By MARTIN SHERMAN
Paradoxically, it was not Peres’s successes – but his failures – that catapulted him to international stardom; it was not his impressive accomplishments that made him a global celebrity but the disastrous fiascoes in pursuit of his wildly unrealistic illusions
Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue.
-Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Roman historian and politician, (86 BCE – c. 35 BCE)
It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.
-Abba Eban, Israeli diplomat and politician (1919-2002)
On Wednesday, September 28, Shimon Peres, the 9th and arguably the most high-profile President of Israel, passed away. For all the glare of the public spotlight and scrutiny to which he has been exposed, he remains in many ways, an enigmatic figure, comprised of seemingly impossible contradictions for historians to attempt to decipher.
Sweeping international acclaim: Well-merited or unwarranted?
Peres will be laid to rest on Friday with all the pomp and ceremony that befits the funeral of a former Head of State and public figure of international stature.
The expected attendees include world leaders and renowned celebrities from dozens of countries around the globe. US President Barack Obama, and former President Bill Clinton, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, former British PM Tony Blaire, and Prince Charles are but a few names in the star-studded list of reported dignitaries, who plan to attend the ceremony. Tributes flowed in from far and wide, from Hollywood stars to the British royal family, mourning the passing of the man seen as Israel’s elder statesman.
Of course, all this international attention was not unexpected. After all, during his lifetime, Peres had virtually every major international honor bestowed on him –from the Légion d’Honneur through the Congressional Gold Medal and Presidential Medal of Freedom, to the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yet, to some, all this acclaim and acknowledgment, may seem somewhat incongruous in light of the almost unbroken succession of failures and fiascoes that have dogged much of his career since the late 1970s—both in terms of his personal electoral defeats and of his policy debacles—particularly the disastrous implosion of his flagship endeavor to resolve the conflict with the Palestinian-Arabs, and the evaporation of his vision of a peaceful and prosperous “New Middle East”.
The enigmatic conundrum
As mentioned earlier, despite the fact that Peres was exposed to public scrutiny for almost seven decades, there in still much about him that remains a puzzling conundrum, comprising a tangled web of seemingly irreconcilable paradoxes. For many, his passing may well appear to be an appropriate juncture to begin addressing the intriguing challenge of unravelling the enigmatic kaleidoscope of events he traversed on his route to the pinnacle of international esteem.
To be sure, Peres’s extraordinary ability, passion and energy are beyond dispute. But so, it would seem, was his unbridled ambition, making the caveats in the introductory excerpts highly relevant in evaluating the breathtaking volte face in his professed political credo.
There can also be little dispute that, as President, he managed, to restore an aura of dignity to the office, so severely tarnished by the unfortunate scandals that plagued the incumbency of his predecessor.
Even his fiercest critics cannot deny Peres’s huge contribution to the nation’s security, particularly in the first decade-and-a-half after independence.
As a young protégé of David Ben-Gurion, Peres is credited with playing a leading role in setting up much of the foundations for the nascent nation’s military infrastructure that has been so crucial in ensuring its survival and its technological edge – including Israel Aircraft Industries (today Israel Aerospace Industries), acquisition of advanced combat aircraft from France and the establishment of the nuclear facility in Dimona.
As defense minister at the time of the Entebbe raid in 1976, many identify him as providing the political will to push through the decision to carry out the now legendary operation.
The fruits of failure?
However, perversely, it has not been Peres’s successes – but his failures – that have catapulted him to international stardom. It was not his impressive accomplishments in the service of his nation that brought him global celebrity status, but the disastrous fiascoes in the pursuit of his wildly unrealistic illusions.
Thus, it was the disastrous Oslo Accords—which have long since imploded into bloody ruin—that brought him the 1994 Nobel Peace prize.
Likewise, it was his lofty vision of a “New Middle East” – with peace and prosperity stretching from the Maghreb to the Persian Gulf – that caught the imagination of so many- but now, with the descent of today’s Middle East into carnage and chaos, appears nothing but a ludicrous delusion.
Accordingly, it was not his considerable contributions to Israeli security that made him such a sought after figure on the global stage, but rather his adoption of the role of supranational statesman on a noble quest for regional peace, a quest that precipitated nothing but death and devastation.
Moreover, since the late 1970s, by most accepted standards, Peres would have been considered a failed politician. Yet repeated electoral defeats, even at times when victory seemed almost certain, appear to have left his stature undiminished.
Snatching defeat from jaws of almost certain victory
Indeed, Peres never won a national election and lost numerous internal elections for party leadership.
Between 1977-96, he led the Labor party unsuccessfully in five general elections, losing four of them and tying in one of them (1984)’ resulting in a 2 year rotation arrangement, with Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir.
The razor-edge loss of the 1996 election to Benjamin Netanyahu, which he was widely expected to win, was particularly humiliating- given the waves of public sympathy his party enjoyed following the assassination of his predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin.
