Loose Nukes - Were terrorists to detonate a 10-kiloton nuclear device near New York City's Empire State Building, everything within a third-mile radius would be utterly destroyed; anyone within 3/4 of a mile would almost certainly be exposed to fatal radiation levels; damage to buildings would be extensive; a large swath of Manhattan from river-to-river would be ravaged. Obviously, if terrorists had access to the kind of explosive power, that devastated Hiroshima (13 kilotons) or Nagasaki (21 kilotons) much of metropolitan New York would be obliterated.
Representatives of over 40 countries, including Israel, have been meeting yesterday and today in Washington under the auspices of the Obama administration at the first-ever Nuclear Security Summit. The administration's goal is to gain public (and private) commitments on a "work plan" to be implemented within four years committing countries to keep nuclear material out of the hands of terrorist groups, "combat nuclear smuggling and deter, detect, and disrupt attempts at nuclear terrorism."
The US government says terrorist groups have persistently sought the components of nuclear weapons. Experts agree that the hardest part about making a bomb is securing the nuclear material.
In 2007, for instance, unknown attackers sought unsuccessfully to penetrate a South African facility where enough enriched uranium was stored to build 12 atomic weapons, according to The New York Times. Approximately, 35 pounds of uranium-235 (about the size of a grapefruit) or nine pounds of plutonium-239 is enough to make a working nuclear bomb, according to political scientist Graham Allison. An estimated 4.6 million pounds of nuclear material is dispersed in 40 countries.
Unfortunately, Egypt and Turkey are set to exploit the nuclear terrorism meeting to criticize Israel's reputed nuclear weapons capability. Faced with the prospect that his attendance would be used to sidetrack the conference, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu opted to stay home and send Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, whose responsibilities include intelligence and atomic affairs, to head the Israeli delegation. In the words of US National Security Adviser James Jones: “The Israelis did not want to be a catalyst for changing the theme of the summit."
In any event, Israel will not be mentioned in the final communiqué being crafted by the administration. Moreover, the parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will meet next month at UN Headquarters in New York where Arab states can be expected to claim that it is politically untenable for them to confront the real and present danger of a nuclear-armed Iran without debating Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity.
Of course, the menace of nuclear terrorism is linked solidly to Islamist extremism. A.Q. Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist -- and an array of his associates -- provided nuclear knowhow to North Korea, Libya and Iran. For its part, Teheran maintains a murky relationship with al-Qaeda and open ties with Hizbullah and Hamas. These organizations have shown no compunctions about engaging in anti-civilian warfare. Worse, it is doubtful whether the Cold War strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction would deter atomic suicide bombers who have no national allegiances. That may explain why the US president calls a nuclear weapon in the hands of a terrorist organization the biggest threat to the Western world.
-- April 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Lose Nukes
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
On the Heritage Trail
Unlike Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not have to take a stroll on the Temple Mount to provoke Palestinian Arab leaders into threatening mayhem. Instead, Netanyahu simply announced a comprehensive plan to strengthen Israel's national heritage by rehabilitating and preserving archaeological and historic sites, developing historic trails, and conserving photographs, films, books, and music of archival value. "A people," he declared, "must know its past in order to ensure its future."
Unveiled on February 2, the plan was greeted with a yawn by the mainstream Israeli media, mixed with a few deprecating remarks about Jewish chauvinism, and was largely ignored by Palestinians. Not until three weeks later did Arab riots break out in Hebron and spread to Jerusalem's Old City and the Temple Mount, where dozens of Palestinian youths locked themselves in a mosque after hurling rocks at visitors to the plateau.
What happened in the meantime was this. Right-wing Israelis protested when it emerged that neither the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron nor Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, both of them integral to the civilization and sacred history of the Jews, was on the list of designated sites. On February 21, Netanyahu duly announced their inclusion. But the two sites (whose status remains otherwise unchanged) are in territory claimed by the Palestinian Authority, which views Israeli Jews as colonialist interlopers. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas promptly warned that Netanyahu's "provocation" could "lead to a holy war." Forget could, said Hamas premier Ismail Haniyeh, urging an intifada: should.
