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Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of deliberately stoking tensions with Türkiye for political gain, calling the escalation "reckless and foolish" in a series of posts on the social media platform X.
Barak, who served as Israel's 10th prime minister and 14th Military chief of staff, wrote late Wednesday that Netanyahu's approach to Türkiye "strongly reeks of a political motive to go into elections with a string of security tensions that would fuel public anxiety."
The post, published shortly before 10:20 p.m. local time, had drawn more than 117,000 views within hours.
In a follow-up post, Barak argued that Türkiye does not pose the kind of threat Israel faces from Iran or the Syria of former president Bashar Assad.
"There is no strategic problem with Türkiye that cannot be resolved, mitigated, or postponed over the long term through discreet contacts coordinated with the United States and its influence in Türkiye and Syria," he wrote, adding that Netanyahu "has completely gone off the rails."
Barak went further in a third post, describing Netanyahu's conduct as driven not by Israel's security needs but by the "survival manipulations of a compulsive gambler," pointing to what he called the prime minister's failure to secure any of his stated wartime objectives and an anticipated political defeat in roughly two months.
He said the approach was unsettling Israel's remaining allies and partners in the region.
Barak said Israel's security would be better served by Netanyahu's eventual successors, whose "combined security experience," judgment and sense of responsibility, he argued, far exceed the prime minister's own.
He said any substantive handling of the Türkiye issue should wait until after the election.
Netanyahu's government is heading toward a national election, with Barak's remarks arriving amid a broader campaign in which the prime minister has increasingly cast Türkiye as a regional adversary alongside Iran and Hezbollah.
In his final post, Barak said the damage he believes Netanyahu has already caused to Israel's security and diplomatic standing over the past three years "will take a long time to fix," and cautioned against "more and more foolish steps that will come back to us like a boomerang."
Netanyahu's office did not immediately respond to Barak's remarks. Barak, who also served as Israel's defense minister from 2007 to 2013, has repeatedly criticized Netanyahu's handling of security and diplomatic affairs in recent months.
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