No less humiliating was the failure of his first bid to win the presidency in 2000, in which he was surprisingly defeated by the unimpressive and un-presidential Moshe Katsav.
Peres was also regularly defeated in elections for the leadership of the Labor party, by Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, and even lack-luster Amir Peretz. It was shortly after his defeat by Peretz, that Peres abandoned the Labor party and joined Ariel Sharon’s newly formed Kadima faction. In 2007, Kadima, which today no longer exists, appointed Peres as its candidate for President—after considerable hesitation due to doubts as to whether he could win. This time, however, Peres won the vote, thus becoming President…on behalf of a party soon to disappear.
It was from this inauspicious start the Peres managed to choreograph his presidency into an international “hit” on a global scale.
Metamorphosis from hawk to dove
Peres was always obsessed with “Tomorrow.” In many ways he appropriated it as his professional trademark, in an endeavor to brand himself as a future-oriented statesman. And while there was much to substantiate that image in his earlier hawkish era, his predictive acumen seems to have deserted him in his later dovish years.
Peres’s transformation from hawk to dove seems to have taken place around the mid-80s, when one Peres morphed into an almost diametric opposite Peres (hence the dichotomy in the title). Indeed, as Anshel Pfeffer wrote this week (Guardian, September 28): “ If Peres had resigned from frontline politics at the age of 54, as many of his colleagues were demanding, after having lost the 1977 general election…he would be remembered as one of Israel’s most legendary security “hawks”
It was around then that Peres, as foreign minister, began to embrace the land-for-peace doctrine and, largely behind Prime Minister Shamir’s back, attempted to secure a deal with Jordan’s King Hussein over the fate of Judea-Samaria. Given the precarious plight of the Hashemite regime today, and the growing ascendancy of radical Islamist elements in the monarchy, it is difficult to be charitable as to the foresight such a proposal entailed.
Calculated cynicism or well-informed confidence
Referring to this puzzling transformation, Pfeffer observes: “Peres never explained the transformation he underwent in the wilderness of opposition”.
He offers two possible explanations, one of calculated cynicism, the other of well- informed confidence: “His many detractors said that Peres simply had no choice. With Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat … signing the Camp David peace agreement, he had no choice but to move leftwards and try to present himself as a better peacemaker than his Likud rivals”; while. “His supporters explained [referring to Israel’s alleged nuclear capabilities]that Peres knew more than anyone else just how strong and secure Israel had become, and could therefore make concessions and take risks for peace in its dangerous neighbourhood.”
While some may baulk at the former, the latter is entirely unpersuasive.
For as we shall see, and as hawkish Peres himself warned, the most immediate threats to Israel’s security today are those of enhanced and ongoing attrition rather than cataclysmic invasion by Arab armies. Accordingly, because of the diffuse nature and close proximity of the sources of these threats to Israeli population centers, the country’s alleged nuclear capabilities are largely irrelevant in dealing with them.
Yesterday’s view of ‘Tomorrow’
As mentioned previously, Peres was always enamored with the “Tomorrow” theme. One of his first forays in to “Tomorrow-territory” was a programmatic book entitled “Tomorrow IS Now”, which he authored as chairman of the Labor Party, just after it had lost power to Menachem Begin’s Likud. Published in 1978, it laid out Peres’s prescriptive vision for the future conduct of the affairs of the nation.
In many ways, the book – available only in Hebrew – is an astonishing document.
For those who are only familiar with the post-Oslowian dovish version of Peres, it offers some staggering surprises.
For the citizens of Israel –indeed anyone concerned with the fate of the Jewish state – it raises deeply disturbing questions regarding the judgment, credibility and integrity of those who have served in positions of senior leadership, and serious doubts as to the credence that can be placed in their pronouncements to the nation.
For, in virtually every aspect, the book negates precepts underlying the rationale of the Oslo Accords—including the validity of the land-for-peace doctrine, the desirability of a Palestinian state and the value of any agreements with the Arab world – particularly concerning demilitarization. Likewise, it strongly endorsed Jewish settlements across the pre-1967 Green Line including Judea-Samaria, the Jordan Valley and the Golan. Indeed, it would not be far from the truth to say that Peres was in fact the founding father (or at least, godfather) of today’s much maligned settlement project.
Peres’s past prescriptions; precise predictions
I have written extensively elsewhere of the incisive insights of Peres’s past prescriptions and the precision of his past predictions of the perils that would befall Israel were it to adopt the kind of policies that he later advocated. (see here and here). I pointed out how hawkish Peres forewarned of the very realities the dovish Peres endorsed, and how these were precisely the realities that precipitated the IDF’s Operation Defensive Shield in Judea-Samaria (2002) – and later operations in Gaza: Cast Lead (2008/9); Pillar of Defense (2012); Protective Edge (2014).