Yet the projected enterprise, whatever missteps may have attended its inception, is both entirely normal and entirely legitimate. It is also an urgent need. The state of Jewish identity in the Jewish state is, paradoxically, shaky. In the private lives of many, Judaism has decreasing significance. Many secular youngsters attend schools where neither Jewish subjects nor Jewish values are high on the curriculum. Meanwhile, among their insular ultra-Orthodox counterparts, civics and Zionism are hardly taught at all. And then there are the post-Zionists, some of whom fully embrace the Arab narrative and see the establishment of their country as "original sin" while others shun any emphasis on the specifically Jewish aspect of their national history.
This, then, is the context in which Netanyahu's call should be understood. Nor is his a lone voice. Natan Sharansky, the new chairman of the Jewish Agency, has launched his moribund organization on a new mission: to build the Jewish people into a connected family—and to link Israelis to their Jewish roots. Both men are saying that the culture, traditions, and historical consciousness handed down through the generations comprise the birthright of the Jewish people. Is this national heritage to be lightly abdicated, and in the name of what?
-- March 2010
Unveiled on February 2, the plan was greeted with a yawn by the mainstream Israeli media, mixed with a few deprecating remarks about Jewish chauvinism, and was largely ignored by Palestinians. Not until three weeks later did Arab riots break out in Hebron and spread to Jerusalem's Old City and the Temple Mount, where dozens of Palestinian youths locked themselves in a mosque after hurling rocks at visitors to the plateau.
What happened in the meantime was this. Right-wing Israelis protested when it emerged that neither the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron nor Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, both of them integral to the civilization and sacred history of the Jews, was on the list of designated sites. On February 21, Netanyahu duly announced their inclusion. But the two sites (whose status remains otherwise unchanged) are in territory claimed by the Palestinian Authority, which views Israeli Jews as colonialist interlopers. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas promptly warned that Netanyahu's "provocation" could "lead to a holy war." Forget could, said Hamas premier Ismail Haniyeh, urging an intifada: should.
Yet the projected enterprise, whatever missteps may have attended its inception, is both entirely normal and entirely legitimate. It is also an urgent need. The state of Jewish identity in the Jewish state is, paradoxically, shaky. In the private lives of many, Judaism has decreasing significance. Many secular youngsters attend schools where neither Jewish subjects nor Jewish values are high on the curriculum. Meanwhile, among their insular ultra-Orthodox counterparts, civics and Zionism are hardly taught at all. And then there are the post-Zionists, some of whom fully embrace the Arab narrative and see the establishment of their country as "original sin" while others shun any emphasis on the specifically Jewish aspect of their national history.
This, then, is the context in which Netanyahu's call should be understood. Nor is his a lone voice. Natan Sharansky, the new chairman of the Jewish Agency, has launched his moribund organization on a new mission: to build the Jewish people into a connected family—and to link Israelis to their Jewish roots. Both men are saying that the culture, traditions, and historical consciousness handed down through the generations comprise the birthright of the Jewish people. Is this national heritage to be lightly abdicated, and in the name of what?
-- March 2010
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Trouble in Emmanuel
Israel Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levi – himself an Orthodox Jew – issued an implied challenge when he told a packed chamber: “It cannot be that rabbis’ rulings will take precedence over the Supreme Court.” A hundred thousand ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews poured into the streets of Jerusalem last Thursday to answer in the affirmative.
Levi had just ordered dozens of ultra-Orthodox (or haredi) parents to jail, until the end of the semester, for refusing to comply with a court order to send their daughters to elementary school. The parents kept their children home rather than allow them to mingle with Sephardi girls – also ultra-Orthodox, but less stringently so -- at the Beit Yaakov School in Emmanuel. Throngs of demonstrators escorted these "parent-martyrs" as they turned themselves in to authorities.
