Moshe Ya'alon Will Bring Balance To Israeli Defense Ministry

Shortly before the Knesset elections of 2006, Ada Ya’alon mailed a personal letter to dozens of her friends. It was a long missive of about 3,000 words, philosophical, ideological and incisive. She wanted to convince her friends, almost all kitbbutz members and part of Israel’s historical Labor movement, “to transcend the psychological barrier” and not vote for Kadima or the Labor Party in the upcoming elections. She tried to persuade them to commit the inconceivable and vote Likud. She explained fervently and at length what had happened to the Israeli left over the past few decades, and how it had fallen captive to the impractical, utopian idea of a permanent peace with the Arabs. By doing so, she explained, the left had sacrificed its real, humanistic values, such as women's and minority rights.

Ada Ya’alon is the wife of Moshe Ya’alon, Israel's vice prime minister, minister of Strategic Affairs and former military chief of staff. Barring any dramatic last-minute changes, he will also be the next defense minister of the State of Israel. Ada's disillusionment happened even earlier to her husband Moshe, and what happened to the Ya’alons happened to large swathes of Israel’s historic peace camp.