New York – Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told the Knesset Channel that the Sharon family was “corrupt to the core,” and that “in any other normal country, Sharon would have no longer been in power.”

Former PM Barak then added that the impression that Sharon has caved in to terrorism, “shared by Uzi Landau, Effie Eitam and Hamas, is in fact grounded in reality. After all, this plan is not something that Sharon promised during his election campaign, but rather something that took form after he saw that he was not defeating terrorism. Sharon is not telling the public the truth about the fence, that the communities behind the fence will be lost and because he wasn’t strong enough to say that, he left the fence open in several places, and that caused people in Hadera, Afula, Be’er Sheva and Tel Aviv to be killed.”

ZOA President Morton A. Klein said, “Even Laborite Barak has joined the long and growing line of critics of the Gaza evacuation plan. He has joined former Defense Minister Moshe Arens, Minister Natan Sharansky, former Military intelligence chiefs Shlomo Gazit and Yaacov Amidror, IDF chief General Moshe Ya’alon, Shin Bet head Avi Dichter, head of the Likud faction Gideon Saar, Landau, Elon, Begin, numerous other public officials and hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have joined public demonstrations expressing deep concern for this plan.

“But more than that, Barak has made the first clarion call to all of us stating that the 75,000 Jews on the wrong side of the fence in Bethel, Kiryat Arba, Kadumin, Shilo, etc. will be, G-d forbid, part of a mass forced evacuation and transfer of Jews in Judea and Samaria as well.

“This would continue to send a message of appeasement and a message that terrorism against Jews pays and pays well.”