Peres vs. Peres
The Jerusalem Post
Dec. 13, 2003
By Martin Sherman
In his "First Word" opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post entitled "Israel's two greatest mistakes" (December 5), Shimon Peres argues that our greatest blunders were first, the failure to take Anwar Sadat's peace offers seriously and thereby avoid the 1973 Yom Kippur War; and second, the Likud's insistence on constructing settlements across the 1967 Green Line, squandering huge sums which could have been invested elsewhere.
Peres goes on to regret the absence of David Ben-Gurion, who, in his view, would have ended the conflict through territorial concessions - much as Peres's Oslo policy purported to do.
As Peres put it, "had we invested the necessary energy in making peace with Egypt after Nasser's death and before the Yom Kippur War, we would probably have avoided that war and might have achieved a different kind of peace accord than we got at Camp David."
However, according to his own public statements, it is clear that one of the greatest opponents to Ben-Gurion's supposed largesse would have been none other than Shimon Peres himself.
Consider the following quotation made several years after the Yom Kippur War. In a detailed programmatic book entitled Tomorrow is Now (Keter, 1978), Peres blatantly rejects the Sadat "peace proposal" that Ben-Gurion would have allegedly accepted prior to 1973: "Now Sadat proposes a peace treaty in this generation. However, it may be the present generation of Arabs is not able to live in the full harmony of peace with the people of Israel; this is something that cannot be ignored. Perhaps the present Arab generation can do no more than reach an interim agreement; but such an agreement cannot involve a return to the 1967 borders or the establishment of a Palestinian state" (p. 232 - all translations are mine).
Indeed, Peres was quite explicit in his opposition to a Palestinian state, declaring in a chillingly accurate prophesy: "The establishment of such a state means the inflow of combat-ready Palestinian forces (more than 25,000 men under arms) into Judea and Samaria; this force, together with the local youth, will double itself in a short time.
It will not be short of weapons or other [military] equipment, and in a short space of time, an infrastructure for waging war will be set up in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. Israel will have problems in preserving day-to-day security, which may drive the country into war or undermine the morale of its citizens. In time of war, the frontiers of the Palestinian state will constitute an excellent staging point for mobile forces to mount attacks on infrastructure installations vital for Israel's existence... and to cause bloodshed among the population... in areas adjacent to the frontier-line." (p. 232.)
In his Post article, Peres laments the settlement enterprise as a "tragic missed opportunity." "Had the Likud and its leaders accepted Ben-Gurion's view 25 years ago, the whole country would look, and live, differently. Tremendous sums of money invested in the territories would have been invested in the Negev. Instead of cultivating a cruel fight between us and our neighbors, we would have developed the alternative 'fight': with the Negev wilderness."
But who was among the chief architects of the settlements and one of their most ardent advocates? Again, Shimon Peres.
In the same 1978 book Peres wrote: "[Israel needs] to create a continuous stretch of new settlements; to bolster Jerusalem and the surrounding hills, from the north, from the east, and from the south and from the west, by means of the establishment of townships, suburbs and villages - Ma'aleh Adumim, Ofra, Gilo, Beit El, Givon and Nahal outposts - to ensure that the capital and its flanks are secured and underpinned by urban and rural settlements.
These settlements will be connected to the coastal plain and Jordan Valley by new lateral axis roads; the settlements along the Jordan River are intended to establish the Jordan River as [Israel's] de facto security border; however, it is the settlements on the western slopes of the hills of Samaria and Judea which will deliver us from the curse of Israel's 'narrow waist'" (p. 48).
Peres writes now that Israel's tragic "mistake was falling in love, without bounds, without demographic considerations, with the territories." Yet it was Peres who urged the nation to expedite its development of the territories, warning, "What we do not do today, we will sorely regret for generations, but what we invest and develop today will be accumulated wealth for generations. It is better that we owe money but develop our land, rather than lose land (whose value will ever-increase) and save money (whose value will ever-decrease)" (p. 49).
With regard to the Golan, Peres is no more consistent. He currently claims, "I know from my contacts with Hafez Assad that he was prepared to take an initiative that would have turned an agreement with Syria into an agreement with all the Arab countries." This is totally at odds with his former resolute affirmation of the enduring need for Israeli settlement of the Golan, declaring: "The purpose of the settlements in the Golan is to ensure that this territorial platform will no longer constitute a danger, but a barrier against a surprise attack" (p. 48).
