A political earthquake shook Israel yesterday when the Chairman of the Labor party, Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced that he would defect from Labor and form a new party called “independence.” It’s his way of defying the wishes of Labor’s other members to withdraw from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition. He and four other Labor members of parliament will stick with Netanyahu under a different guise.

But while he may have staged a bit of a political theater he’s being vilified in the Israeli press as a coward who put the final nail in the coffin of the Labor party.

The Labor party for many years, the biggest and strongest party in Israel is the party of founding father David Ben-Gurion, and slain peacemaker Yitzhak Rabin. Labor dominated Israeli politics for almost the first 30 years since the country’s inception. “Labor” – even its name symbolizing the hard work and socialist ethos of Israel’s kibbutznik past.

Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper called him Ehud Barah, a wordplay. Barah means “runaway” in Hebrew. The implication is clear He’s being viewed as a deserter and a coward by many here. Other headlines called him “the symbol of failure”, “demolition man” and columnist Ari Shavit from Ha’aretz summed up many Israelis sentiments writing Ehud Barak will be remembered not as the captain of the ship of Labor that led it safely to port, but the one who steered it to crash on jagged rocks.