He warned of the dangers of relinquishing the highlands of Judea-Samaria to Arab control and how that would allow “the most extreme terrorist forces…equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft shoulder-launched rockets, [to] endanger not only random passers-by, but also every airplane and helicopter taking off in the skies of Israel and every vehicle traveling along the major traffic routes in the coastal plain.”
He argued that the greater range, mobility and firepower of modern weaponry only enhance the strategic importance of territorial depth and that relinquishing Judea-Samaria would “create compulsive temptation to attack Israel…” (p.255).
He cautioned against placing trust in agreements with the Arabs, since “The number of agreements which the Arabs have violated is no less than the number which they have kept” (p.255).
Which Peres do we mourn?
But perhaps most significant was his endorsement of the settlement project and his call “to create a continuous stretch of new settlements; to bolster Jerusalem and the surrounding hills…by the establishment of townships, suburbs and villages – Ma’ale Edumin, Ofra, Gilo, Bet-El, Givon…to ensure that the capital and its flanks are secured…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”; 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)
So which Peres do we mourn? The dour hawkish Peres, who got it right? Or the internationally-acclaimed dovish Peres, who got it disastrously wrong?
Dr. Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategic-israel.org)
http://leesaylor.com/Benedict-Arnold.html
@ Felix Quigley:
Believe in God in 5 Minutes (Scientific Proof)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQVm8RokoBA
honeybee Said:
How about small brain extra large head???
Felix Quigley Said:
Sebastien Zorn Said:
He died a British hero.
Sebastien Zorn Said:
He died a hero to the Progressive left.
http://leesaylor.com/Benedict-Arnold.html
If Peres had died in 1977,right after Entebbe, he would be remembered as an Israeli, and as a Jewish hero. I, for one, will not remember him that way. I refuse to honor him. Excellent article, by the way.
Sebastien Zorn Said:
Arnold was a very flawed human being led by a very calculating young woman.
Before he was a traitor, Benedict Arnold was a hero, too:
http://leesaylor.com/Benedict-Arnold.html
Sorry, whatever his past contributions, I don’t much feel like honoring a man who, persisted in ramming through policies that threw away Jewish lives, heritage, and national pride. The rest is “before my time.” I was moved and shocked by the following article in Arutz Sheva. The list goes on for pages:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19556
david frankel Said:
My late Father use to spit every time he heard Peres’s name mentioned. Same for Abbe Eban.
Felix Quigley Said:
you are indeed the never ending serial trotskyite who appears to be unable to pay attention to what people write and instead imprint your own ridiculous notions on other folks statements.
The term globalist is currently used to describe those who seek the end of national states, open borders, unmimpeded migrations, etc.
Communists and socialists are “globalist ” by creed in that they seek a world of socialism or communism. Muslims are globalist by creed in that they also seek a one world islamic caliphate. Capitalists are not globalist by creed but tend to follow the money…. and as I said they will work with either methodolgy that gives profit. Hence, captialists found when they first went to communist russia that there were some profit making advantages to doing business with a communist gov… one stop for approvals and no union problems like strikes. It is self evident that they also have no problem with working with muslim jihadis or nazis either.
I only visit infowars when a interesting link is posted in another news source and I never visit Icke, about whom you appear to be always talking. The only thing I know about Icke is that he apparently believes in alien lizards running the planet and perhaps identifies those lizards in some way with Jews.
Felix Quigley Said:
as usual, you put words in my mouth… please show me where I used the term marxist in any of my posts on this page or I will have to wonder whether you will admit to error or are dishonestly trying to misrepresent me….. dishonest misrepresentation is what you have appeared to be doing for quite a while.
as for your usual repetitive, communist rantings i can only say
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmwqnqL3Hbg
Felix Quigley Said:
Neanderthals had larger brain then modern Homo Sapiens. They also inter bred with Homo Sapiens, So you too may be a Neanderthals, providing you have a large brain.
@ Austin:
No Sugar not in mourning , the honeybee is making a come back.
A member of the hive had surgery and I have been busy. Would you give me the name of the John McCormack song. I am afraid that I have lost tract of life over the last few days.
I shall also be busy baking Honey Cakes, as I am the money cake maven. The girls have producing honey like mad bees. Production is the key to capitalism and bees a capitalist.
Yamit
Re the Communist Manifesto.
To clarify what I wrote “It is still the best explanation for the development of human society and is a massive aid to us today.”
Anyway your point on neanderthals is totally irrelevant to the issue of the discovery of Lucy
I mentioned the Manifesto because it is short, clearly written, very available as it is in PDF which I had not known till yesterday. And it is never ever mentioned.
My use of the word human did not tell the whole story. Meant in the case of the Manifesto slaver, feudalism, manufacture and even into todays derivative problem which brings us into the heart of our present system and its great dangers as a systen to humanity, plants and animals
I then went on to mention a later work by Engels. Chapter 9 out of an unfinished work. This chapter is startling and nothing less than that.
