Epstein Secrets

using him of being driven by personal ambition. Then he offered the Defense Minister’s job to Misha Arens. Yitzhik did join the Center Party, as did Amnon Lipkin, who had ended his term as chief-of-staff and, with initial opinion poll numbers suggesting he’d do well, even briefly entered the race for Prime Min

gn team. This wasn’t just because I wanted to guard against complacency. It was because, deep down, still I didn’t trust the numbers. I retreated to Kochav Yair on Friday evening. On Saturday, two days before the election, I had a surprise visitor, someone I knew from Yitzhik Mordecai’s team. He said he had a

ERSIGHT_011813 / BARAK / 57 A few days later, the “pre-endgame” around the summit began. Not in Washington or Jerusalem or Ramallah or Gaza, but in Kochav Yair. Nava and I still spent almost all our weekends there. We valued the quiet, or at least the slightly quieter, time away from Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. S

cusing him of being driven by personal ambition. Then he offered the Defense Minister's job to Misha Arens. Yitzhik did join the Center Party, as did Amnon Lipkin, who had ended his term as chief-of-staff and, with initial opinion poll numbers suggesting he'd do well, even briefly entered the race for Prime Min

ign team. This wasn't just because I wanted to guard against complacency. It was because, deep down, still I didn't trust the numbers. I retreated to Kochav Yair on Friday evening. On Saturday, two days before the election, I had a surprise visitor, someone I knew from Yitzhik Mordecai's team. He said he had a

VERSIGHT_028190 / BARAK / 57 A few days later, the "pre-endgame" around the summit began. Not in Washington or Jerusalem or Ramallah or Gaza, but in Kochav Yair. Nava and I still spent almost all our weekends there. We valued the quiet, or at least the slightly quieter, time away from Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. S

a serious candidate at this stage. Moshe’s own preference seemed to be either Amir Drori, the head of the northern command during the Lebanon War, or Amnon Lipkin, the veteran paratroop commander who’d been with me on the Rue Verdun raid in Beirut. My own hope was that the nod would go to any even closer friend

iled in Israel at about 2 a.m. on January 18, 1991, almost exactly 24 hours after the Americans began their bombing raids over Baghdad. I was home in Kochav Yair. Like other Israelis, we’d set up a sealed shelter. Though I felt a bit silly doing it, having assured the government Saddam was vanishingly unlikely