They were both Israeli prime ministers. Ehud Barak served from 1999 to 2001, and Ehud Olmert from 2006 to 2009. They were close friends and political allies. Today, they are bitter enemies. Everything goes in this war of annihilation. They’ve called each other names. They’ve spread rumors about each other. Now it's also about denouncing each other.

The loathing between the two is considered to be the most bitter animosity in the Israeli political system, a system that has more than its fair share of hatreds. As of now, Barak is in a much better situation than Olmert, who was sentenced in May to six years in prison for his part in the bribery scandal surrounding the Holyland real estate development project in Jerusalem. He has appealed his conviction, and his sentence was postponed until the Supreme Court decides the matter. Barak, in contrast, is a happy and free civilian. Although he was ejected from politics and left his post of defense minister, which he held in the previous Benjamin Netanyahu government, he lives the good life and continues to get rich. But an allegedly incriminating tape aired Nov. 7 by the Israeli TV Channel 10 turned Barak into a potential subject of investigation. On Nov. 10, State Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein instructed police to look into claims voiced by Olmert in that tape. It's unlikely that this preliminary inquiry will develop into a full-blown investigation that will end with Barak arriving to court, but drama is drama, and the Israeli media is stirring it up.

Barak’s roots lie in the Labor movement. He is a kibbutznik who was elected prime minister after Netanyahu’s traumatic first term in office. Olmert’s roots lie in the right. He's a classic Likud prince who served as mayor of Jerusalem and later found himself prime minister after Ariel Sharon’s health plummeted. Though they both come from opposing camps, the two Ehuds maintained a close friendship for years. In the 1999 election campaign in which Barak defeated Netanyahu, it was Olmert, then serving as Jerusalem mayor, who stabbed his party leader Netanyahu in the back by being featured in a Barak campaign ad declaring, “Barak will not divide Jerusalem.” Doing so emasculated the main scare tactic used by Netanyahu’s team and contributed to Barak’s election as prime minister in a most decisive and direct way. Years later, when Olmert was prime minister, he helped Barak orchestrate his comeback in the Labor Party, helping him win the primaries and replace Amir Peretz as defense minister. Soon after the operation was accomplished, however, Barak stabbed Olmert in the back politically and deposed him as prime minister, while the criminal investigations against him were at their height.

This tragedy of biblical proportions went up a step last week, if not an entire story. It was fascinating television. I also happened to be in the Channel 10 studio as a commentator. Just a few minutes earlier, I was played the relevant section of the tape, which had been prepared for broadcast. The tape features Olmert, who had left the prime minister’s office two years earlier, speaking with his former bureau chief and close confidante of 30 years, Shula Zaken. During their conversation, he tells Zaken that Barak, who served as defense minister until 2013, used to accept bribes to facilitate security deals. Olmert went on to inform Zaken that “the head of the Mossad came to see him” about secret bank accounts that Barak had in Switzerland. Bribe money allegedly made its way into these accounts through a network of straw companies.