If you read it and you view even the videos by Don Johannson n the discovery of “Lucy” then people will begin ti see what a genius these guys were.
But the work has to be done
i can only give out leads. then people can shut off or take it up…it is free choice.
https://youtu.be/PR_9_5gxvxg
Lucy IN SEARCH OF HUMAN ORIGINS PART ONE
It is a 3 part series (the other 2 parts are to the right if you follow this url) and contains the most important science and also deals with aspects of philosophy, such as the nature of thought itself.
Johanson is forced to deal with these philosophical problems and the genius of Engels is that he has nearly a hundred years before explained the issue and even had predicted the finding of “Lucy” as a hypothesis
As to the unfinished work by Engels of the 1870s find it here https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/
This is short and again very readable. I emphasise that it is of extraordinary genius.
If you read this and then follow the films of this also extraordinary American Donald Johanson you will see that the latter is clearly following a path that the great Engels had already trod using his great mind and his empirical research.
I quote these paragraphs:
“It stands to reason that if erect gait among our hairy ancestors became first the rule and then, in time, a necessity, other diverse functions must, in the meantime, have devolved upon the hands. Already among the apes there is some difference in the way the hands and the feet are employed. In climbing, as mentioned above, the hands and feet have different uses. The hands are used mainly for gathering and holding food in the same way as the fore paws of the lower mammals are used. Many apes use their hands to build themselves nests in the trees or even to construct roofs between the branches to protect themselves against the weather, as the chimpanzee, for example, does. With their hands they grasp sticks to defend themselves against enemies, or bombard their enemies with fruits and stones. In captivity they use their hands for a number of simple operations copied from human beings. It is in this that one sees the great gulf between the undeveloped hand of even the most man-like apes and the human hand that has been highly perfected by hundreds of thousands of years of labour. The number and general arrangement of the bones and muscles are the same in both hands, but the hand of the lowest savage can perform hundreds of operations that no simian hand can imitate – no simian hand has ever fashioned even the crudest stone knife.
The first operations for which our ancestors gradually learned to adapt their hands during the many thousands of years of transition from ape to man could have been only very simple ones. The lowest savages, even those in whom regression to a more animal-like condition with a simultaneous physical degeneration can be assumed, are nevertheless far superior to these transitional beings. Before the first flint could be fashioned into a knife by human hands, a period of time probably elapsed in comparison with which the historical period known to us appears insignificant. But the decisive step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation.
Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations, through the inheritance of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones that had undergone special development and the ever-renewed employment of this inherited finesse in new, more and more complicated operations, have given the human hand the high degree of perfection required to conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the statues of a Thorwaldsen, the music of a Paganini.
…
The genius of Engels is this: That Johanson in part 1 begins by outlining how all of the archaeologists up to the finding of “Lucy” were looking for the transitional link in a hominid type creature with a brain.
But the answer turned out to be that the kind of Lucy were walking as upright and powerful as we today do, but had a brain hardly any bigger than that of an ape or monkey
We should emphasise also that this was the greatest ever challenge to all forms of religion.
But this was not religion or a belief; this was an hypothesis by Engels, and the moment of truth (an absolute truth) gained by Johanson when he first saw that knee joint lock like ours do. He KNEW this was hominid. He knew this was the transitional link.
Science in its quiet, methodical and non-boasting way had won the argument.
Shimon Peres was born on August 2, 1923 (some sources say August 16, 1923), in Wieniawa, Poland (now Vishniev, Belarus). In 1997, he became acting prime minister when Yitzhak Rabin stepped down. Peres was elected the Prime Minister of Israel under its National Unity Government in 1984. In 1994 he co-won a Nobel Peace prize for negotiating the Oslo Accords with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He was elected president of Israel in 2007 and retired from his role in 2014.
Early Years
Shimon Peres was born August 2, 1923 in Weinlawa, Poland, (now Vishniev, Belarus). His family was committed to Zionism and as anti-Semitic violence escalated in central Europe in the 1930s, they migrated to then British-controlled Palestine when Shimon was 11. His family members who remained in Europe were murdered by the Nazis.Including his grandfather a Rabbi who was burned alive with 2000 Jews.
Freedom Fighter
Shimon Peres grew up in Tel Aviv and joined a socialist youth group, the Hanoar Haoved or Working Youth. At age 15, he attended Ben Shermen Agricultural School and later joined an armed underground movement, Haganah, to counter Arab sniper attacks. The Zionist military organization was under the direction of David Ben-Gurion, who became Peres’ political mentor. In 1945, Peres married Sonia Gellman whom he met at Ben Shermen. The couple would go on to have three children.
@ yamit82:
depressing stuff, what do Israelis think of this? Did they give that room to the vatican above David’s Tomb?
