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Middle East

Making History

Israeli President Shimon Peres reflects on his mentor, his peace partner, and whether the State of Israel will survive

By Benny Morris|July 26, 2010 7:00 AM|35comments
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Shimon Peres in his Jerusalem residence earlier this year. (Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)

Did Israel’s possession of a nuclear bomb—OK, “option,” if you prefer—really serve Israel’s security?

Without doubt. Say there is a suspicion that [Israel has nuclear bombs]. This serves to deter. Let me tell you a story. Amr Moussa—formerly Egypt’s foreign minister, then secretary of the Arab League—we had good relations. One day he comes to me and says, “Shimon, we are friends, take me to Dimona and show me what you have there?” I said, “Are you crazy? I’ll take you there, you’ll see there’s nothing there, you’ll stop being suspicious, and they’ll fire me. And I’m not interested in you stopping being suspicious. Be suspicious.” This suspicion played a major role, I know, in [Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat’s decision not to [try to] reach Tel Aviv [in planning the Yom Kippur War of 1973], in limiting the war to Sinai, not to exaggerate [in their war aims].

How do you know this?

I heard it from Yigael Yadin [a former IDF chief of general staff, later Israel’s deputy prime minister], who heard it from Sadat. And Yadin was someone completely reliable. [The nuclear capability] affected [that is, enhanced] Israel’s position in the world. This can’t be denied.

But since then, especially in recent years, the suspicion or reality of Israel having nuclear bombs enables [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad to say: “Why should we be forbidden nuclear weapons?”

They would have gone for nuclear weapons anyway, whether we had them or not. They want to destroy us.

But this gives them the excuse to go for the bomb.

The world understands the difference [between Israel having the bomb and Ahmadinejad having it]. To this day it serves as a [good] deterrent.

He is clear on the crucial point: “They want to destroy us.”

The handling of the matter, by the West, by all of us, has been wrong-headed, from the beginning. There are two elements. One is, in whose hands are the bombs. Say Switzerland got the bomb. Would anybody be worried?

I don’t think it’ll be easy to replace the Iranian regime.

I think the first sanctions should have been [and should be] moral sanctions.

Moral?

Yes, against the leadership. To prevent anyone meeting them. Like Fascists, like Nazis, not that I’m saying they’re Nazis. Get them ousted from the United Nations. Put them on trial for calling for the destruction of a fellow U.N. member state. They are behind terrorism. Hezbollah.

But would this have stopped the Iranian nuclear project?

This together with economic sanctions. And place a ring of anti-missile missile systems around Iran.

On the settlements issue, you spoke of proportions, of before 1977 [when, as defense minister, you were responsible for Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank] and after [when for much of the time, the Likud was in charge]. You did have a hand [during 1974-77] in establishing settlements on the [heavily Arab-populated] hill crests. For example, Sebastia [ where a precedent-making breakthrough occurred in 1975, when Israel’s Labor-led government permitted the establishment of a Jewish settlement in the heavily Arab-populated hilly spine of Samaria].

It’s a matter of proportions, I never agreed to 300,000 settlers. We were for settlements which were agricultural-military [not civilian settlements]. Like Ofrah. That was the idea.

He suggests that the compromise with the settler group Gush Emunim, essentially to allow the settlers to take root, was reached behind his back by Yisrael Galili, a fellow Labor minister, and that Peres’ negotiation and deals with the settlers at the time of the Sebastia crisis were irrelevant to the outcome. But Israeli critics, then and since, have consistently charged Peres with precedent-making responsibility for the government cave-in to illegal Gush Emunim actions that led to the settlement enterprise in the heartlands of the West Bank.

But I was held to blame. And this joined the other defamations against my character—that I owned factories [and made money through my Defense Ministry position], that my mother was an Arab, etc. All untrue.

Israel refused to talk with the PLO for a long time, then changed its tune in the early 1990s. Maybe that was a mistake? [Perhaps Israel should have begun to talk to them earlier?]

