Ehud Barak came to Hay to talk about his memoir My Country, My Life and to defend insist on the importance of creating a viable Palestinian state. Without one, he said, demographics dictate that Israel cannot be both democratic and Jewish.
“There is no more urgent and critical task to our generation that to put a wedge on this slippery slope towards a one-state solution which threatens the very Zionist project and Zionist dream. The fact that people behave like lemmings, they do not see the cliff, does not make it proper and recommended,” he said.
“The present government, a right government, for the first time in decades, they put the whole Israeli democracy under direct attack, like an autoimmune disease. The government is the source of direct attack on the authority of the supreme court in Israel. The government is in direct attack on civil society, NGOs, human rights whatever. The government is in direct attack on the free media.”
He said he was confident that the political pendulum would swing back, and that a left-wing movement, such as his own Labour Party, would take power in Israel once more. In the meantime, it was imperative to try to keep Israel on the moral high ground, something he said it had been slipping from far too frequently.
“There are only two options, either non-Jewish or non-democratic. No one considers the non-Jewish option, so the other option will become inevitable,” he said.
If you missed this, you might like to come to see Peter Hain talking about his biography of Nelson Mandela at 7pm.