What is that website all about? I found this page very heavy
http://www.biblesearchers.com/hebrewchurch/primitive/losttribesisrael13.shtml
and this page interesting
http://www.biblesearchers.com/yahshua/beithillel/SederOlamRabbahVezuta.shtml
thanks for all the interesting sites you post, and your perspectives
a happy 5777 to you and family
@ honeybee:
Glad to see you resurfacing, it’s been a bit quiet without your voluminous posting. I suppose you’ve been sitting sheva over the demise of the Honeybee, as reported in many news sites.
@ Philippe:
The Kibbutz crowd was obviously fantasizing about the benefits “real” peace would bring them, being originally agrarians, who remembered they had to work with a hoe in one hand and a rifle in the other. They pushed into the background of fantasy-land, their certain knowledge that Arabs are treacherous and murderous by nature, especially against Jews. They assumed that the government would take care of that part.
That’s the most likely explanation for that part of your question, as I see it.
Felix Quigley Said:
Neanderthals were human
The equality of people is no more proven than their inequality. Groups, including nations, are different from each other. Their competition fosters social evolution and progress. In the process, some groups die out. Oil purchases artificially keep the Arab hordes alive.
@ bernard ross:
EXCERPT FROM ABOVE:
http://destination-yisrael.biblesearchers.com/destination-yisrael/2013/06/israels-jesuit-president-shimon-peres-heads-again-to-rome-to-offer-pope-francis-i-the-cenacle-church.html
Ted Belman Said:
I am glad, cause I is so nice.
Felix Quigley Said:
Whoop te do , any Mother with small children figured this out, even our Simian ancestors. Engels is a ” Johnny come lately”.
@ bernard ross:
NOT SHERMAN OR ANY OTHER COMMENTERS HERE UNDERSTANDS WHAT THE SOB PERES WAS REALLY ABOUT:
Israeli President Shimon Peres, the Vatican’s Agent to Israel: Part One
Israel’s Jesuit President, Shimon Peres
@ honeybee:
I wish I knew. Sometimes its just a delay and some times I have to intervene and release. Nothing personal.
Ted, why am I being “modified” . I am a good Bee and I never use curses or obscenities.
Felix Quigley Said:
They probably stand on your backside!!!!!!!!!!!!
Felix Quigley Said:
Felix Quigley Said:
Bernard Ross , a highly intelligent and well informed Gentleman, does not need your assistance in posting comment.
Freedom of speech which Communist, such as yourself , do not practice.
Felix Quigley Said:
Heaven Forbid ” the Masses” be allowed to decide for themselves what are their needs.
How did that work for the Soviet Union??? How is it working for North Korea ??? Venezuela??? Cuba???
February 1848. it is a terrible crime indeed that people who are full of their own ego or else are consciously serving the interests of the oppressors should ignore the Communist Manifesto.
It is still the best explanation for the development of human society and is a massive aid to us today.
I would also point out that chapter 9 of the Dialectics of Nature written some time later was so brilliant that it laid out in advance the also brilliant discoveries by people like the Anerican archaeologist Donald Johannson of the hominid “Lucy”.
Johannson does not mention Engels but he should have. The power of his method and thought led him to predict “Lucy” and the importance of the upright stance, the freeing of the hand, leading to development of tools.
All there. Who needs more than the truth which is of course science in all regards.
B. Ross is well and truly sold on the bankrupt conspiracists “globalists” crap which you see most often in Infowars and David Icke conspiratorial ignorami.
Please desist from entering it onto Israpundit (or anywhere) as it is an assault on intelligence.
The world market has been established as Marx and Engels in this small work made clear so long ago.
QUOTE…”Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois. Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf
The world market in fact is a huge step forward for humanity. It is just that the system of capitalism is based on greed and not on the needs of humanity.
Hence the need for social revolution.
By the way the Israeli Labour Party and certainly not Peres is in any sense Marxist so please do not place Peres and Marxist in the same sentence.
The market has made “an ever closer union” of the whole World and it will continue to tighten the bonds. Now lump it or develop the political parallel to control it. Instead of spluttering at the supremacist ambitions of the out of date in the subsistence agriculture and steam ages religious and the ideologues, learn to argue coherently about them or with them in the need to create liberty and privacy in the wired age.
Felix Quigley Said:
bernard ross Said:
the leftist muslim alliance is the biggest threat to Jews today.. Leftists and Muslims are globalists… both seek world domination….. both use their ideologies as tools to activate “useful idiots”… Israel and Jews are an impediment to their agenda… hence the leftist muslim alliance should be damaged, weakened, destroyed….. Capitalists have found that they can employ both ideologies as tools as they can control the leadership of both. Ideologues tend to be part of the group of “usleful idiots”. I expect that like stalin and churchill that the left and the muslims each see the other as their “useful idiots” thinking that they will each bring the other to heel and subjugation after their coalition wins.
