JERUSALEM -- It's hard to spend any time with Israeli President Shimon Peres and remain pessimistic about the possibility of peace.
"I'm 86," he told me, "and at a moment in my life when I have no personal agenda. I'm not interested in money. I'm not jealous of anyone. My only agenda is my country. I feel freer than I've ever felt before -- and with this freedom I can be most effective. At my age I don't want a suntan. I like being in the shadows."
But from the shadows he can influence all the players in the sun. "I meet regularly with Netanyahu and talk to him all the time," said Peres. "He asked me to meet with President Obama before he did and prepare the ground. I talk with Abbas and Fayad a lot too. We've never had better leaders to deal with. Fayad is an economist; he understands the importance of producing real results for his people."
I met with Peres at Beit HaNassi, the official presidential residence in Jerusalem (which is being given a green makeover). I had brought him my book on fearlessness, so our meeting began by talking about fear and the role it plays in undermining peace efforts.
The conversation quickly turned to what great role models of overcoming fear our parents had been: my Greek mother, who hid Jewish girls in the Greek mountains during the German occupation and had to confront Nazi soldiers who came looking for them; his Polish father, who had volunteered for the Royal British Army, and was given shelter by Greek monks, who fed and hid him for two years.
Peres' father was eventually captured and forced into hard labor at a concentration camp near Auschwitz, where one of his jobs was to take dead bodies out of the camp. At great risk, he and another prisoner used this position to help a few condemned prisoners escape, hidden among the dead.
The family eventually made its way to what would become Israel. "I remember my father in later years," Peres told me, "singing Greek songs he had learned from the monks to his grandchildren."
Peres is a powerful storyteller -- and the tale of his father's war experience has more cliffhangers than an old Saturday matinee serial -- so I felt almost sorry that I had to drag him back to the prosaic world of tripartite talks in Washington.
"It was an important first step," he said of yesterday's meetings, "because, as leaders, the main problem that both Netanyahu and Abbas face are their own people asking, 'Why are you giving away so much?'"
And, indeed, this morning the Israeli papers featured comments from Israeli politicians calling the summit "a shameful farce" and accusing Netanyahu of "humiliating Israel." Danny Danon, a member of the prime minister's Likud Party, said: "The summit proved that the peace process is not a Hollywood movie." On the other side, Abbas was accused by Hamas' leaders of "stabbing Palestinians in the back."
"You are going to be criticized," said Peres. "But you have to give things away. Indeed, you must have the courage to keep giving things away. But we need to understand that the leaders' rhetoric is often for domestic consumption. So when Abbas makes statements that are difficult for Israelis to hear, I choose to judge him not by his rhetoric but by his actions."
"The path to peace is never perfect," he continued. "Too many critics demand perfection. But what we are trying to achieve is to allow people to stay alive so they can dream of perfection. Better an imperfect peace than a perfect war."
Given this clear preference for an imperfect peace, what, I asked, is the best way for Israel to deal with Iran? Meir Dagan, the director of Mossad, has said that Iran will not be in possession of a nuclear weapon for several years. So, I asked the president, why are Netanyahu and Ehud Barak pushing the U.S. to enforce sanctions by the end of the year that may lead to military action? What is the urgency?
"We are not planning military action," he told me. That is the same thing Russian President Medvedev recently said that Peres had told him, an assertion that Israel's deputy foreign minister quickly disavowed, saying: "Medvedev may have misunderstood or misinterpreted. But, categorically, Israel is not taking any option off the table, as nobody should."
But it was clear that what Medvedev reported is what Peres believes. "Sanctions are the best way we can help our Iranian brethren to build the pressure from within," he told me. "The Iranian people are way ahead of their leaders in power. Ahmadinejad is a throwback to the middle ages. He would have been at home presiding over a 12th century Inquisition. What's happening in Iran is that the Islamic revolution that overthrew the Shah is now being devoured by its children."
In Iran, it is the children's children -- today's young people -- who represent the best hope for a break with a barbaric regime. In Israel, Peres sees education and innovation as the key to his country's future.
"Our brains," he told me, "are our only real resource. We have 100,000 cows in Israel but we produce more milk than Ethiopia, which has four million cows. Technology is what makes a difference. So, for us, it's all about science and education. That's why I want to turn the army into a university. I want to turn camps into campuses. We need to educate our soldiers, not just train them."
