Ehud Barak Profile

"Two Egyptian divisions were already deployed deep into the Sinai desert very close to the Israeli border. Israel had a very small regular standing army, and it had to deploy immediately along the border to avoid a surprise attack."

With no time to mobilize reserve officers, the battalion commander asked the raw recruits in the boot camp for a volunteer to lead an ammunition convoy 50 miles in the dark across a desert plain, without roads or landmarks. Ehud Barak stepped forward. Only 17, and undersized for his age, the unathletic youngster seemed an unlikely candidate for military heroism. An introverted nonconformist who had been expelled from the high school on the communal farm where he was raised, he was nevertheless confident that he could read the map and find his way across the desert.

He succeeded in this mission and many others. As a member of Israel's most elite commando force, he crossed borders in disguise and rescued hostages from hijacked airplanes. As a rising officer, he commanded a tank battalion in the fiercest battles of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He retired from the military after 36 years as Chief of Staff, commander of the armed forces, and Israel's most decorated soldier.

On leaving the military, he answered the call of his friend and mentor, Yitzhak Rabin, to enter politics and join Rabin's cabinet. After Rabin's death, Ehud Barak became leader of Israel's Labor Party, and only four years after entering political life, won election as Prime Minister of Israel. As Prime Minister, he brought Israel closer than ever before to a final peace agreement with the Palestinians. The leader of Israel's Labor Party, he now serves as Minister of Defense in a multi-party coalition government, working to obtain a lasting peace while preserving his nation's security.