Sweet revenge and sour stocks

A new batch of tapes of former defense minister Ehud Barak were leaked Sunday, making waves in Monday’s Hebrew press, though the dailies are still far more interested in plans to strike Iranian nuclear facilities than his negative psychological profile of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or a reported plot to overthrow ex-prime minister Ehud Olmert.

Yedioth Ahronoth reports that the bombshell recordings were part of a coordinated publicity bid to promote Barak’s biography, and questions whether Barak really supported a military strike. Haaretz wants to give those ministers and security officials who opposed military action on Iran a “security prize,” and Israel Hayom, rather predictably, simply runs with Netanyahu’s condemnation of the leak.

Yedioth reports that the authors of Barak’s biography decided to leak the tapes over a publishing dispute. While the authors believed they owned the international rights to the book and to the extensive interviews they conducted with the ex-defense chief, Barak went ahead and signed with a US publisher for an English-language biography.

That’s when the authors decided to do a little payback – taking revenge on Barak in an elaborate marketing ploy.

“It was obvious that our book would be the basis of the international edition,” one of the biographers told Army Radio. “But Barak, as Barak does, went the dishonest, unfair route and decided to do what he did. We have an interest in promoting the book. It’s not his book, it’s our book. The tapes are our property. When the moment came to promote the book, we decided that the tapes were a legitimate way to promote it. Ehud, with his other considerations, tried to oppose it.”

Yedioth also highlights that Barak strongly objected to the 2007 strike on the Syrian reactor – a fact the paper maintains cast doubt on his assertion that he was ready and willing to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.

The daily quotes a 2012 New Yorker report, which said that while Barak ultimately voted in favor of the strike in 2007, “Barak told his fellow cabinet ministers that he feared a repeat of the 2006 war, and thought it would be better to delay the attack on Al Kibar… Olmert suspected that Barak had another reason for putting off an attack on Al Kibar. The final report of the Winograd Commission, a government-appointed inquiry into the decisions involved in the 2006 war with Hezbollah, was anticipated around the end of the year and was expected to criticize Olmert for his handling of the war and weaken him politically. Olmert worried that Barak would seize upon the report’s findings, trigger Olmert’s ouster as prime minister, and lead the operation against the Syrian reactor himself.” (Olmert’s fears may have been well-founded, as tapes of Barak released on Sunday saw the ex-defense minister admit that he had planned to oust Olmert).

In a column, Eitan Haber laments the leak, and opines that its source, Barak, is “a big surprise.”

Barak is “one of the most suspicious men in our generation,” he writes. “The joke goes that he doesn’t even trust his shoes… he tends to compartmentalize even his closet partners and make sure they only know very little.”

Over in Haaretz, the daily’s editorial offers glowing praise to Barak and the various officials who blocked a strike on Iran.

“Former defense minister Ehud Barak did the right thing when he publicly disclosed details from the deliberations in the previous government over attacking Iranian nuclear facilities,” it writes, omitting the key fact that the tapes were leaked ostensibly against Barak’s will.

“Barak’s remarks suggest that the Israeli public is deeply indebted to Steinitz and Ya’alon, who usually come off as as the prime minister’s yes-men but who opposed him precisely on the most sensitive and important issue of all,” it continues.

“The opponents and the hesitators, who saved the lives of hundreds and perhaps thousands of Israelis and prevented large-scale attacks and destruction, therefore deserve an Israeli security prize — and not the scorn of the former defense minister, who described how Ya’alon and Steinitz ‘melted’ during the deliberations.”

Meanwhile, Yedioth Ahronoth leads with a report on educational reform. After parents launched a “sardines protest” against overcrowded classrooms, schools around the country will open 300 new first grade classes at the beginning of the school year next week. The daily lists the schools affected by the directive.

Israel Hayom and Haaretz remain troubled by plummeting stocks in the Asian market.

“The snowball, which started with the sharp drops in the Chinese market, swept up the entire world during the weekend, and hit, as expected, Tel Aviv as well,” Israel Hayom reports.

The daily quotes a concerned chief economist, but says “the majority of economists” maintain this does not portend another crash like 2008.

But Hezi Sternlicht, in a column, says Israelis ought to hold their breath.

The stock exchange “very quickly affects all of our purses,” he writes. “We are a state that is heavy on exports, and stagnation in the markets destined for Israeli exports is very worrisome… In other words, drops in the stock market affect the public pocket far faster that we tend to think.”