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.