In the years in which he was exiled to the Twittersphere, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak gathered a herd of fans who happily followed his vile and unrestrained attacks on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The more he cursed and foamed at the mouth, the more his admirers cheered. They admired the audacity, which unlike the languid attitude of other left-wing leaders, expressed the courage and brusque attitude necessary to defeat the undefeatable King Kong of Israeli politics. One can understand where they are coming from. In times of despair, Barak's swearing provided them with a moment of release; with the help of poisonous pins, they stuck them into their Netanyahu doll.
But they missed the boomerang effect big time: Every bullying tweet and horror move in which Barak tried to look into the white of Netanyahu's eyes only strengthened the prime minister's image. That is the ABCs of political media: You must not build your opponent up to be someone who is unbeatable. Beneath every message is a hidden implied meaning, and there are those who are taking it in.
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This ironic contrast was the thread running through the press conference where the man who, for the fourth time, had come in from the cold to return to the political arena. It was difficult to ignore the polar tension between the plethora of messages and the reality as we know it, and it is unclear how this comic effect went unnoticed by the speechwriters. This is what happened in 2011, when Barak announced that the era of Syrian President Bashar Assad would be over in weeks – is once again presuming to make a prediction, this time about the end of the Netanyahu-era. The prime minister with the shortest tenure in Israeli history is threatening the man who broke late Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's record for the longest time in office, by noting that this is Netanyahu's last chance to resign of his own free will.
But Barak's fans are inside something of an echo chamber. Oblivious to external impressions, they do not realize they are slowly taking on the brittle appearance of their idol. Advocates of a two-state solution dedicate themselves to a man who is proud of exposing [late Palestine Liberation Organization leader] Yasser Arafat's "bluff" and who destroyed the 1993 Oslo Accords. Labor loyalists are cowering before the man who left the party in tatters; advocates of Arab-Jewish cooperation follow the man under whose watch Arab protesters were shot with live fire and killed. Netanyahu haters are clinging to the man who gave him peace and ensured he would lead the government.
Now they pray that with his clenched fists, Barak will succeed in bringing them the moon. It is unclear how once again, they fail to notice Barak's cannibalism. If I were on the Left, I would be shocked at the split of the camp into two sub-camps: Blue and White and Barak-Labor. They know there is no chance that Barak and his new party will succeed in stealing a Knesset seat from the right-wing bloc, but that doesn't keep them from throwing flowers at his feet, which will soon enough trample bit by bit portions of the shriveling Left. How many Knesset seats will he be able to take from Meretz and Labor? And should he join forces with both those parties with the aim of creating a renewed left-wing front, exactly how many Knesset seats will he be able to take away from Blue and White?
But it is most difficult to understand how they forgot the magical influence of the codewords in classic boomerang language of the Left: "Netanyahu must be toppled," "Netanyahu with his radical messianists and his corrupt government" or calls to "get Israel back on track."
How many election campaigns will go by before they understand that this childish discourse is not seen from the outside as "combative and determined" but rather the very essence of arrogance? While it remains unclear whether such remarks will be enough to rally enough of a base around Barak, they will be enough to set a fire under the nationalist camp.