Accordingly, if Peres is right in what he diagnoses as Israel's greatest mistakes, then he is undeniably among the chief perpetrators and instigators of these historic blunders. If he is wrong, then he is guilty of abandoning those who, at his behest, established their homes in the territories across the 1967 borders.
Either way, some humility would seem to be in order from a leader who has demonstrated a lack of foresight, staggering historical amnesia, or both.
The writer lectures in political science at Tel Aviv University.
Shimon Peres
An obstacle to peace
Saturday, December 13, 2003
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Peres bears the mark of Cain
Unrepentant Shimon
The Jerusalem Post
September 25, 2003
by Uri Dan
Even the 80th birthday celebrations Shimon Peres arranged for himself this week could not, thank God, ever turn him into an Israeli prime minister.
So we can relax. It was enough to hear Peres's defense of Yasser Arafat, his co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, to realize that Peres is living in an imaginary world.
"I want to be honest, and I don't care what they say: I believe it was right to give him the Nobel Prize," said Peres in a speech. He continued: "He made a mistake by failing to dismantle groups opposed to peace with the Jewish state. He spoke against, but did not act against them."
In 1994 Peres himself, as foreign minister, shared the peace prize with Arafat, together with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. So in attempting to justify the award to Arafat, he was, in effect, defending himself. Were Peres living in the real world, were he truly honest with himself, as well as with his nation he would have returned the prize.
Palestinian terrorists never before used so great a quantity of explosives including the dynamite Nobel invented to kill innocent Jews as they have since Peres and Arafat received that peace prize.
The files of the GSS and army intelligence are overflowing with reliable documents proving that Arafat himself gave the orders, the directions and the money to perpetrate these terrorist acts. And it has been going on not only over the past three years, but ever since Rabin and Peres permitted Arafat to return to the Gaza Strip in the summer of 1994, together with thousands of armed "policemen."
Of course there are more recent documents linking Arafat directly to the current terrorist offensive, in which more than 800 Israelis have been killed and thousands injured.
And all this Peres calls "a mistake." What was the mistake? That Arafat did not dismantle the terrorist organizations, but as those incriminating documents prove encouraged them, and goes on encouraging them, to continue their terrorist attacks. Which is why not only Prime Minister Ariel Sharon but also President George W. Bush have concluded that as long as Arafat is around there will be no progress toward peace.
Peres's latter days shame his younger years. Truly it may be said about him who loves to boast in broken French that he is familiar with French history what was once said about the Bourbon dynasty: "They learned nothing and forgot nothing."
Can it be said that Peres is an egocentric person, unable to admit his mistakes even when surrounded by the victims of his policies? Can his defense of the award of the Nobel Prize to a serial killer of Jews be explained by the fact that, at 80, a person is liable to lose his judgment? No. This is Shimon Peres at his best: An irresponsible leader, or perhaps one with "flexible responsibility."
There were times when this irresponsibility was exploited for the good of the state. But that happened a long time ago, when Israel had a responsible prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
Ben-Gurion wanted to give Israel a nuclear option and assumed the responsibility for it. But in order to set up this security wall he needed an adventurer willing to cooperate with France in order to construct a nuclear reactor in Dimona a seemingly irresponsible financial, political and scientific adventure.
However, Ben-Gurion, who was a responsible leader, knew how to ensure that Peres would not exceed the bounds of his flexible responsibility in this secret undertaking. He permitted him to lay the foundations for Israel Aircraft Industries.
Small, poor Israel producing modern aircraft? It sounded like a crazy dream. But under the balanced leadership of Ben-Gurion, Peres could recruit Al Schwimmer for an adventure that became reality.
Even when Peres served as foreign minister a year ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon knew how to restrain his tendency toward destructive adventurism, permitting Peres to travel again and again to his ally Arafat, "to bring peace." As could be expected, he brought more terror. "Meet with Arafat. Invite him to visit my farm. Shake his hand," Sharon said to Peres, to get him to enter the swamp of blood.
