The Labor Party, declared Ehud Barak in his victory speech, will follow the path of the founder of the state and the generation of founders. Even if victory speech promises are greeted with skepticism, the choice of these words and their timing are worth noting. Especially encouraging were his remarks that the State of Israel is "the home of the Jewish people, its historic bastion, the homeland of our people."

On the backdrop of the post-Zionist voices in academia, the media and politics, it is considered bad form these days to utter words like "homeland" and "the national home of the Jewish people." These terms have become rare - or illegitimate - among those who consider themselves among the progressive, cultured, liberal sector of society. Therefore there was something refreshing, certainly daring, when Barak uttered them in his speech. Time will tell whether the Labor Party under his leadership will return to the positions and ideas it held while leading the Yishuv [Jewish settlement] in Mandatory Palestine, preceding the establishment of the state and during the state's first 29 years of existence.

The extent to which Barak's declarations should not be taken for granted can be seen, for example, in the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. While preparing a constitution for Israel in recent months, the committee has discussed the identity of the state and its symbols. The Labor Party members, MKs Colette Avital and Matan Vilnai, like their new party head, are in favor of the constitution declaring that the State of Israel is "the national home of the Jewish people." Others, however, among them committee chair MK Menahem Ben-Sasson (Kadima), are opposed to this. The commitment to "follow the path of the founder of the state" is liable to remain hollow if Barak does not follow through with action, setting a personal example. No one is demanding he live in a modest apartment like David Ben-Gurion did. However, if his words are sincere, Barak is expected to abide by the total commitment of "the Old Man" and his peers to bring the identity of the state as Jewish, Zionist and democratic to its fullest interpretation.

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Given the devaluation of the Zionist identity in recent years, this persistence is not to be taken for granted. However, without it, Israel will not be able to survive for very long as a Jewish state, as it was envisioned by the founding fathers from the labor movement.

Not only the Arab representative bodies are declaring openly that they deny the Jewish identity of the state. Such streams of thought exist among Jews as well, and their influence is not negligible. Post-Zionist views have become influential in part because the central Zionist parties, and above all Labor, have divested themselves of their ideological assets, and their leaders have begun to prophesize in fashionable language very far from that of the country's founders - in whose footsteps Barak has promised to follow. Only last week, during the days of self-laceration to mark 40 years since the Six-Day War, we were able to see the prominence of the position, "forgive us for winning."

Deterrent capability, which Barak promised to bring back as well, does not depend only on restoring the army's professionalism. If the citizenry's willingness to bear the cost of independence and sovereignty is restored, the Israel Defense Forces will also become stronger.

When Barak was prime minister, our ability to stand firm was at a nadir. Instead of elevating the country's spirit, Barak rode the waves of weakness and led the panicked flight from Lebanon. We can hope that the things he said yesterday, along with his promises to learn from his mistakes, show that this time he intends not to come to terms with these weaknesses, but rather to overcome them. Only in this way will he be able to help extricate the people and the state from their crisis.