Look, there was the Socialist International. It had several deputy presidents, including myself. Three leaders [were relevant]: Olof Palme [prime minister of Sweden], Bruno Kreisky [chancellor of Austria], and Willy Brandt [sometime chancellor of West Germany and head of its Social Democratic Party]. They wanted to bring PLO head Yasser Arafat into the International. The only vice president who was opposed was me. There were fierce arguments. They pressured me, they said you don’t know Arafat. I said, I am not against. We are a socialist and democratic organization. If he becomes a democrat and socialist, I won’t oppose him. Meanwhile he’s a terrorist. And [gradually] they persuaded him. It was them, 100 percent. They persuaded him to accept [U.N. Security Council Resolution] 242 [which implied recognition of Israel’s right to exist], to abandon terrorism. To talk to Israel.

Arafat was an extraordinary person. Very complicated. He was born in lots of places. [Peres was alluding, jokingly, to the fact that Arafat said he was, or was reported to have been, born variously in Jerusalem, Gaza, and Cairo—and, perhaps, more generally to his penchant for telling tall tales.] He had a wonderful memory, [he remembered] every name and birthday. But facts he didn’t remember. They didn’t interest him. They were something he forgot. So you couldn’t conduct an orderly conversation with him. He was [politically] isolated. Even among the Arabs. Had the Arab states helped him, as world Jewry had helped us, he would have had a state years before. The [European socialist leaders] gave him money, a platform, made him an international figure. And what they wanted from him, he delivered [i.e., announcing abandonment of terrorism, willingness to recognize Israel, etc.].

Kreisky, incidentally, had a big part in bringing Sadat to Jerusalem [and in bringing about peace], [through arranging or endorsing] a meeting between the Egyptian ambassador in Austria and [then-Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe] Dayan. Kreisky always attacked us. I once asked him: Why? He said, “If I didn’t, how would I be able to help you?”

Next: Oslo

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Benny Morris is a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University and the author, most recently, of One State, Two States.
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  • MaxS

    Peres has indeed contributed much to Israel. But as principal architect of the Oslo agreement, which has done more damage to Israel than all the other wars put together, I’m amazed that he still has the gall to show his face.

  • Ken Besig Israel

    Shimon Peres and his dangerous naivete regarding peace with the Arabs and his downright ignorant support of Oslo, the Sharon Disengagement, and his appeasement mentality has killed, wounded, maimed, and disfigured more innocent Israeli Jews than all the Arab terrorist attacks in our history.
    Shimon Peres’ voluntary submission to every ridiculous and lethal European and American demand for Israeli concessions to the Arabs has led to the Arabs thinking that all they have to do is wait long enough and most Israelis will become just as cowardly and weak as Peres.
    Shimon Peres is perhaps the most dangerous element in the world Israel has to deal with. If only Peres’ shortcomings were the result of senility or Alzheimer’s, there might be some way to correct them, but Shimon Peres is a Left wing, Peace Now at any price with the Arabs, concessionist and appeaser, the Israeli version of WWII Neville Chamberlain if you will.
    With luck and a generous helping of the mercy of God, we will never see Peres’ kind of sick and twisted betrayal of Israel ever again.

  • Ken Besig Israel

    It is of course entirely appropriate that Peres should be interviewed by another dangerous and misguided Post Zionist Leftist so called historian Benny “know nothing about Israel, the Arabs, or the Middle East” Morris.
    Mr. Morris has actually written history books about Israel, and managed in those books to libel Israel in some of the bitterest terms possible, that is, when he wasn’t publishing outright lies about Israel. For Benny Morris, Israeli soldiers and settlers are murderous baby killing thugs while the Arabs are the cream of humanity and a byword for restraint and compromise. Indeed, for Benny Morris the world would have been a much better place had the sin of Israel never been committed and the poor Arabs left to live their lives in peace and progress.
    Benny Morris and Shimon Peres, what a pair of horse thieves they would make. You know they used to say that Peres would sell out Israel the first chance he got, but now they say Peres wouldn’t sell Israel, he’d just give it away. Benny Morris is a slightly different tale he just sold his soul and integrity so he would win the acclaim of the anti Israeli secular Left.
    These two clowns deserve each other.

  • Sharon Kahn

    I am wondering why Mr. Morris did not mention or ask Mr. Peres about his eponymous Peace Institute which, as far as I understand, concentrated heavily on creating the conditions for economic peace.