"Uproot the settlements in Gaza as a gesture to Arafat," Peres pleaded in return. Sharon, an experienced and responsible leader and the last real pupil of Ben-Gurion, rejected all these requests by Peres out of hand.
Rabin, in contrast, lacked backbone as prime minister which allowed Peres to bloom in all his irresponsibility. In order to achieve the Oslo agreement, Peres conducted meetings with the PLO through his deputy, Yossi Beilin, using messenger boy Uri Savir as one of his envoys, all in opposition to Rabin's policy. He reported none of this to the prime minister.
Then when Peres revealed the trap into which he had led him, Rabin was too weak to resist. He even agreed to Peres's demand that the professional intelligence services, the GSS, the Mossad and the General Staff not be involved, not even in the final stages of the Oslo agreement. As a result, they knew virtually nothing about it.
In other words, in the most fateful negotiations between Israel and Arafat's PLO, neither Peres nor Rabin permitted the participation of the nation's most important security institutions apparently in the knowledge that their files contained information indicating that Arafat would not honor a single agreement; and that he intended to reach the gates of Jerusalem, from where he would continue the terrorist offensive and destroy the Jewish state.
All this goes some way toward explaining how an unrepentant Peres could have dared this week, once again, to defend the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Arafat, while the blood of hundreds of his innocent victims cries out from the earth.
You should live to 120, Shimon, bearing the mark of Cain on your forehead. That is your punishment.
The writer is Israel correspondent for The New York Post.
The Jerusalem Post
September 25, 2003
by Uri Dan
Even the 80th birthday celebrations Shimon Peres arranged for himself this week could not, thank God, ever turn him into an Israeli prime minister.
So we can relax. It was enough to hear Peres's defense of Yasser Arafat, his co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, to realize that Peres is living in an imaginary world.
"I want to be honest, and I don't care what they say: I believe it was right to give him the Nobel Prize," said Peres in a speech. He continued: "He made a mistake by failing to dismantle groups opposed to peace with the Jewish state. He spoke against, but did not act against them."
In 1994 Peres himself, as foreign minister, shared the peace prize with Arafat, together with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. So in attempting to justify the award to Arafat, he was, in effect, defending himself. Were Peres living in the real world, were he truly honest with himself, as well as with his nation he would have returned the prize.
Palestinian terrorists never before used so great a quantity of explosives including the dynamite Nobel invented to kill innocent Jews as they have since Peres and Arafat received that peace prize.
The files of the GSS and army intelligence are overflowing with reliable documents proving that Arafat himself gave the orders, the directions and the money to perpetrate these terrorist acts. And it has been going on not only over the past three years, but ever since Rabin and Peres permitted Arafat to return to the Gaza Strip in the summer of 1994, together with thousands of armed "policemen."
Of course there are more recent documents linking Arafat directly to the current terrorist offensive, in which more than 800 Israelis have been killed and thousands injured.
And all this Peres calls "a mistake." What was the mistake? That Arafat did not dismantle the terrorist organizations, but as those incriminating documents prove encouraged them, and goes on encouraging them, to continue their terrorist attacks. Which is why not only Prime Minister Ariel Sharon but also President George W. Bush have concluded that as long as Arafat is around there will be no progress toward peace.
Peres's latter days shame his younger years. Truly it may be said about him who loves to boast in broken French that he is familiar with French history what was once said about the Bourbon dynasty: "They learned nothing and forgot nothing."
Can it be said that Peres is an egocentric person, unable to admit his mistakes even when surrounded by the victims of his policies? Can his defense of the award of the Nobel Prize to a serial killer of Jews be explained by the fact that, at 80, a person is liable to lose his judgment? No. This is Shimon Peres at his best: An irresponsible leader, or perhaps one with "flexible responsibility."
There were times when this irresponsibility was exploited for the good of the state. But that happened a long time ago, when Israel had a responsible prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
Ben-Gurion wanted to give Israel a nuclear option and assumed the responsibility for it. But in order to set up this security wall he needed an adventurer willing to cooperate with France in order to construct a nuclear reactor in Dimona a seemingly irresponsible financial, political and scientific adventure.
