"Although in '98 everything seemed dark because of Rabin's murder, I believed we could still move the peace process ahead more quickly. I did not think we'd have so many problems. I believed the separation between the West Bank and Gaza would make things easier, not harder. I did not imagine that we would leave Gaza and they would fire Qassams from there; I did not imagine that Hamas would show so strongly in the elections."
-- from an inteview with Shimon Peres in Ha'aretz by Lily Galili
Since Ehud Olmert is a bit indisposed, the honors have fallen to Shimon Peres. It is he who as President of Israel has met with foreign journalists to remind them – and they do need reminding – of what Israel has achieved in the sixty years of its existence. Seven hot wars and two intifadas, along with unceasing economic and diplomatic warfare did not prevent Israel from becoming the refuge and hope for Jews, and, despite having no natural resources – no oil, for example, to match the trillions that its mortal enemies pile up thanks not to any industriousness or entrepreneurial flair or inventive genius, but purely to an accident of geology – an example to the rest of the world, of how to build a nation-state. And this building has been achieved not because of, but despite, having a political class unworthy of its citizens, a problem not confined to Israel.
One member of that permanent class is Shimon Peres. For the past three decades Shimon Peres has not only played the fool, but has been the fool. Perhaps now, at long last, after the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza, reality has begun to sunk in. At least he has publicly admitted of his surprise – he, Peres, is always being surprised – at what happened in Gaza once the Israelis left, abandoning Jewish towns (not “settlements” but towns), which was, of course, what anyone of sense could, and did, predict. And it is exactly the lesson of Gaza that applies to the “West Bank,” though perhaps Shimon Peres is incapable of drawing that conclusion. He certainly cannot, at this point, begin to ponder the Islamic basis for Arab and Muslim opposition –murderous opposition – to the permanent existence of Israel. It would be too painful. He can’t do it.
Shall we let bygones be bygones? Shall those who care about the survival of Israel pay attention, on this anniverary, in a spirit of untruth and reconciliation, to what Peres did that was right, long ago, when he helped create Israel’s essential, never-to-be-surrendered nuclear deterrent, and ignore the way he has been, the damage he has done, for the past thirty years, ever since Sadat came to Israel to be hailed as Saint Sadat, Prince of Peace?
No, we shouldn’t. Like Ariel Sharon, who founded Unit 101 and successfully suppressed terror from Jordan, and in the 1948 war and 1967 war and 1973 war was a spectacular commander, but who in his last years expelled Jewish villagers, and tore down their villages and towns, and provided the precedent of the Gaza surrender, and Ehud Olmert, and thus did damage that may have outweighed the good he once did. And Shimon Peres, who in the 1950s helped foster the nuclear-weapons project, by his later words and deeds, undid whatever good he may once have done.
In his famous speech (“The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne/Burned on the water…”) in "Antony and Cleopatra" , Enobarbus ends with an image of those pretty dimpled boys, fanning Cleopatra and her retinue, cooling them down but at the same time heating them up, so that “what they undid, did.”
It’s the same with Shimon Peres and Ariel Sharon, but in scansion-smashing reverse: “What they did, they undid.”
Those who still don’t know what folly Peres encouraged need to take a look at “Shimon Says,” a compilation, by Rael Jean Isaac and Roger Gerber, of his most self-damning remarks:
"Peres views himself as a visionary (he has stated, "I got a license to become a dreamer")2 and is someone who speaks him mind openly. In view of his central position in Israeli political life, and in the Oslo process especially, we offer a sampling of some characteristically idiosyncratic utterances in recent years.
