Barak and the Judean Hills
Barak and the Judean HillsIsrael news photo: Flash 90

Defense Minister Ehud Barak engineered the building freeze in Judea and Samaria, and self-hatred and Labor party politics are behind the move that endangers the country, according to Professor Shalom Rosenberg, who teaches Jewish Thought at Hebrew University.

He explained that the real danger to Israel is that “internal objectives change foreign policy.” Prof. Rosenberg recalled that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said that Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic policy.

“Barak is behind the building freeze because he wants to protect his position in the Labor party and in the coalition government, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lets him do what he wants,” the professor told Arutz 7.

“You don’t have to be a genius to understand the connection between Barak’s political crisis and the building freeze,” Prof. Rosenberg asserted. “It is dangerous when internal politics are involved with external political policies, and it is liable to turn into a catastrophe. The building freeze decision might become a tragedy and seriously damage our standing.”

Several America political analysts have written that U.S. President Barack Obama was mistaken in pressuring Israel to halt building for Jews in Judea and Samaria, and Prof. Rosenberg says that the Netanyahu government is similarly mistaken. Israel’s expulsion of Jews from Gaza and parts of northern Samaria four years ago proved that “we are not land robbers,” he explained.

He estimates that Labor party chairman Barak is driven by inexplicable self-hatred in his anti-settlement actions. He compared his move with the psychological reaction of kidnap victims who identify with their abductors.

“This is a form or psychological robbery,” he explained. “If the Europeans look at someone as if he is the devil, then he wants to look acceptable in their eyes. This is what has happened with Ehud Barak."