But, I countered, brains without heart and empathy are never enough. After all, Germany in the 30s was a highly educated country. "Yes," he replied, "and we need to express our empathy in practical terms. That's what we are trying to do through the Peres Center for Peace. We've brought 5,500 gravely ill Palestinian children and their mothers to be treated in Israel. We've also trained Palestinian doctors in -- and provided equipment for -- fighting cancer."
There is an enormous amount of philanthropy in Israel but the horror of what happened to civilians, especially children, in Gaza continues to overwhelm the good that's been done.
I asked Peres whether Obama's tough love approach will, in the end, benefit Israel by helping to end the stalemate. "If there is love," he told me, "it's never really tough. But you must have love. At the end of the day, you have much more influence through generating goodwill than through applying pressure."
Clearly, this is the strategy Shimon Peres has chosen for this final chapter of a remarkable life on the world stage that started when David Ben-Gurion handpicked him at age 24 as his deputy minister of defense and which he now hopes to conclude by doing everything he can -- in public but especially "in the shadows" -- to make real his mentor's vision of an Israeli state peacefully co-existing next to a Palestinian one.
Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
Hmmm....well with 500,000 Israelis in illegal (according to the UN, EU and just about everybody else) settlements in the occupied Palestinian Tarritories and Netanyahu and a majority in Israel opposing a freeze, never mind abolition of these illegal settlements, and therefore no chance of achieving a viable Palestinian state, I think everyone should be "pessimistic about the policy of peace".
A little fast to jump to conclusions, no?
What is really astounding it that some of the writers actually think that 14,000,000 Jews (approximate number of Jews in the entire world) can cause as much trouble as is attributed to them. There are more than 1,000,000,000 Christians and a similar number of Muslims. I suggest that if you want to know where the trouble like you look first at the billions of people subjugated to superstition and ignorance of those two religions and only as a footnote to the infinitessimal number of Jews.
In any case, however, the world will continue this nonsense until reason prevails and stone age superstitions are destroyed.
Jews have had an almost continuous presence in Palestine for at least 3000 years.
Jews were not privileged in the USSR.
The wall is to protect Israeli citizens from terrorism.
Approximately 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab.
History proves that Jews need a safe place to live.
All people, regardless of nationality or religious affiliation need a safe place to live.
I have lived here through several UN General Assemblies and was actually pleased with the traffic jams and pleasant security when President Obama was here yesterday. Everyone was in a festive mood (although typically grumpy, NY style about the traffic and noise) and we were all standing looking out for our President to try and catch a glimpse.
Naturally, I was concerned and curious as to the VERY heightened sense of security, Then I turned on CNBC and saw Bibbi at the Podium.
It is very impacting to see that this man requires Much, much more security than our own President. This is an indication of several things:
1. He is so disliked that the power is justified.
2. The level of paranoia is unparalleled.
3.It is just the way they see themselves ("us against them").
4. They trust no one and travel with their own security forces.
Regardless of the reason, it certainly put me in a state of stress and I only live here, free and American. I can only imagine the fear Palestinians feel on a daily basis from such a daunting force!
'The Israeli Prime Minister's office recently put the number of "living Holocaust survivors" at nearly a million' (extract from The Holocaust Industry by Norman G. Finkelstein of the City University of New York, published by Verso, London and New York, 2000, p.83).
Well, they never did and the problems went on.
I, like you, blame it on militants who never want peace anyway.
And I have pity on the people who are unfortunate to live in the midst of this.
Israel has the right to defend itself.
Too bad it has to, but it is necessary as long as there are people out there who are hell bent on destroying Israel.
We keep arguing about who was there first and ancient religions that might as well be in the stone age. This is pointless. The israelis aren't going anywhere. Get over it. Its not going to happen. In this sense, we are just as bad as they are.
The Palestinians may or may not ever be able to throw off the terrorists who control and manipulate them. This is sad because there have been times and places when there have been communities of both sides living in peace and having commerce amongst themselves.
This isn't about rational thought an discussion. Peace will only come when both sides want it bad enough.
The issue however is one of "no territory" - for the Jewish state, that is.
