Billboards started popping up across metropolitan Tel Aviv last September, calling on former Prime Minister Ehud Barak to “run [for office]” because “Netanyahu is destroying our country.” This raised the inevitable question: Was this the opening salvo of Barak’s big comeback? The answer became clearer over the weeks to follow, when the former prime minister emerged as the sharpest, most pointed critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both publicly and in the media, but especially on Twitter. And he did it as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him.
In 2012, while serving as defense minister in Netanyahu’s government, Barak announced that he was retiring from political life. But since then, every so often he would test the waters to see if the time was ripe for his return. He did this by sending out trial balloons, mostly in the form of in-depth interviews in which he attacked Netanyahu’s passivity. He also held periodic meetings with Labor Party activists, as a means to examine the atmosphere within the party. Yet all of these efforts were met with public apathy at best.