However, Ben-Gurion, who was a responsible leader, knew how to ensure that Peres would not exceed the bounds of his flexible responsibility in this secret undertaking. He permitted him to lay the foundations for Israel Aircraft Industries.
Small, poor Israel producing modern aircraft? It sounded like a crazy dream. But under the balanced leadership of Ben-Gurion, Peres could recruit Al Schwimmer for an adventure that became reality.
Even when Peres served as foreign minister a year ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon knew how to restrain his tendency toward destructive adventurism, permitting Peres to travel again and again to his ally Arafat, "to bring peace." As could be expected, he brought more terror. "Meet with Arafat. Invite him to visit my farm. Shake his hand," Sharon said to Peres, to get him to enter the swamp of blood.
"Uproot the settlements in Gaza as a gesture to Arafat," Peres pleaded in return. Sharon, an experienced and responsible leader and the last real pupil of Ben-Gurion, rejected all these requests by Peres out of hand.
Rabin, in contrast, lacked backbone as prime minister which allowed Peres to bloom in all his irresponsibility. In order to achieve the Oslo agreement, Peres conducted meetings with the PLO through his deputy, Yossi Beilin, using messenger boy Uri Savir as one of his envoys, all in opposition to Rabin's policy. He reported none of this to the prime minister.
Then when Peres revealed the trap into which he had led him, Rabin was too weak to resist. He even agreed to Peres's demand that the professional intelligence services, the GSS, the Mossad and the General Staff not be involved, not even in the final stages of the Oslo agreement. As a result, they knew virtually nothing about it.
In other words, in the most fateful negotiations between Israel and Arafat's PLO, neither Peres nor Rabin permitted the participation of the nation's most important security institutions apparently in the knowledge that their files contained information indicating that Arafat would not honor a single agreement; and that he intended to reach the gates of Jerusalem, from where he would continue the terrorist offensive and destroy the Jewish state.
All this goes some way toward explaining how an unrepentant Peres could have dared this week, once again, to defend the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Arafat, while the blood of hundreds of his innocent victims cries out from the earth.
You should live to 120, Shimon, bearing the mark of Cain on your forehead. That is your punishment.
The writer is Israel correspondent for The New York Post.
Sunday, September 21, 2003
Is Peres a narcissist, or just a Stalinist?
Peres's 80th birthday web site goes on-line
www.ynet.co.il
September 21, 2003
by Gal Mor
It's worth your while taking a peek at the Internet site that was unveiled on the occasion of the birthday of the leader of the opposition, Shimon Peres, and not only because of the events that were deleted from his CV, the selected quotes or the posters in his honor.
The new Internet site marking the 80th birthday celebrations of the leader of the opposition, MK Shimon Peres, has been unveiled.
The new site, which at this stage appears only in English (the Hebrew version is slated to appear in another two days), includes a graphic timeline, on which details from Peres's CV are included, beginning with his birth in Belarus (in the 1920s), photos of Peres's life during Israel's years of immigration and absorption (1934-1990), the years on Kibbutz Alumot, his activity as director general of the Ministry of Defense (1950), and his positions in government and the Knesset.
The important milestones that were deleted from Peres's CV are more interesting than the events that are mentioned on the site. Splitting off from Mapai in 1965, together with David Ben-Gurion, and joining up with Rafi (which Peres served as secretary-general), for example, wasn't mentioned at all. The same with his losses in the campaigns for the leadership of the Labor party in 1974 and 1977, when Peres was named party chairman only after the resignation of Yitzhak Rabin (following the disclosure of his wife Leah's dollar account), and his subsequent loss in the Knesset elections.
In addition, the London agreement, which he signed with King Hussein of Jordan in 1987, but which was rejected by the then-prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, is not mentioned. The "stinking maneuver" (March 1990) is not mentioned on the site, and Arafat was blacked-out of the photo of the signing ceremony of the Oslo agreement even though the other leaders who participated in the ceremony are clearly discerned.
Peres's loss in the 1996 elections is attributed to terror attacks ("terror attacks once again led Peres to the opposition," according to the site), and the years the Labor party spent in Sharon's government under Peres's leadership do not appear.
Also on the site: A link to the Peres Center for Peace's web site, greetings from world leaders on Peres's birthday, a photo album, a poster exhibition on Peres by students of design and art, and greetings from web surfers (with the possibility of adding a greeting yourself).
