Kadima MKs hit back at Barak, say he's hysterical, exhausted

Kadima Party sources hit back Wednesday to ongoing criticism by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, saying that the Labor Party chairman was a hysterical man suffering from exhaustion and heading a party on the verge of bankruptcy.

Five weeks ahead of the Kadima primary election, Barak told Army Radio earlier Wednesday that Kadima front-runner Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was unfit to make decisions regarding Israel's security and that the pride she takes in her contribution toward the passing of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 - which brought the Second Lebanon War to an end and has been stridently criticized in Israel - casts serious doubt on her judgment.

"Running a country is more complex than merely transferring messages from public relations departments to television networks," Barak said.

Barak, who insisted on calling Livni by her full name, Tzipora, continued to attack her lack of experience, saying "I am not convinced that the foreign minister is fit to answer questions on important security issues that an Israeli prime minister has to be able to answer; not at 3 A.M. and not at 3 P.M."

Livni, for her part, recently spoke of Barak's "panicked escape from Lebanon." The defense minister responded Wednesday, saying that he had spent ten years at the center of painful, complex and difficult decisions involving human lives. "I know that being in that room, and being there when decisions are made, does not make you fit to make them," Barak added.

MK Yitzhak Ben Yisrael (Kadima) responded to Barak's criticism of Livni's lack of a military background, saying that the defense minister was apparently so distressed that his judgment had become deficient. "I wonder if [Barak] would consider [David] Ben Gurion, [Levi] Eshkol or [Yitzhak] Shamir, who never served in the military, unfit for premiership," he said.

Barak did not limit his tongue lashing to Livni, and went on to criticize the entire Kadima Party, saying that Kadima was "disposable, a party that is a refugee camp," which has offered nothing but the leftovers of the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza, the Second Lebanon War and a string of embarrassing corruption scandals in which its heads have been implicated.