Globalists like peres and obama tend to hold global multinational interests at a higher priority than the citizens of their own nation. There is no one right ideology, there is only the temporal appearance of ascension of one over the other… depending on which vehicle is proving more succesful at controlling the masses at the moment. The capitalists funded Hitler but they have found that communists and muslims can be controlled and puppeted more easily becuase central authority and control is programmed into the ideologies. Hence monarchists like Prince Charles loves to dance the sword dance dressed as an arab prince when in Saudi because it evokes in him soulful memories of his ancestors absolute control over the masses. I have no doubt that such folk can envisage themselves as caliphs under a system of absolute cultish control.
I dont know why you seek my opinion
Felix Quigley Said:
I hope I have lived up to your assessment of me 🙂
SELECTED from the comments section below the article:
First, thanks to Martin for a very measured and fair obituary. As some of you did, I would have dwelled on the negative much more had I written it. But Martin knows Israel’s history and I think was respectful as was appropriate. And, to his credit, his column has generated this excellent discussion.
There is no doubt that Peres’ changed his constituency once he heard the applause coming from the left — applause which he could never quite garner from the centre or the right. My son is busy today preparing a presentation for his Grade 12 class on Narcissus — the god of many a politician. The timing is very a propos! I always got the feeling, not that Peres believed what he eventually stood for (and we will never know), but that he loved the accolades he received from the “social marxist” elites whom he came to represent, at the expense of the truth and of so many soldiers and innocent civilians who died as a result.
I would go still further. There was an event in Toronto last week titled “The Jewish Enemies of Israel”. Peres sadly, from at least Oslo onward, falls into that camp. He made it respectable to be stupid and naive, divided the Diaspora, and give grist to the Arab/Jihadist “Palestinian narrative” whose goal as we know is to destroy Israel through defamation and de-legitimization. May 5777 be a year of recovery! Shana Tova to everyone and especially to Ted Belman, who devotes every day to getting his blog out to us all.
I would like to know where Andrew, Ross and Yamit stand on these issues, and also the editor Ted…no hurry no pressure but would like to know
peres also brought suffreing to israel he made peace with the dvill he coast hundreds of jewish lives may he rout in hell forever
Philippe…you speak in tautologies. You say the people are passive…the leaders are treacherous and betray the people…the people are passive…the leaders betray … the people become more passive. Ad infinitum!!!
But simple empirical evidence paints a different picture. The British working class and true people rejected Brexit despite poor leadership or no leadership (they acted fairly spontaneously)
The people flock behind Trump despite Trump not fighting Clinton in the First Debate. He may change things in this regard inthe next two. But people are not proving to be so passive at all even though they and Trump face hostility of total state and total media outlets.
In withdrawal from Gaza Sharon and the IDF elites were opposed and support against withdrawing (against also the whole state machine) was growing not from any leader (such as netanyahu who was treacherous) but from the people especially the youth.
Philippe your position is in fact that of cynicism which itself is an ideology of defeat. You also lie!
Also vastly missing the point. Martin cannot answer the two Pereses, until he answers the nature of the state set up in 1948.
All progressives greet the setting up of the Jewish state after 2000 years or more in 1948, and historic event and achieveent for sure.
But in 2016 are we allowed “to look at it” without being given accusatory looks?
Consider this:
JNS.org – “We don’t consider Iran as an enemy,” Israeli President Shimon Peres told CNN‘s Richard Quest on Sunday at the Globes Israel Business Conference in Tel Aviv.
Asked whether he would be willing to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Peres replied, “Why not? I don’t have enemies.”
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/12/09/shimon-peres-‘we-don’t-consider-iran-as-an-enemy’/
Now have (another) close look at the 1948 Declaration of Independence. Ask: Is there any resemblance?
I think there is a strong resemblance. These dreamers who penned the Independence Declaration did not have any enemies at all…not a capitalist system in its death agony…not a stalinism which inundated the Kibbutz etcetera…not the Arabs!!! with their lethal Islam!!!
But against that and today there is the sober analsis of dialectical materialism that I represent in this discussion.
Against the dubious tautologies of Phiippe and utter contempt for the revolutionary potential of the Israeli Jewish people
This sort of opinion is common to many populations and disappointed comments about leaders. Kipling wrote savage lines on politicians at least twice.
It is very easy with 20/ 20 hindsight but in the actuality and the slow motion action with the background noise it is not so easy to politic.
Do consider that Oslo did open the door to the Jordanian peace which has held, as has the Egyptian peace despite a Mos Bros interlude.
War over long periods gets people down as those who lived through the WW’s could tell you. People need carrots whether the Beveridge Report or the prospect of plenty.
In Israel which suffers the constant dribble of as many war deaths as road accidents deaths, the prospect of peace and its real achievement is important. As in the old school debate “Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?” Not to have tried could have been even more discouraging than to have tried and lost what at he time was a reasonable each way bet. Remember that in 1947 after UN181 BG asked the Generals for an estimate for the chances of success and they replied 50/50. The Warsaw Ghetto command knew they had precisely no chance of success.