There is also an area full of Peres's quotes, including statements like "we are moving from a world of borders to a world of horizons," and "technology doesn't need a visa, ideas aren't inspected at customs," "the moment you are connected to the Internet in your room, the room becomes a part of the world, the wall and the distance will not prevent you from connecting."
In the framework of the birthday events, a panel discussion will be held tomorrow at Tel Aviv University on the topic of "the promises and risks of science and technology," with the participation of the founders of the Google search engine, Sergei Brin, who arrived in Israel together with Larry Page, and Yossi Vardi.
www.ynet.co.il
September 21, 2003
by Gal Mor
It's worth your while taking a peek at the Internet site that was unveiled on the occasion of the birthday of the leader of the opposition, Shimon Peres, and not only because of the events that were deleted from his CV, the selected quotes or the posters in his honor.
The new Internet site marking the 80th birthday celebrations of the leader of the opposition, MK Shimon Peres, has been unveiled.
The new site, which at this stage appears only in English (the Hebrew version is slated to appear in another two days), includes a graphic timeline, on which details from Peres's CV are included, beginning with his birth in Belarus (in the 1920s), photos of Peres's life during Israel's years of immigration and absorption (1934-1990), the years on Kibbutz Alumot, his activity as director general of the Ministry of Defense (1950), and his positions in government and the Knesset.
The important milestones that were deleted from Peres's CV are more interesting than the events that are mentioned on the site. Splitting off from Mapai in 1965, together with David Ben-Gurion, and joining up with Rafi (which Peres served as secretary-general), for example, wasn't mentioned at all. The same with his losses in the campaigns for the leadership of the Labor party in 1974 and 1977, when Peres was named party chairman only after the resignation of Yitzhak Rabin (following the disclosure of his wife Leah's dollar account), and his subsequent loss in the Knesset elections.
In addition, the London agreement, which he signed with King Hussein of Jordan in 1987, but which was rejected by the then-prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, is not mentioned. The "stinking maneuver" (March 1990) is not mentioned on the site, and Arafat was blacked-out of the photo of the signing ceremony of the Oslo agreement even though the other leaders who participated in the ceremony are clearly discerned.
Peres's loss in the 1996 elections is attributed to terror attacks ("terror attacks once again led Peres to the opposition," according to the site), and the years the Labor party spent in Sharon's government under Peres's leadership do not appear.
Also on the site: A link to the Peres Center for Peace's web site, greetings from world leaders on Peres's birthday, a photo album, a poster exhibition on Peres by students of design and art, and greetings from web surfers (with the possibility of adding a greeting yourself).
There is also an area full of Peres's quotes, including statements like "we are moving from a world of borders to a world of horizons," and "technology doesn't need a visa, ideas aren't inspected at customs," "the moment you are connected to the Internet in your room, the room becomes a part of the world, the wall and the distance will not prevent you from connecting."
In the framework of the birthday events, a panel discussion will be held tomorrow at Tel Aviv University on the topic of "the promises and risks of science and technology," with the participation of the founders of the Google search engine, Sergei Brin, who arrived in Israel together with Larry Page, and Yossi Vardi.
Friday, September 19, 2003
The man is a megalomaniac
The land of delusion
The Jerusalem Post
September 19, 2003
COLUMN ONE By Caroline Glick
This coming Sunday, Israel's Who's Who will be joined by the rich and famous from around the world at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv to celebrate Shimon Peres's 80th birthday. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to attend the festival, as is former US president Bill Clinton. Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela are also set to be there.
More than providing the public with yet another display of Peres's narcissism, the gala event will show the yawning gap between the world we occupy and the world occupied by Peres and his friends and supporters. In the world we live in, every promise of peace and a New Middle East has not only been broken, but has blown up in our faces. In the world we live in,the notion that it is either possible or desirable to negotiate a peace deal with the PLO has been rent asunder.
But in the Land of Peres, it is reality, not Peres, that is wrong. It is reality that is doomed to be remembered in history as a failure. It is reality that is to be condemned as not merely inconvenient but as impossible to countenance.
