Ex-Labor chief Barak declares ‘Independence’ in Tel Aviv
By GIL HOFFMAN
12/05/2011
Defense minister officially inaugurates new political party, complaining about "opportunists and charlatans" in Israeli politics.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak completed the process of leaving the Labor Party he led until January when he officially formed the new Independence Party at its inaugural meeting at the Council for a Beautiful Israel Center in Tel Aviv on Thursday.

Speaking to the party’s founding 80 members, Barak complained that Israeli politics had deteriorated into “tricks and shticks” and was led by “too many opportunists and charlatans.”

He vowed to change that with his new party, rejecting surveys indicating that it had no chance of passing the 2 percent electoral threshold in the next election.

“I have bad news and good news for you,” he told the crowd. “The bad news is that we are doing badly in the polls, but the good news is that we can only go up from here.”

Barak spoke in front of a wall bearing the party’s new blue, white and red logo that features the national flag and quotes from Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Barak was unanimously elected head of the party at the event, which was held on the Hebrew calendar anniversary of his withdrawal of IDF troops from Lebanon 11 years ago.

A party of loosers' founded on a day that marks a loss for Israel the shameful retreat from Lebanon.

Look for them not to be in the next Knesset.