A nice question whether “bourgeois” Zionism is inherently bankrupt economically or politically? How else in the 20th century were Jews to be protected than by Zionism in general ? As somebody in the Warsaw Ghetto said early in WWII, “The British and French will arrive proclaiming victory and we shall be dead.” That indeed happened with the extra burden an complication of the Russians arriving as the victors.
Before getting into whether Jews can survive as a religiously defined demographic in a liberal open market society with national identity, education and social welfare is a nice question as all attention to religious identity and purpose seems to corrode and erode in such circumstances.
What Israel does for Jewish survival across the World is to make Hebrew a living language for all daily uses and not just parroted and gabbled prayers. That actually puts a lot of modern sense into the religion t take it beyond family tradition and bobbe meises.
Second Israel is the scene of the Bible narrative and so makes sense of it beyond just religious faith which is an ever more philosophically frail and ever more politically poisonous flower since natural sciences penetrated the Creation with maths, chemistry evolution and DNA.
Third for the moment the success of Israel as a nation-state and economy puts a lot of pride and optimism into being Jewish.
@Martin Sherman; I liked your question but I think you do not deliver the answers.I have only pointed out two ( common ) defaults : the gullibility of the jewish public – the treacherous behavior of the ruling leadership. I suggest – IMHO – to look into Francisco Gil-White’s researches. His website http://www.hirhome.com is a trove of deep, well documented historical researches of the subject of antisemitism.You may note:
– Why do israeli leaders betray the jews ?
– Leaders lied, jews died
– Understanding the palestinian movement
– How to save Israel from the US ruling elite
etc…..etc…Fr.Gil-White , ethnologist-sociologist investigates in a subtle , penetrating way the limpness of the jewish people among many other subjects.
@ Felix Quigley:
Sir, I do not see ” bourgeois ” zionism as a treacherous by nature movement. Almost 85% of the israeli youth serve three years or more ,and the next bourgeois have been very often officers. The question not fully answered by Martin Sherman , is strictly limited : Why Peres Gambled Israel security for a miserable Oslo framework ? I suggest that the ruling elites are naturally inclined to betray their own public . The passive behavior of the public was well explained behavior by Etienne de la Boetie ( discours sur la servitude volontaire 1549-1576 ) and the treacherous nature of the elites was analyzed more recently in 1927 by Julien Benda ( la trahison des clercs ).
If ” bourgeois ” zionism is treacherous then how do you qualify the kibbutz movement embrace of Oslo ? Our own ” workers-collectivist ” movement, the salt-of-land-of-Israel-settlement group , loved so much the Oslo swindle . So there is no time to waste in finger pointing the culprit mantle at such “bourgeois” or “leftist” or ” globalist ” ; the problem is moral decay, lack of patriotism, political naivity of the general public which fuels a leadership inclined to betrayal .
PERES WILL AND SHOULD BE REMEMBERED FOR PROMOTING THE ARAB POISON NARRATIVE AGAINST THE JEWS AND AGAINST LIBERTY OF ALL
I have held off saying anything about Peres until after his burial yesterday out of respect to his family.
I do object however against the mountains of hypocritical praise for this man and I consider that he was the cause of much loss of life and not only of Jews but also the Yazedis and many nore.
Furthermore I do not think fruitful that saying before 1980 Peres good and after 1980 Peres bad, but rather the roots go to the very bourgeois and pro-imperialist nature of Israeli leadership from the beginning.
A step forward in the creation of the Jewish Homeland but with leadership nearly “programmed” to betray.
The high point was the wars fought against the Arabs but the tragedy was that they were not aware of the real enemy at that stage – Islam and Jihad.
In recent 10 or 15 years we have all become more aware of the danger of Islam and what a serious threat that Islam is to the world.
However the other component is the death agony of the capitalist system.
Hence I wrote in a short comment to the Martin Sherman article which makes this dividing line the centre.
I say that in fact the roots of the betrayal of Peres lay in his being a servant of capitalism
QUOTE…”If there was indeed a change as martin claims he or nobody including Bedein (David Bedein) explained how and why?
This illustrates the inherent bankruptcy of bourgeois zionism as a weapon to defend the Jews when this basic question, quite easily answered actually, cannot be answered by them.
You will have to go deeper into history especially in his friendship with Ben Gurion…sadly I do not have the space or time here…END QUOTE
It is the bloodthirsty deeds and intentions of Islam allied to a capitalism in its death agony that threatens humanity.
In no way did Peres accept that or in any way answer that.
Thus unable to understand that or to combat that (Islam and a world capitalism in death agony) the only answer of Peres was to lead the Jews into a deadly crisis.
And as Sherman spells out they are still in that deadly crisis.
Ben Gurion was an enemy of Lenin and Trotsky. He refused or did not bother to take a position on theoretical issues and he was ignorant of the struggle between Trotsky and Stalin.
Peres was out of that “school” a very bad one indeed.
In that theoretical stupidity he however represented and represents all Israli Jewish leadership today.