And so it is that 10 years after that first handshake on the lawn of the White House Rose Garden, Peres defends Yasser Arafat and condemns Israel. In a recent television interview with Fareed Zakaria on MSNBC, the erstwhile foreign minister held up Arafat as a paragon for combating Hamas in 1996, after 60 Israelis were blown to bits in eight days of carnage.When Zakaria asked him why Arafat stopped combating Hamas, Peres replied that it was the fault of his successor, Binyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu, according to Peres, was to blame for Arafat not combating Hamas because Netanyahu was not forthcoming enough in negotiations with Peres's Nobel co-laureate.
Never mind that Peres's entire claim that Arafat fought Hamas is a lie. Arafat, ahead of the 1996 general elections in Israel, rounded up, as he was wont to do, several hundred "usual suspects." Less than a week later, and before the elections had taken place, he had already released more than a hundred of them. At the same time, Muhammad Dahlan, then head of his Preventive Security Service in the Gaza Strip, was actively hiding Hamas terror chief Muhammad Deif, who had orchestrated the attacks. And Peres knew this.
The upshot of all that Peres has told us for the past decade is that he cannot be held responsible for the consequences of his strategies. He must only be congratulated for the hope he bestowed on us all.
And here in lays the entire problem not just with Peres but with all his honored guests and supporters. While some continue to blame Israel for the Palestinian war being fought against the state, others claim to be more"pragmatic." These people are willing to allow that Arafat is not a partner in peace, but still protest that Israel must move ahead with the non-existent peace process, "along the lines of the Camp David proposals."
And so it is that former US Middle East mediator Dennis Ross came to write an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this week protesting the government's decision to "remove" Arafat. Ross, who was the only Oslo pusher to acknowledge that Arafat would never cut a peace deal with Israel, explained that if Israel were to expel Arafat from its heartland, it would have to be in the context of large Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.
Like Peres, Ross refuses to acknowledge reality. If Israel were to make concessions of any kind to the Palestinians as part of its move to expel, arrest, or kill Arafat, these concessions would only go to the unrepentant murderers who'd take his place. Surely Ross knows this. Surely Peres does,too. So the question must be asked. What is it that propels these urbane andcultivated men to such conclusions?
The answer was given three weeks ago by no less of an authority than Ian Buruma, in no less a venue than The New York Times. There, in an article titled "How to talk about Israel," Buruma explained, "The Palestinian cause has become the universal litmus test of liberal credentials." And so it is.
In the wreckage of Oslo it is important to note who its greatest beneficiaries were. The Israelis? Our lives have become a crapshoot. The Palestinians? Their standard of living was decimated by Arafat's kleptocracy, while their children were brainwashed by its jihadist media.
No. The real beneficiaries of the Oslo process were people on the political Left like Peres and Ross and Annan and Clinton and their peace-activist friends. At Oslo, where Yasser Arafat and his PLO were crowned in glory and legitimacy, these men finally found a way to be pro-PLO and "pro-Israel."As long as Israel had a government that favored Arafat and Oslo, they could ignore the fact that Arafat's regime was among the greatest human-rights abusers in the world.
They could, as the UN did this week, condemn every move that Israel takes to defend itself against aggression, never condemn the massacre of Israeli civilians, and still say they were friends of Israel because they believed in peace. They could equate Zionism with racism, as Mandela has, and pretend that they actually cared about the human rights of Jews because they support Oslo. They could keep their place on the liberal A-list without ever having to come to terms with the fact that what they claimed to be supporting and what they actually were advocating were mutually exclusive.
But now that is over. Oslo is dead. The overwhelming majority of Israelis want Arafat to disappear and do not believe that peace can be achieved in the foreseeable future. The PA stands revealed as the terrorist regime ithas been since its inception.
Sides must be chosen. Some leftists, like Meron Benvenisti and Uri Avnery, have already done so. Benvenisti advocates the destruction of the Jewish state, and Avnery acts as a human shield for Arafat. In America, historian of Zionism Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, like philanthropists Edgar Bronfman and Marvin Lender, has also chosen sides by appealing to President George W. Bush to put sanctions on Israel and to view Israel and the PA as equivalents. Thus do they remain acceptable to their liberal friends, rather than true to genuinely liberal values.
