Ehud Barak was a visiting research fellow at CSIS in the spring of 1995. After a 35-year military career, Barak made a transition to politics that culminated four years later in his election as prime minister of Israel. Barak retired as army chief of staff in 1995 and joined the left-leaning Labor Party as a protege of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. He served briefly as interior minister under Rabin and as foreign minister under Rabin's successor Shimon Peres. Israel's most decorated soldier, Barak enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) at age 17. In 1972 he led an elite commando unit in successfully storming a Belgian airliner hijacked by Palestinian guerrillas at Tel Aviv Airport. In 1982 he was appointed head of the IDF intelligence branch, in 1986 he was appointed commander of the IDF central command, and in 1987 he was appointed deputy chief-of-staff. In 1991 he assumed the post of chief of general staff and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general, the highest in the Israeli military. Barak received his B.S. degree in physics and mathematics from Hebrew University in 1976 and his M.S. degree in economic engineering systems from Stanford University in 1978.
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