This class around Peres and Netanyahu have continually accepted the terminology of “Palestinians” which shows they had not a clue because all “Palestinians” represents as a name is simply the Jihad of Islam to kill Christians and Jews.
And promoting that lie, actually a poison narrative against Jewry, is what Peres should and will be remmebered for.
If there was indeed a change as martin claims he or nobody including Bedein explained how and why?
This explains the inherent bankruptcy of bourgeois zionism as a weapon to defend the Jews when this basic question, quite easily answered actually, cannot be answered by them.
You will have to go deeper into history especially in his friendship with Ben Gurion…sadly I do noit have the space or time here.
I object very strongly to this use of the conspiracists like Infowars use of “globalists” a term which in the hands of Jones leads straight to Antisemitism.
Knowing his flakiness it is not a surprise then to me that B Ross has begun to adopt this concept, a very dangerous one indeed.
Let’s see the roots of the conflict ; there never was a true and lasting compromise with the so-called palestinians. The conflict is both ethnical , religious and historical . Even before Israel project came into existence, on November 29 1947 at the UN , the arab side rejected it with total frankness. NOTHING HAS CHANGED . I was listening in 1982 a conference by a french military expert ( Colonel Philippe Rondot french intelligence top brass) , he said ” Well PLO took a drubbing in Beyrouth and was expelled by Israel BUT from now on PLO will rebuilt its stance through diplomatic campaign to regain a foothold onto its HISTORICAL soil “. Note I emphasize historical in cubital letters because it’s the way France reads the history of Israel , where Israel HAS NO HISTORICAL RIGHTS on this land SINCE IT HAS NO HISTORY except a limited religious claim to small areas of Jerusalem, Tzfat , Tiberias ) .”
Some participants in the conference asked how PLO could convince Israel that it changed its basic principle of eliminating Israel . Colonel Rondot then sayed ” International pressure will apply to Israel to accept the change “.
Then Col.Rondot added ” Once PLO is back to its HISTORICAL soil, it will resume the armed struggle “.
This Trojan-Horse tactic was well-known to Israel. IDF had seized many political documents in Beyrouth in 1982 and also kept “peeping ” into the top leadership of PLO.
Therefore the question turns back to Shimon Peres : Why did he GAMBLED Israel security at Oslo , knowing fully well the real intentions of PLO ?
Peres preferred the short term fallacy of Oslo – the easiness of Surrendering for Nothing, to the continuous effort of settling the whole of Eretz Israel.
In his opinion he saw the empty half of the glass i.e the limitations of Israel power facing the world negative opinion as a unbearable burden.
And Peres was unable in 1985-1986 to deliver a Jordanian involvement ( King Hussein ) taking charge of the arabs in part of the disputed land .the palestinian revolt of 1987-1993 translated on the ground the weakness of the Israeli leadership.
So if we can resume, the Defeatism of Peres and the lack of political maturity -the naivity of the israeli public – produced Oslo. We are therefore fully responsible to the disaster of Oslo. It will take generations of strong willed israelis to reverse the failure.
@ Frank Adam:
The ex Jordanian (19 years by conquest -never recognised by the International Community except for Britain (their enablers), and Pakistan, (a crazy Islamic whim)…and now ex post, regained with defensive conquest, by the rightful owners, The Jewish People.
It is an ill wind that bloweth no man any good. The erroneous expulsion of Israel from Sinai by US threats in 1949 and 1957 enabled Israel after 1967 to tell everybody, “Told You so!” and enabled her to stay till Egypt agreed to a peace treaty. The Arab failure to amend the PLO charter and other obstructionism after Oslo and the vicious violence of the 2nd and “knife” intifadas enables Israel to stay in the ex-Jordanian West Bank.
well written, and poses a still open question:
It appears to me that he was rejected by his own people and embraced by the globalists, and since then carried the globalist grail. The Labor party in general was likely moved further left by the globalist abandonment of Israel… after all… socialist movements and parties are heavily influenced by their international ideological peers….. internationalists and globalists. It was alright until the global fashion trended from respect for Israel to deprecation of Israel. Everyone prefers to be liked by their peers, the problem is when you consider foreigners to be greater peers than your countrymen.
Any tight knit group with an agenda and goals tends to honor those who do its bidding… Obama also got a Nobel PP but I cant even remember what ludicrous explanation was given for the laughable “medal”. If you do what they want, follow their instructions, you get heaps and piles of rewards and medals.
Emiting “auras” is the politicians stock in trade… I understand Hillary the dangerous crook has quite a positive “aura” with many of her supporters.
A national leader should always hold his peoples interests higher than foreign accolades and rewards.
Thank you for publishing this excellent and much needed article.
Martin, this was very well written and on point.
See translated excerpts from Shimon Peres’s “Tomorrow in Now”
http://www.strategic-israel.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Peres-in-Tomorrow-in-Now-1.pdf