Israel in search of a leader
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe "Bogie" Ya’alon tries, and fails, to pick up the mantle of Sharon.
A day after Israel’s former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was laid to rest, on Jan. 13 Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe "Bogie" Ya’alon was quoted to have leveled scathing, if not to say crude, criticism at US Secretary of State John Kerry.
“Kerry is messianic,” Ya’alon said in closed conversations (according to Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth’s headline on Jan. 14). “He is obsessive. Let him take the Nobel Prize and leave us be.”
It may have been homage to Sharon, who served as Israel’s defense minister exactly 30 years ago and specialized in stoking precisely such fires. It is also possible that Ya’alon, who says these things incessantly in closed discussions yet makes sure they don’t leak, may have slipped up. Well, eventually they did leak.
I would venture to say that Kerry probably did not fall off his chair upon getting this report from US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro. He has heard scathing criticism about the “security plan” which the United States drew up in Israel’s interest. Although he has not heard direct personal insults from the Israeli minister, the unfavorable innuendos are nevertheless out there. Ya’alon wants to be Sharon. The problem, however, is that he wants to be the former Sharon rather than the latter-day one. He wants to be Sharon — the man of war, the intransigent and unstoppable politician.
