Labor comes to bury Barak, not really to praise him.
By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMANehud barak happy 248.88(photo credit: AP)
Very few people have lived to hear the delivery of their own eulogy or to read their obituary in the newspaper.
One of them was former minister Amnon Rubinstein, who was eulogized by then-Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg after a prank call in 2000 but is still alive and well. Another was Menachem Begin Heritage Center founder Harry Hurwitz, who died last month, seven years after reading his obituary in The Jerusalem Post.
Labor chairman Ehud Barak joined their ranks on Thursday night when Labor MKs loyal to him, as well as his biggest enemies in the party, took turns praising the man who is about to lead Labor to its most dismal showing in history in the February 10 election.
Barak's erstwhile rival, Amir Peretz, did not send him an olive branch on stage in Tel Aviv University because he suddenly decided that Barak was a good man or because he forgot that Barak had fired him from the Defense Ministry by fax. Peretz sent the olive branch because he was waiting for Barak to trip on it.
Peretz and the other politicians who spoke at the event know that Labor has no chance of winning the election. They know that Labor is not even trying to win, but just to put up numbers decent enough to avoid a merger with Kadima.
But they want to make sure that if a political grave is dug, it will be only Barak who falls in it and not the party as a whole. All of Labor's brass will continue supporting Barak vocally for the next few months while they plan for the day after the election, when they intend to push him into that grave.
Peretz and other Barak critics need to be careful not to be seen as plotting against him, because then Barak could accuse them of helping bring down the party. They have given Barak a big bear hug to use as an alibi and to make sure that Barak - and Barak alone - will be blamed for the party's downfall.
According to Labor's bylaws, a party chairman who loses a general election must face a leadership race within 14 months after the defeat. That gives Barak 14 months at best to serve as defense minister in someone else's government unless he decides to quit the day after the race. If that happens, Peretz could become opposition leader, a position that suits him well.
Barak is so convinced of his party's doom that he forced his faction to approve moving up his closest political ally, Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon, to 12th on the list. If he wanted to show that he wasn't pessimistic, he would have kept Simhon in the 15th slot he ran in last time.
But Barak knows that the praise he received on Thursday night was merely gratification from his gravediggers. And the eulogies that his political career will receive on February 11 will not be nearly as kind.
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