  • David Star

    It amazes me to read Ken Besig’s sentiments regarding Peres and Benny Morris. His understatements of the foul deeds of these two shows a reticence for bringing out all the facts that should be known about them.

  • Ken Besig Israel

    There is not enough room on the Internet nor are there enough words of condemnation available to use to describe the perfidy of Peres and Morris.
    These two are beneath contempt.

  • allenby

    peres’ Oslo Peeeeece formula has created a monster killing spree in Israel that lasted for almost 10 years. Don’t remember the exact number of Israelis killed, but it was probably the second in number of victims after the Yom Kippur War 1973.
    Rabin didn’t want to go to oslo. Pundak and Beilin are those who created and handcrafted the oslo-pogroms together with their friend arafat. Did they know what arafat was planning ? an old experienced diplomat peres should have known the game arafat was playing. And what about Thousands of Sfardi children that were sacrificed for atomic experiments in dimona, as a trade with US ??? peres was then the head of Israel’s atomic commission.

  • Amiel Ungar

    I was amused by the amalgam Harold Brown. I assume that the author meant either the prime minister Harold Wilson or the foreign minister George Brown.

  • Per Einar Sonnesyn

    Too much to hide?
    “About two weeks ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed regulations restricting access to government archives. As Barak Ravid revealed yesterday in Haaretz, 50-year-old materials that were to be opened to the public for historical study will now remain classified for two more decades.–
    Israel, which this year celebrated its 62nd birthday, can and must confront the less than heroic chapters in its past and reveal them to the public and for historical study. The public has a right to know about the decisions made by the state’s founders, even if they involved violations of human rights, covering up crimes or harassing political opponents by security means. The country is mature and strong enough to absorb the criticism that could arise if, for example, previously unpublished testimonies are discovered about the events at Deir Yassin”, Haaretz wrote yesterday. How bad conscience does the prime minister have to do this?
    And why does one Israeli Shalit count more than 10 000 palestinians in Israeli prison?
    It is forgotten that Ashkelon is an old Palestinian town, with the mosque still in its center!

    The facts on the ground speaks too loud to be subdued!

    Per Einar

  • David

    Israel is an historical anachronism, a blip in history. It will drown in a sea of Arabs. Israel faces the same fate that has befallen all other settler/colonialist enterprises dependent on the political support and largesse of another country thousands of miles away – abandonment. Time, the thrust of history, economics, geopolitics and demographics are with the Palestinians and the Arabs in general.

  • Martin K

    Umm, did the president of Israel just call the UK a anti-semitic nation? Wtf?

  • Shalom Freedman

    I do not believe Shimon Peres was wise in regard to ‘Oslo’. I believe he misjudged the intention of Arafat, and still does.
    But to read this outpouring of vitriol against a man who has contributed so much tp the Jewish state is disheartening. Peres has spent his entire life helping to build the state of Israel. He is doing this still now. The list of his accomplishments is long indeed.
    He is one of the true pioneer founding fathers of Israel whose complex story does credit both to him and to the Jewish people.
    It would behoove those who fanatically condemn him to look at the whole picture, and and have a bit of gratitude for what he has done for Israel, and the Jewish people as a whole.

  • Binyamin in Orangeburg

    The Thirteen Lies of Shimon Peres.
    Lie Number 1: He [Ben-Gurion] did not give orders to expel.
    Lie Number 2: They [the Iranians] want to destroy us. . . not that I’m saying they’re Nazis. . . .They are behind terrorism. Hezbollah.
    Lie Number 4: I never agreed to 300,000 settlers.
    [Racist] Lie Number 5: An Arab doesn’t compromise.
    Lie Number 6: Things have changed [for the Palestinians]; [we] allow them to build, to develop their economy.
    Lie Number 7: They [the British] always worked against us.
    Lie Number 8: We left the Gaza Strip completely.
    Lie Number 9: [Before Cast Lead] we refrained from retaliating [against the Hamas rockets]. … we restrained ourselves for eight years and allowed them to shoot thousands of rockets at us until the rage came out at one go. {Earth to Shimon, you killed 2500 Gazans between the time the Qassams started in the Fall of 2001 and Cast Lead. Total Israeli casualties over the same period from Gaza rockets – 27.}
    Lie Number 10: Hamas says we don’t want to talk, we want to destroy you, we don’t want peace with you.
    Lie Number 11: There is, in Gaza, no siege.
    Lie Number 12: We [the Jews] alone remained [from the ancient world].
    Lie Number 13 {THE BIGGEST LIE OF ALL}: There is no solution in one state.