Then again, at least they've "shown their cards" as Bush might say. Not so men like Peres and Ross, who continue to view reality as just another option, and choose self-delusion over the plain meaning of facts. No doubt many on the Left are emotionally, politically, and financially invested in the false assumptions of Oslo.
And yet the time has come to cut their losses. If the values they espouse are more important to them than the company they keep, they will side with reality. If, on the other hand, hanging with the A-list is what really motivates them, at least they'll have a great party to go to. When it's Happy Hour in the Land of Delusion, the drinks are free.
The Jerusalem Post
September 19, 2003
COLUMN ONE By Caroline Glick
This coming Sunday, Israel's Who's Who will be joined by the rich and famous from around the world at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv to celebrate Shimon Peres's 80th birthday. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is scheduled to attend the festival, as is former US president Bill Clinton. Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela are also set to be there.
More than providing the public with yet another display of Peres's narcissism, the gala event will show the yawning gap between the world we occupy and the world occupied by Peres and his friends and supporters. In the world we live in, every promise of peace and a New Middle East has not only been broken, but has blown up in our faces. In the world we live in,the notion that it is either possible or desirable to negotiate a peace deal with the PLO has been rent asunder.
But in the Land of Peres, it is reality, not Peres, that is wrong. It is reality that is doomed to be remembered in history as a failure. It is reality that is to be condemned as not merely inconvenient but as impossible to countenance.
And so it is that 10 years after that first handshake on the lawn of the White House Rose Garden, Peres defends Yasser Arafat and condemns Israel. In a recent television interview with Fareed Zakaria on MSNBC, the erstwhile foreign minister held up Arafat as a paragon for combating Hamas in 1996, after 60 Israelis were blown to bits in eight days of carnage.When Zakaria asked him why Arafat stopped combating Hamas, Peres replied that it was the fault of his successor, Binyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu, according to Peres, was to blame for Arafat not combating Hamas because Netanyahu was not forthcoming enough in negotiations with Peres's Nobel co-laureate.
Never mind that Peres's entire claim that Arafat fought Hamas is a lie. Arafat, ahead of the 1996 general elections in Israel, rounded up, as he was wont to do, several hundred "usual suspects." Less than a week later, and before the elections had taken place, he had already released more than a hundred of them. At the same time, Muhammad Dahlan, then head of his Preventive Security Service in the Gaza Strip, was actively hiding Hamas terror chief Muhammad Deif, who had orchestrated the attacks. And Peres knew this.
The upshot of all that Peres has told us for the past decade is that he cannot be held responsible for the consequences of his strategies. He must only be congratulated for the hope he bestowed on us all.
And here in lays the entire problem not just with Peres but with all his honored guests and supporters. While some continue to blame Israel for the Palestinian war being fought against the state, others claim to be more"pragmatic." These people are willing to allow that Arafat is not a partner in peace, but still protest that Israel must move ahead with the non-existent peace process, "along the lines of the Camp David proposals."
And so it is that former US Middle East mediator Dennis Ross came to write an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this week protesting the government's decision to "remove" Arafat. Ross, who was the only Oslo pusher to acknowledge that Arafat would never cut a peace deal with Israel, explained that if Israel were to expel Arafat from its heartland, it would have to be in the context of large Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.
Like Peres, Ross refuses to acknowledge reality. If Israel were to make concessions of any kind to the Palestinians as part of its move to expel, arrest, or kill Arafat, these concessions would only go to the unrepentant murderers who'd take his place. Surely Ross knows this. Surely Peres does,too. So the question must be asked. What is it that propels these urbane andcultivated men to such conclusions?
The answer was given three weeks ago by no less of an authority than Ian Buruma, in no less a venue than The New York Times. There, in an article titled "How to talk about Israel," Buruma explained, "The Palestinian cause has become the universal litmus test of liberal credentials." And so it is.
In the wreckage of Oslo it is important to note who its greatest beneficiaries were. The Israelis? Our lives have become a crapshoot. The Palestinians? Their standard of living was decimated by Arafat's kleptocracy, while their children were brainwashed by its jihadist media.
