Peres' gross intervention

Peres' gross intervention

Dror Eydar

In all the times that President Shimon Peres abandoned 
the presidential decorum and spoke out about politics, I have never gotten too wound up. This time, too, it was rather insignificant as Peres doesn't have an iota of public influence. Unlike the fool adherents who adore him at The New York Times, Israelis know Peres all too well. We have been subjected to his political genius and extraordinary foresight for years, as he allowed tens of thousands of terrorists into our land, armed them and ensured that they received international legitimacy. Since then, thousands of wise men have been racking their brains trying to solve the predicament one person got us into.

But this time, Peres' remarks constituted gross intervention in an election. U.S. President Barack Obama has a high-ranking spokesman here — our president. There is no question as to who both presidents want to win the Israeli election. Ten days before the vote, Peres runs to the one paper that has been traditionally the most hostile to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's administration, and "rats him out:" It is not Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' fault, it's Netanyahu's fault. "If the people of Israel heard from the leadership that there is a chance for peace, they would take up the gauntlet and believe it," Peres told The New York Times. We've been hearing it for 20 years, Mr. Peres. Twenty years! Most of us have become disillusioned, without Obama's Presidential Medal of Freedom.

On Thursday we marked the birthday of our national poet, Haim Nahman Bialik. "No voice is heard, nobody answers/And a dove and a youth still knock at the gate's door" Bialik wrote in his book "Behind the Fence." We have been knocking at the gate of peace for a hundred years, in vain. We are the only ones who want peace, while our neighbors want us dead. Wasn't that the case when you handed cities over to Yasser Arafat, and got nothing but suicide bombings in return, Mr. Peres? Wasn't that the case with the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza?

Recent research teaches us that Abbas, Peres' partner for peace, has been promoting the Palestinian narrative through the institutions of the Palestinian Authority and its media outlets. He has been cultivating the idea that all of "historical Palestine" (from the Jordan River to the sea) will soon return to the hands of the Palestinians, while simultaneously denying Israel's right to exist as a state, not to mention a Jewish state. He has been demonizing the Zionists and the Jews (not just the settlers). His message is that all forms of struggle, including terror, are legitimate, and previous agreements with Israel do not invalidate the legitimacy of the struggle. And we're the problem?

Alongside the brown-nosing article, we also received news that two Israeli films had been nominated for Academy Awards. Both films are documentaries that are based on the assumption that Israel is the bad guy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is a huge market for this message in the world. There is also a market for Peres' self-congratulatory remarks in which he speaks of modesty in the face of history, until he begins listing his own everlasting accomplishments. The one thing in common between these three events is that they take pride in our own people's misdeeds. Bask in your people's misdeeds and get awards. Out nation shall overcome this, too.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3224