PEACE PROCESS
This is not a negotiation of give and take because Israel has something to give but has nothing to take.3
I don't think we should judge the process by the performance of Yasir Arafat. We're not negotiating with Yasir Arafat. We're negotiating with ourselves.4
Papers are papers and realities are realities. We cannot judge the PLO and its leader just by what he is saying. Would we do so, we would be completely wrong and we would be in troubles.5
[Responding to an interviewer who asked "Are you saying that what Arafat told you in Oslo is sufficient, that he does not have to sign any new commitments?"] I am not a notary who writes affidavits.6
[Asked about Arab statements that there would be no peace without an Arab Jerusalem]: These are only words. Let them talk.7
[Reacting to an Arab song, "Zionist, your death is in my hands"]: There are those who sing and those who shoot. I'm checking out those who shoot.8
THE NEW MIDDLE EAST
We are going to copy a European example which is called Benelux. I hope the relations between the Jordanians, the Palestinians, and us will be very much of the same nature that exists in Benelux.9
A Middle East where holiness will overcome oiliness . . .10
[In Gaza] a dynamic reconstruction has started. . . . Women are throwing away their veils and are going swimming in the sea.11
STRATEGY
I have always tended to be overly optimistic.12
An army that can occupy knowledge has yet to be built. And that is why armies of occupation are passé.13
It is no wonder that war, as a matter of conducting human affairs, is in its death throes and that the time has come to bury it.14
Anyone who wants peace and security will get neither.15
It was a mistake to bomb the nuclear reactor in Iraq.16
Between ten bunkers and ten hotels, ten hotels are also defense.17
ECONOMICS
We claim that the United States and Europe became so productive that the only thing you can really produce is unemployment. The more productive you are becoming, the more unemployed people you are having. The time has come to export your unemployment.18
In technology, we have an advantage over the former Soviet Union, because our technology is more advanced. We have an advantage over the United States, because our prices are less capitalistic.19
DEMOCRACY
As a protégé of David Ben-Gurion, I subscribe to his philosophy that "I may not know what the people want; I do know what is good for the people."20
ZIONISM
We are discovering that all the things we are fighting for are not so important.21
The more we give up land, we discover we have more Ph.D.s per kilometer -- so we are going to make a living on the Ph.D.s and not on the mileage.22
We live in a world where markets are more important than countries.23
POLITICS
[To those who disagree with his vision]: It's a changed world and . . . you are out of date.24
[In the Knesset, to Benjamin Netanyahu]: You were in America and you are still in a daze. You have just come back and, believe you me, you have not got a clue what we are talking about.25
THE FUTURE
We are in transition from a world of identifiable enemies to one of unidentifiable problems.26
What we have to do is to economize our policies, and not to politicize our economies, which is so costly and so expensive. Dictatorship, nowadays, is so expensive that only rich countries can afford it. Poor countries can hardly suffer it -- with an outsized secret service, the censorship, the permanent control, the worries, the suspicion, the narrowness, the closeness, the ignorance.27
I have become totally tired of history, because I feel history is a long misunderstanding.28
SHIMON PERES
I feel in some ways the most independent political figure in Israel. Nobody can add to what I have done, and nobody can take away from what I did.29
[Describing his courtship]: Her name was Sonia, and she was eventually to become my wife. I sought to impress her by reading to her, sometimes by the light of the moon, selected passages from Marx's Das Kapital.30
1 Shimon Peres, Battling for Peace (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 170.
2 Pennsylvania Gazette, Nov. 1994.
3 Statement before the 50th Session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, Geneva, Feb. 10, 1994.
4 Jewish Week (New York), June 2, 1994.
5 Heritage (Los Angeles), June 3, 1994.
6 Israel Radio, May 23, 1994.
7 Speech in New York City, May 23, 1994.
8 The Jerusalem Post International Edition, Feb. 3, 1996.
9 Address to Council of the Socialist International, Oct. 6, 1993.
10 Remarks to Fourth Business Forum Conference, Jerusalem, Feb. 28, 1994.
11 Die Welt, July 14, 1995.
12 Shimon Peres, The New Middle East (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993), p. 18.
13 Remarks on acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, Dec. 10, 1994.
14 Ibid.
15 The Jerusalem Post, May 7, 1995.
16 Ha'aretz, Dec. 24, 1995.
17 Ha'aretz, Jan. 29, 1996.
18 Speech to The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Feb. 2, 1994.
19 Remarks before the Knesset Economic Committee on the Arab Boycott, Feb. 21, 1994.
20 The Jerusalem Post International Edition, Dec. 23, 1995.
21 Jewish Week, June 2, 1994.
22 Pennsylvania Gazette, Nov. 1994.
23 Ibid.
24 Speech in New York City, May 23, 1994.
25 IBA television, Jerusalem, Aug. 30, 1995.
26 The New Middle East, p. 82.
27 Remarks to Fourth Business Forum Conference, Jerusalem, Feb. 28, 1994.
28 The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 30, 1994.
29 The Jerusalem Post International Edition, July 16, 1994.
30 Battling for Peace, p. 25.
So Shimon Peres when young used to court his wife by reading aloud to her aloud from "Das Kapital." Note to froggies who would a-wooing go: apparently it worked. One would like to know what other texts Peres found particularly useful in his later celebrated womanizing. Possibly Lenin on Renegade Kautsky? Or excerpts from Stalin's "Short Course"?
Physically Shimon Peres reminds one of Chico Marx. Mentally Peres reminds one of the Fool of Chelm. And for too long, in Israel, over the past 30 years when he started to undo what he had done, Shimon Peres has been near – or even at – the helm.
