Omer Bar-Lev ( he, עֹמֶר בַּר־לֵב; born 2 October 1953) is an Israeli politician who formerly served as Minister of Public Security. He was previously a member of the Knesset for the Israeli Labor Party. He was placed seventh on the party's list for the
2013 Israeli legislative election
Early elections for the nineteenth Knesset were held in Israel on 22 January 2013. Public debate over the Tal Law had nearly led to early elections in 2012, but they were aborted at the last moment after Kadima briefly joined the government. Th ...
, and serves as the Party's point person on issues of peace and defense. Bar-Lev is an IDF reserve officer with the rank of colonel (Aluf mishne), who was commander of the Sayeret Matkal elite commando unit between 1984 and 1987.
Ashkenazi Jewish
Ashkenazi Jews ( ; he, יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, translit=Yehudei Ashkenaz, ; yi, אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ''Ashkenazim'',, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: , singu ...
family with origins from Austria. His father is former IDF Chief of Staff and government minister Haim Bar-Lev. Bar-Lev is married again to Tami, a video editor, and father of three children.
Military career
He was drafted in 1971, and went on to command Israel's most elite special forces unit Sayeret Matkal and later the Jordan Valley Brigade. During his service in Sayeret Matkal, Bar-Lev took part in famous operations including the Savoy Hotel and Entebbe. In the early 1990s, Bar-Lev served as a member of the IDF's negotiations with the Palestinians that led to the Gaza–Jericho Agreement, and later to the negotiations that led to the Israel–Jordan peace treaty.
Over the span of his military career, which lasted from 1971 to 1994, Bar-Lev left the IDF twice. In the late 1970s, Bar-Lev studied agronomy and agriculture at the Hebrew University's Faculty of Agriculture at Rehovot, and received his B.Sc. in 1980. After commanding Sayeret Matkal, Bar-Lev left the army again in 1987 in order to study for his master's degree in international relations at Tel Aviv University. As part of his M.A. studies, Bar-Lev wrote a thesis on potential security arrangements with Syria, which later became the book entitled ''Security Arrangements in the Golan for the Age of Modern Warfare''. He also joined a group of reserve soldiers who, in 1978, wrote a letter to Prime Minister
Menachem Begin
Menachem Begin ( ''Menaḥem Begin'' (); pl, Menachem Begin (Polish documents, 1931–1937); ''Menakhem Volfovich Begin''; 16 August 1913 – 9 March 1992) was an Israeli politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of Israel. B ...
urging him to sign a peace deal with Egypt.
Business career
After retiring from the IDF in 1994 with the rank of colonel, Bar-Lev became a technology entrepreneur and social activist. Among other positions, he was, from 2001 to 2013, the Founder and CEO of Paieon, Inc., a medical imaging company.
Political career
After the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Bar-Lev joined the organization "Generation of Peace", and within this framework, he founded the movement ''"Acharai"'', a slogan used in the IDF to mean "Follow me", and is used to galvanize a group towards a common goal. Acharai works to empower marginalized Israeli youth, and educate them in democracy and Zionism. Over the past 15 years, Acharai worked with some 20,000 youth, and today enrolls about 4,000 participants in its programs annually.
In 2012, Bar-Lev decided to run for Knesset with the Israeli Labor Party, and was chosen as the number seven on its candidates list. With the 2013 national elections, in which Labor won 15 seats, Bar-Lev became a Member of the
19th Knesset
The members of the 19th Knesset were elected on 22 January 2013, and sworn in on 5 February.PA to address security and resource concerns. However, the plan argues that in the event that negotiations fail, Israel must take proactive steps to maintain its identity. To this end, Bar-Lev proposed a series of partial Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank aimed at minimizing the number of Palestinians living under IDF military rule and transferring responsibility for those areas to the PA.
Bar-Lev ran for the leadership of the Labor Party in
2017
File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a ser ...
, and won 6.9% of the vote in the first round.
Controversy
After the
2022 Beersheba attack
On March 22, 2022, four people were killed and two more were injured during a stabbing and vehicle-ramming attack by an Islamic State supporter in Beersheba, Israel.
Background
In early 2022, a string of clashes between Israeli security forc ...
, Bar-Lev was criticized for a statement he made at the funeral of one of the victims, promising to jail the terrorist who committed the attack. The terrorist died during the attack. He was also criticized for omitting that the victim was killed due to her Jewish faith.