June 8, 2007, @ the 27th annual American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Washington, D.C. Conference, Congressman Paul Findley, a moderate Republican blew my mind when he addressed the luncheon crowd:
"It is time to speak openly and honestly about Israel. But, in American politics, that is still forbidden....Pity that we cannot seem to shed our fear of Israel. We are afraid to speak out on Capitol Hill, for fear of losing the next election. They are more like trained poodles jumping through hoops than leaders!
"Why this fear? How did we get here?
“Forty years ago to this day, June 8, 1967 the change occurred, the floodgates opened and money poured into Israel as never before. When President Johnson heard about the U.S.S. Liberty being attacked by Israel he ordered the rescue fighter planes to return to the deck. The rescue mission was aborted and the survivors have said they heard LBJ’s voice tell Admiral Giess, 'Get those planes back on deck. I don’t care if the ship sinks, I will not embarrass Israel.'
“LBJ also threatened to court martial anyone who reported what had happened. Johnson accepted Israel’s false claim of “mistaken identity” and he knew it was a lie. That is when the change began and Israel learned they could get away with murdering U.S.A. soldiers."
Excerpted from: Honoring LIBERTY and Calling for a Second American Revolution!
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=701&Itemid=180
At the end of the day it is not about Obama but the survival of Israel and so the Israelis will continue to do what they think will help their survival and not the survival of a four years president.
An Israeli Border Police jeep had parked outside the gates of the Anata girls' school and opened fire, and Abir was hit with a rubber bullet.
After three days on life support her struggle ended.
"Many children have been injured in the past by these brutal actions of the soldiers and on January 16th it became deadly. As in many other cases the police replied that the soldiers were shooting in response to stones thrown at them by children."
Abir's father and co-founder of Combatants for Peace affirmed, "I'm not going to lose my common sense, my direction, only because I've lost my heart, my child. I will do all I can to protect her friends, both Palestinian and Israeli. They are all our children."
Excerpted from "They Are All Our Children"
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=642&Itemid=176
"Michshol Hafrada" Hebrew for "The Separation Wall" which translates to Apartheid in Afrikaan.
The Wall has divided Palestinians from Palestinians and has stolen their aquifers, denies them access to their land, jobs, families and holy sites and for every mile it consumes over $1.25 Million USA Tax dollars.
The Wall was deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice but no president has yet demanded Israel to tear down this wall!
Jewish only colonies have been implanted to divide the Palestinian neighborhoods throughout occupied territory. Over 100,000 Palestinians are trapped and then daily humiliated and tortured at the over 600+ checkpoints that deny them access to their families, land, jobs, resources and holy sites.
Since 1967, over 22,000 dwellings in Jerusalem have been bulldozed by Israeli forces because they interfere with settlement expansion.
Israel attempts to justify their immoral actions with three distinct categories:
1. Collective Punishment: Homes of suspected terrorists-in reality that is anyone who opposes the occupation.
These punitive actions amount to 15% of the over 22,000 homes destroyed since 1967.
2. Administrative demolitions for lack of building permits: Israel refuses to issue any and this accounts for 25%. In occupied east Jerusalem one out of four Palestinian homes have a demolition order.
3. Security: The blanket reason given for all of Israel’s injustices and illegal actions.
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1422&Itemid=224
Home destruction: If terrorists do not fear for their own death, they may give a thought to the consequences to their families, if they know their home will be destroyed if the terrorist carries out his murders. There is precious little else to use to try to deter those maniacs.
But enough about that. Why not just accept the offers from Netanyahu for a state of their own? They rejected Barak and Olmert, and no are being offered less. If they reject this too, who knows what they will be offered down the road. Take "yes" for an answer.
"We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community."
I felt COMMON SENSE has returned to the White House:
"Soon after I had published the pamphlet "Common Sense" [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion... The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." -Tom Paine
When FDR met with labor leaders in 1934, after four hours of meeting, he said, 'You've convinced me that you are right. Now, go out there and FORCE ME TO DO IT.'
What he meant, was that the pressures on a President to stay with the status quo, the forces of the economic and political elites of the country so enormous, that even when a President wants to change direction, he requires the support of forces that will push him in the correct direction.
In solidarity we "have it in our power to begin the world again"-Tom Paine
xoxe
fanned