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Questioning Shimon Peres’ Legacy

Like many older Israelis, Shimon Peres was a Polish national who immigrated to the new Jewish colony underway in Palestine. While European anti-Semitism was a major factor in the mass Jewish exit from Poland; the Zionist enterprise was active long before Hitler’s birth and the eventual rise of Nazism.

It mattered little to men of Peres generation that their nation-building tactics were destined to create a legacy of permanent strife and resentment. I suppose he was willing to let others, particular Palestinians and young Israelis; pay that bill. Peres spilled about the same amount of blood as his predecessors; although not as much as Netanyahu; and justified the violence in similar ways.

The Peres peace legacy is a necessary illusion, assisted by compliant Western politicians like Justin Trudeau and Bill Clinton. The 1993 Oslo Accords were a total Israeli victory since Yasser Arafat betrayed his people for myopic political gain. No progress was ever made on illegal settlements or the Palestinians’ right of return to their conquered homes.
The only peace process Shimon Peres participated in was ensuring that Israel would continue to expand beyond its flexible borders by absorbing Palestine piece by piece. Apparently, such trickery deserves a Nobel Prize.

COMMENT

Peres fulfills God’s purpose

Published in Guardian-Charlottetown: October 12, 2016

Morgan Duchesney in his letter "Questioning Peres' legacy," the Guardian October 6 2016, is very bitter and very disrespectful towards an Israeli national hero. Morgan seems to have forgotten the Holocaust and the over six million European Jews that were murdered and that "Zionism is a movement formerly for re-establishing and is now for supporting, the Jewish national state of Israel." The deed for Israel's land is written in the Holy Bible and Shimon Peres was a man used greatly for God's purpose. The people who think the way Morgan views Zionism want Israel annihilated.

R.A. Jenkins, Charlottetown