Twenty-six years after the disaster that was Operation Bramble Bush, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak's knack for entering a TV studio and firing in all directions remains intact. At that time, then-IDF Chief of Staff Barak faced criticism for his decision to take off in his helicopter when, during a dry run, five soldiers were killed by live fire. Today, however, he is free to push false propaganda on Channel 12 News.
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All Barak could muster in his defense of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was attacks on the previous premier, Benjamin Netanyahu. It is terrible to think that just two and a half months ago, Israel's infection rate was practically O, and now, as Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked said, we must deal with the deaths and thousands of new cases every day. Propaganda chief Barak's method, however, differs from that of Shaked. He casually claimed that Netanyahu was to blame for the over 6,000 deaths Israel has recorded since the pandemic's outbreak. The truth is that, as Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has attested, we have Netanyahu to thank for the fact that 20,000 Israelis have not lost their lives to the virus thus far. Israel's death rate is very low, and Barak's interviewer should have asked him how it came to be that Israel is now worse off than Canada, Germany, and Italy.
Barak also spoke about Bennett's upcoming, historic White House visit. What Barak failed to mention is that the US, and certainly US President Joe Biden, are in a tizzy over the disaster transpiring in Afghanistan. Since Barak is known to have set out all kinds of preconditions for his interview, he may have said the US withdrawal would be off-limits. Like Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan is also a hasty retreat from the security zone and the betrayal and abandonment of allies. Only in the Israeli media could someone like Barak, who ordered Israel's exit from southern Lebanon, ignore Kabul at a time when it is not at all clear if there is a possibility of returning to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
The Israeli public should be worried about people like Barak and his senior analyst friends, who are stringing the people along with their Afghan tales. Barak and his ilk are in deep with the failing American establishment. He should have been made to answer how Israelis, now witnessing the terrible fiasco in Afghanistan, could rely on Biden's judgment. Of course, we can't. Nor can we rely on the judgment of Barak and his friends, who are so deeply invested in the US administration.
Today's Kabul is reminiscent of the collapse of the Israel Defense Forces we witnessed in 2000, for which Barak was to blame. The Palestinians got the message, and within a few months, embarked on a terrorist rampage that saw over 1,100 Israelis killed.
According to the polls, the public longs for a strong government and Likud party chairman Netanyahu. Barak would like the legislation preventing Netanyahu from running for premier to become law so that the public will not hold the establishment accountable for its failures.
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