No. The real beneficiaries of the Oslo process were people on the political Left like Peres and Ross and Annan and Clinton and their peace-activist friends. At Oslo, where Yasser Arafat and his PLO were crowned in glory and legitimacy, these men finally found a way to be pro-PLO and "pro-Israel."As long as Israel had a government that favored Arafat and Oslo, they could ignore the fact that Arafat's regime was among the greatest human-rights abusers in the world.
They could, as the UN did this week, condemn every move that Israel takes to defend itself against aggression, never condemn the massacre of Israeli civilians, and still say they were friends of Israel because they believed in peace. They could equate Zionism with racism, as Mandela has, and pretend that they actually cared about the human rights of Jews because they support Oslo. They could keep their place on the liberal A-list without ever having to come to terms with the fact that what they claimed to be supporting and what they actually were advocating were mutually exclusive.
But now that is over. Oslo is dead. The overwhelming majority of Israelis want Arafat to disappear and do not believe that peace can be achieved in the foreseeable future. The PA stands revealed as the terrorist regime ithas been since its inception.
Sides must be chosen. Some leftists, like Meron Benvenisti and Uri Avnery, have already done so. Benvenisti advocates the destruction of the Jewish state, and Avnery acts as a human shield for Arafat. In America, historian of Zionism Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, like philanthropists Edgar Bronfman and Marvin Lender, has also chosen sides by appealing to President George W. Bush to put sanctions on Israel and to view Israel and the PA as equivalents. Thus do they remain acceptable to their liberal friends, rather than true to genuinely liberal values.
Then again, at least they've "shown their cards" as Bush might say. Not so men like Peres and Ross, who continue to view reality as just another option, and choose self-delusion over the plain meaning of facts. No doubt many on the Left are emotionally, politically, and financially invested in the false assumptions of Oslo.
And yet the time has come to cut their losses. If the values they espouse are more important to them than the company they keep, they will side with reality. If, on the other hand, hanging with the A-list is what really motivates them, at least they'll have a great party to go to. When it's Happy Hour in the Land of Delusion, the drinks are free.
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Peres's dark side
The Jerusalem Post
Letters-to-the-Editor
August 12, 2003
Sir, - Dan Izenberg's report on the meeting held by the Knesset Law Committee to discuss an alternative electoral system ("Three ex-PMs offer views on constitution," August 5) ignored something that ought to have received wide coverage.
At that meeting former prime minister Shimon Peres quipped that "the United States, which is white, is now becoming darker, and that is not an insignificant problem."
This patronizing remark - reported in Ma'ariv next day and mentioned on the radio - would certainly have been denounced in the strongest possible terms by our enlightened political, media, academic and cultural elites had it been made by Binyamin Netanyahu or Ehud Barak, the other two ex-prime ministers present at the event. Instead it solicited only the meek acknowledgement by Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On that it was "not politically correct." The American Embassy, which should have been quick to upbraid Peres, preferred to remain silent.
How might we react if a senior American politician testifying before a Congressional hearing in Washington stated that Israel was "becoming darker" as a result of immigration from North Africa, Yemen or Ethiopia? Why should such blatant racism be ignored when it is uttered by Shimon Peres?
REUVEN ELIAZ
Beit Shemesh
Letters-to-the-Editor
August 12, 2003
Sir, - Dan Izenberg's report on the meeting held by the Knesset Law Committee to discuss an alternative electoral system ("Three ex-PMs offer views on constitution," August 5) ignored something that ought to have received wide coverage.
At that meeting former prime minister Shimon Peres quipped that "the United States, which is white, is now becoming darker, and that is not an insignificant problem."
This patronizing remark - reported in Ma'ariv next day and mentioned on the radio - would certainly have been denounced in the strongest possible terms by our enlightened political, media, academic and cultural elites had it been made by Binyamin Netanyahu or Ehud Barak, the other two ex-prime ministers present at the event. Instead it solicited only the meek acknowledgement by Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On that it was "not politically correct." The American Embassy, which should have been quick to upbraid Peres, preferred to remain silent.
How might we react if a senior American politician testifying before a Congressional hearing in Washington stated that Israel was "becoming darker" as a result of immigration from North Africa, Yemen or Ethiopia? Why should such blatant racism be ignored when it is uttered by Shimon Peres?
REUVEN ELIAZ
Beit Shemesh
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