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