Ehud Barak slams fellow former prime minister Ehud Olmert amid the fallout between political and security officials over the 2007 Israeli raid on a Syrian nuclear reactor.
“Olmert was never really prime minister. He got there by chance. I’m sure that [ex-prime minister Ariel] Sharon would never have aimed to have him there. He played the role very well,” Barak tells Hadashot TV news.
Asked whether Olmert, nonetheless, had made the courageous and correct decision to approve the strike on Syria’s reactor, Barak said: “Kevin Spacey is also a good actor. He played the president exceptionally well [in House of Cards]. That didn’t make him president. [Olmert] made that good decision… and he ultimately deserves credit for that.”
Barak asserts that Olmert’s upcoming book proves he wasn’t fit to be premier.
“To think that the person who wrote that book… was the prime minister of Israel, and took fateful decisions is disturbing, to put it mildly,” Barak says.
Ehud Olmert (L) and Ehud Barak visit an IDF base in southern Israel. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO/Flash90)
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