Barak Predicts Assad Gone by Spring
Ehud Barak predicted to a group of schoolchildren that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad would be removed from power by Passover.
“Before Pesach, I believe, he won’t be in power any more,” the Israeli defense minister, who is in Washington to address the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial, said Thursday when meeting with students at the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital.
“He orders his security to shoot his own cities,” Barak said of Assad. “His people don’t want him any more. In days of cell phone cameras, emails and YouTube, no dictator can escape the feelings of his people.”
Until unrest erupted earlier this year in Syria, Israel’s posture was that the Assad regime was the least worst of the alternatives; now Israeli leaders see the Syrian regime’s likely demise as a harbinger of reduced Iranian influence in the region, which Israel would welcome.
Barak toured JPDS on a day that it was commemorating Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister assassinated by a Jewish extremist. Rabin was Barak’s mentor.
Barak, who was prime minister from 1999 to 2001, suggested he did not seek the post but happened into it because of the leadership vacuum left by Rabin, who was killed in 1995.
“I didn’t want it,” he told a pupil who asked why he sought it. “I came into through happenstance. I wanted to make Israel a better place.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.