    Mixed in with the lies are a few truths:
    There was an exaggerated enthusiasm after [the victory of] 1967.
    The other defamation against my character—that my mother was an Arab. Untrue. [But I am a racist.]
    I got from him [Arafat] what no one else would have: To move their demands from the 1947 [U.N. partition plan] borders [which gave the Jews 55 perecent of Mandate Palestine] to the 1967 borders [which gave the Israel 78 percent of Mandate Palestine]. No other Arab leader would have [conceded this]. . . . Arafat wanted peace.

  • David

    For the record, Shimon Peres was born in Poland and his real name is Shimon Persky. Perhaps nothing better illustrates the utter fraudulence of Zionism than the fact that in an absurd attempt to legitimize a false link between them and the ancient Israelites, many of Israel’s leaders changed their names in favour of Hebrew ones. David Gruen became David Ben-Gurion; Goldie Myerson became Golda Meir; Ariel Shinerman became Ariel Sharon, etc.

    Nor must we forget that Shimon Peres was responsible for the April 1996 premeditated massacre of over 100 innocent Lebanese civilians in the Qana UN compound. He should have been arrested, charged and put on trial as a war criminal.

  • Dave

    A great state-man, with true vision. so much of his vision is already applied.
    Wish Israel had more people like him. When a person like that talks, should listen and take some time for thinking more on what he said and meant. Experience and rare view combined with humanism.

    (a tad embarrassing to see some of the comments here. how low will people go to sound an anti-israeli opinion no matter what is the context?! … like David’s argument with the names changing… this is ridiculous.. pure lack of knowledge and understanding competing with anti-israeli prejudice.. )

  • David

    Dave

    Like it or not, by changing their names, Peres et al. have assumed false identities. There is no lack of knowledge on my part and as for my “anti-israel [sic] prejudice..,” I freely admit that I stand with the Palestinian victims, not with Israel, their well documented victimizer.

  • JonathanInTelAviv

    Simple people who don’t accept a secure Israel label Peres a right-wing extremist, while simple people who don’t accept an Israel at peace with the Moslem world label him a left-wing extremist. But the conflict isn’t simple, and anyone pushing a simple solution is a fool.

  • David Bramhall

    Another lie to add to Peres’ list: there is no common saying in England that “an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary”. Perhaps Mr.Peres could give us his source, though I suspect that he just made it up.

    His recent comments about Britain have caused great hurt in a nation that by and large regards itself as pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli. If Mr.Peres thinks that Britain favours the Arab nations, he might like to reflect on the fact that they got oil and he don’t. We have no choice but to deal with them.

  • Ron

    @David

    I wonder if you even realize how much your insane, lunatic rant supports Peres’ assertion?

    And David, while oil is probably the main motivating factor, the reality is you do hate us regardless. And by “us” i’m referring to Jews, Israelly or otherwise.

  • http://www.mohammedamin.com Mohammed Amin

    As a British citizen, I take great exception to President Peres calling my country anti-Semitic.

    This criticism is simply not consistent with the facts. Quite apart from the Balfour Declaration, it is clear from Tom Segev’s history of the British Mandate “One Palestine Complete” that the British were not neutral between Palestine’s Arab and Jewish residents; instead they consistently favoured the interests of the Jewish residents.

  • Regor

    Mr. Peres accuses the English of being anti-semitic? He should not confuse the ordinary ethnic English who stood alone in 1940 against the Nazis and gave shelter to persecuted Jewish people and the England of today.It is not the ordinary ethnic English who are desecrating Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and memorials or spouting pro-arab and anti-Israeli rhetoric but the foreign colonists who have been allowed to settle here in major cities, who may call themselves British or not, and who are well represented in an oppresive British parliament. Like the Israelis the English( but without an English parliament to protect their interests)feel beleaguered and surrounded by enemies.

  • lovelyisraelis

    The British are repulsed by Israel for the same reason the rest of humanity is repulsed by these criminals.

