for Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon
in 2000, following 18 years of occupation. It's a decision, he said,
he would not have changed, even in hindsight.
"It is only because I ordered the pullout from Lebanon to the
last square inch [that] Israel could have fought, responded in this
way, and occupied the moral high ground in the world and the support
of the UN Security Council and the G8 or even the support of certain
Arabs," he said. "If we were still inside Lebanon –
I don't mention the cost in human lives and in financial and so
on – but we would have experienced a much faster improvement
in the Hezbollah.
"What [has] happen[ed] since only convinced me even stronger
that we had to pull out. In fact, we put an end to a tragedy that
was there for 18 years and cost the life of thousands of Israelis
[and] many Lebanese, with no real profound reason, because this
security zone that we had for the last 15 years could never block
Katyushas from coming to Israel. The range of the rockets is three
times the width of the security zone. By our very presence in Lebanon,
we legitimized the effort of Hezbollah emerging as a major power
within Lebanon. So maybe this was the right step, probably 15 years
too late."
Barak was less certain about the potential return of the Israel
Defence Forces soldiers kidnapped in the summer. "I hope the
soldier in the south [Gilad Shalit, who was taken from his post
near the Kerem Shalom crossing at the Gaza Strip in June] will be
brought back in the coming few weeks, but I'm not sure that it will
happen," Barak told the Independent. "It seems
that it's very clear that he's alive, that he's in good shape, that
he's in the hands of certain terrorist organizations, but probably
the Palestinian Authority and the government can have enough influence
to order at a certain point his being brought back. We have no,
even sign of life, from the other two [reservists Ehud Goldwasser
and Eldad Regev] in the north. And we think that it should be a
precondition [for negotiations] ... they should let the Red Cross
go in to verify that they are alive and in good health, it could
be [they're] in bad hands but in good condition – but it should
be a condition before any kind of serious negotiations can begin."
In what appeared to be a thinly veiled critique of the way the summer's
military campaign was enacted, Barak asserted that the IDF was still
one of the world's best fighting forces, "but like any other
force, should be prepared. I'm a great fan of classical music and
listen to the best symphonic orchestras on Earth. You cannot take
even the best one of them and meet them in the morning and tell
them, you know, this evening, you begin to perform the Nibelungen
Ring of Wagner, this series of four operas, each one four to five
hours. In order to perform it, even the best orchestra should prepare
it.
"After five years of policing the West Bank and Gaza, an army
should have a certain period, probably several days or several weeks
... before it jumps into such a war," he continued. "We
need to stretch the intervals between wars, but once we decide to
go to war – and no war in our history was more justifiable
than this one – we have to make sure that it will be decided
in an unquestionable way, immediately, with minimal suffering to
the homefront and in a way that we cause the other side to lose
its appetite for wars for years to come. Somehow, we did not come
to grips with these basic principles during this last campaign."
Barak himself spent 35 years in the IDF, eventually reaching the
highest rank of rav aluf and serving as chief of staff. He remains
the most highly decorated officer in Israeli military history.
It was during Barak's tenure as prime minister that he, then-Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat and former United States president Bill Clinton
met at Camp David to try and broker a Mideast peace agreement. The
attempt was not successful - an outcome Barak blames entirely on
Arafat.
"I ended up, at Camp David, having to say that it's time to
call a spade a spade," he reflected. "If it looks like
a terrorist, it walks like a terrorist, it quacks like a terrorist,
probably he is one."
Outside the synagogue on Sunday night, around two dozen protesters
from the Canada Palestine Association, Palestine Community Centre
and Jews for a Just Peace held up candles and placards labelling
Barak a war criminal.
"If Mr. Barak and others had lived up to the stipulations of
the Oslo agreement, we would be in a very different place than we
are today," said Stephen Aberle of Jews for a Just Peace.
"I know that there were some operations in which he was involved
early on in his career that involved murder – [the] assassination
of various Palestinian leaders. I would say that more important
than that were his actions when he was the prime minister of Israel.
During the Oslo peace process, as a consequence of that process,
settlement construction in the occupied territories was supposed
to end and withdrawal from various autonomous Palestinian areas
was supposed to be accomplished and instead we saw an acceleration
of settlement construction and we also saw devastating military
incursions against the Palestinian population – tanks, helicopter
gunship attacks, the practice of targeted killings of Palestinians,
along with whom, innocent civilians who happened to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time were killed. I count all of those as war
crimes and he was in charge. It was his government and his policies
and I hold him accountable for that."
Aberle said he was "prepared to respect the opinions of those
folks [Hillel students, with Israeli flags, showing their support
for Barak outside the synagogue] across there, as I hope they will
respect mine. Let's talk about our political differences as human
beings. Let's talk with each other within the Jewish community and
let's talk with our Palestinian brothers and sisters as human beings
with respect and dignity."
Barak strongly refuted the protestors' allegations.
"I respect their right to protest," he said, "and
we [are better off] living in places where people can protest against
visiting speakers, rather than neighborhoods like most of the places
they came from, where no one would have dared to make such criticism
of a foreigner. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Maybe these
guys are not aware of it, but at Camp David, six-and-a-half years
ago, I put together, with President Clinton, for the first time
in the history of the conflict, an offer on the table, by which,
in exchange for [the] end of [the] conflict and certain consideration
for [the] Israeli security situation and our affiliation to our
birthplace, the Palestinians could get a Palestinian, independent
state, contiguous over 100 per cent of the Gaza Strip and 90-plus
per cent of the West Bank, with right of return into the Palestinian
state, of course, not into Israel, and even certain Arab, heavily
populated neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem as part of their Palestinian
capital.
"And Mr. Arafat, on behalf of the Palestianian people, was
unready to accept this offer, even as a basis for negotiations,
and deliberately and consciously turned to terror. That's why whenever
anyone – an Arab leader, spokesman or protester – tells
me it's all about occupation, occupation, occupation, I tell them,
no. It's about terror. If it were about occupation, we could have
already put it behind us years ago and could be well into the implementation
of a peace agreement. Unfortunately, what I've found is that Mr.
Arafat was not about correcting '67 (end the occupation) but '47
and the very establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. I can
tell you very bluntly, we will never, ever, yield to terror, period.
Yielding to terrorists is like feeding crocodiles – they just
want more."
Like much of Israel's current leadership, Barak perceives Iran as
a major potential threat. Israel, he said, "is a microcosm
for world terror, nuclear proliferation and rogue regimes. It's
the tip of the iceberg – what happens to Israel is a much wider
phenomenon."
Living in Israel, he said, "is like living in the villa in
the jungle. You can enjoy the Jacuzzi in the villa, but you cannot
dare to forget for a moment that the jungle is outside the door.
It is a neighborhood where there is no mercy for the weak and no
second opportunities for those who cannot defend themselves and
we should realize that peace agreements, even when they will come,
will be achieved only from a position of strength and self-confidence
on behalf of Israel. They will be based on an Arab realization that
nothing could be extracted from Israel against its will, neither
through the direct use of force, through diplomatic tricks or through
attempts at [outsmarting] us. Israel is fully aware of its vital
interests and ready to fight for them.
"I hope that [peace] will take three years, but maybe it will
take 50. We prayed for too many years to come back to Israel to
try to think that if something is not solved within three years,
six years or 15 years, it is over."
Barak ended his speech by offering a prayer. "Hashem oz
l'amo yiten," he intoned, "Hashem y'varech et amo
v'shalom – May the Lord give his people courage, may the
Lord bless his people with peace."
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