    It’s not anti-Semitism. It’s anti-Nazism.

    British (and Jewish) labor MP Gerald Kauffman spells this out nicely for the pro-Israel goons:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8

  • Lisa Abramowicz

    Regor: I admire and revere Britain for standing up against och fighting the Nazi regime during WWII even when it wasn’t opportune to do so. But I beg to differ on another matter. You claim that Britain
    “gave shelter to persecuted Jewish people”. How many did Britain actually give shelter to? Even temporarily? Very few. At the same time stopping Jews from trying to get into Mandate Palestine. Two thirds of the European Jews perished during the war after having been stripped of all civil and human rights. Even after the war when no one could say that they didn’t know, very few countries incl Britain was prepared to let in large numbers of survivors.

  • REGOR

    Lisa, how many? I understand in the 1930′s about 90,000 plus around 10,000 children under the “Kindertransport” programme. Yes, more could have been done. In the main the English have been friendly to Jews and were the authors of the Balfour Declaration. However, the British government were guilty of a betrayal of the Jewish people dduring the Mandate period and, of course, at the bottom of this was oil. The British relied on Arab regimes of the Middle East so a pro-arab policy on palestine served best to protect oil rights and the Suez canal.In England at the moment I believe there are some 350,000 Jews who add something to the life of the mind, music, art, science, medecine, etc. and my country, England, would be the poorer for their absence.

  • lovelyisraelis

    And lest we forget, ALL of the Jewish children in saved by England from the holocaust would be dead if the repulsive Israeli criminal and psychopath David Ben Gurion had had his way:

    “If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter.”

    Great friends of the Jews, these Israelis!

  • Dov Ber

    Shimon Peres is very well respected for his vision. He sees the end-game. He knows what is possible. He is also a mentor to Barak Obama. He is humble, gentle, and kind– he is a jewish sage

  • Yaakov Hillel

    To my friend Mohammed Amin and the rest of the British cronies. The saving of 10000 Jewish children whose families completely perished in the holocaust, mainly because the British locked the gates of Palestine for them to escape to, does not give England any credits.The Jews were thrown out of England hundreds of years earlier, the antisemitism is in their blood.the Universities trying to ban israel is the continuation of the great English love for jews. The Book/movie “the ship of fools tells an important angle of the story that the Jews were not let in to any country in the world including England and the United States. The British caused unseaworthy ships full of refugees not into Palestine and they sank with their thousdands of Jews that have gone in the holocaust. the British were partners to the Nazis when they could have blown up the railroads into the death camps and the death camps them selves. I have one good thing i can say about the British, they are inviting friends like Amin into England with a free hand they would not let the jews. The Jews would have turned England into a true empire the muslims will send england to an odyessy that goes back 1300 years where Their Leader who lied and murdered and was a praised pedophile who has taught to put women in their places. We see in the world that if a Muslim girl is raped then her family burn her to death. this is the world that the British have turned to, and they cannot turn the wheel back. Today you are going to pay for what you did to the Jews sixty years ago. The people who are going to make your life misrable are he ones you let into Palestine in the hundred of thousands when you would not let The tortured Jews in.

  • Yaakov Hillel

    Shimon Peres Belongs to the socialist/ once communist party of Israel. His mentor David Ben-Gurion was useless when it came to protecting the Jews against Muslims But he was brilliant when he gave orders to Kill Jews because they were not socialist-communists. He gave an order to look good among his non Jewish socialist-Communist friends to sink a ship in Tel Aviv Harbor with shooting canon fire at it. And his son of legacy Yitzchak.Rabin gave orders to machine gun the survivors who jumped off the exploding ship to save their lives and swim to safety. Ben Gurion carries the responsibility of having Zombied 16 year-olds (I have living proof) shoot survivors which was a planned act of murder from the roof tops of the hotels. Their only sin was they were not Socialist- Communists,and may be Israel would be a democratic country with revisionists (capitalists) taking over government some day. This is the true mentor and socialist half brother of Shimon Peres that the Israelis cry over their legacy. Maybe I have become a target now like Yitzchak Rabin who was put to death by a conspiracy.

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Making History

Israeli President Shimon Peres reflects on his mentor, his peace partner, and whether the State of Israel will survive