After months of failed efforts to cajole the parents into a compromise, the justices ruled that they were in contempt of court and were apparently motivated by ethnic and religious prejudice. Not at all, say the haredim. The issue is one of principle: the right to educate their children in accordance with their ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi traditions. For Israel's body politic – already split along political, religious, social and cultural lines – the Emmanuel affair is yet another slash at the polity's cohesion. On Friday, the country's leading tabloid, Yediot Aharanot split its front page with two photos. One showed the over-dressed, black-clad ultra-Orthodox rallying under a withering sun; the other showed the outlandish pop singer Elton John at a sold-out nighttime concert near Tel Aviv. The headline sought to encapsulate Israel's dilemma: "Between Two Worlds."
Emmanuel is an underprivileged ultra-Orthodox settlement in the northern West Bank. Much of the population is Sephardi (with origins in the Arab world) and loyal to the Shas Party. A minority of residents are Ashkenazi (of European heritage) mostly Hassidim affiliated with the Slonim, Bratslav, and Gur dynasties. With Emmanuel's fortunes in decline, more well off families have left and, in recent years, been replaced by newly religious Sephardim. The hassidic parents say that their children were being negatively influenced by the "intolerable" deportment of the newcomers' daughters at the town's well-regarded, state-licensed and state-assisted Beit Ya’acov School.
With the Slonim parents taking the initiative, the Ashkenazim put up a fence, and created a school within the school for 75 of their daughters – also allowing a vetted group of Sephardi girls, whose families committed to living Ashkenazi religious lifestyles, to join them. The remaining 175 Sephardi girls were left to be educated on the other side of a barrier.
Sephardi ultra-Orthodox leaders challenged the segregation in the courts which repeatedly ordered Ashkenazi authorities to reintegrate the school. When the Education Ministry took down the barrier, the Ashkenazi parents – following rabbinic orders – sought to evade the court's ruling by bussing their girls outside the district. The court blocked this evasion and the controversy came to a head last week.
What distinguishes the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox from the Sephardim is the extent to which they will go in their unceasing struggle against modernity. This quest for insularity explains why Ashkenazi haredim keep their children out of the Israel Defense Forces and why they forbid television, and strictly regulate exposure to radio, newspapers, Internet, and mobile phones. The obsession with preserving a cloistered way of life is also why many of their men never enter the work force.
Chauvinism, too, plays a role. Ashkenazi haredim maintain a sense of religio-cultural superiority toward their Sephardi brethren. In Emmanuel, for instance, while the little Sephardi girls might wear knee-length white stockings under modest frocks, more is expected of little Ashkenazi girls who are obliged to wear white waist-length tights, even more modest skirts, and long-sleeve blouses worn with collars buttoned to the top. They are also forbidden to ride bicycles – “for the sake of modesty.”
In a new twist, Shas spiritual leader Ovadia Yossef, whose son Rabbi Yaakov Yosef had spearheaded Sephardi litigation efforts, declared that ultra-Orthodox Jews who turn to the secular judiciary to pass judgment on religious disputes risk losing their places in heaven. The son has now dissociated himself from the case citing temporal threats to his life not the risk of eternal damnation. Having embarrassingly aired their dirty laundry in public, the ultra-Orthodox world –Ashkenazi and Sephardi, Hassidic and Lithuanian -- has now closed ranks.
Mainstream Israel – secular and traditional -- has become increasingly jaded by the conduct of the haredi world particularly its willingness to benefit from the state while rejecting its core values. There is a prevailing sense of resignation that 10 percent of the population will continue to hold inequitable political sway over the allocation of resources unless the system of proportional representation – which artificially boosts parochial and single-issue parties -- is fundamentally revamped.
Levi had just ordered dozens of ultra-Orthodox (or haredi) parents to jail, until the end of the semester, for refusing to comply with a court order to send their daughters to elementary school. The parents kept their children home rather than allow them to mingle with Sephardi girls – also ultra-Orthodox, but less stringently so -- at the Beit Yaakov School in Emmanuel. Throngs of demonstrators escorted these "parent-martyrs" as they turned themselves in to authorities.
After months of failed efforts to cajole the parents into a compromise, the justices ruled that they were in contempt of court and were apparently motivated by ethnic and religious prejudice. Not at all, say the haredim. The issue is one of principle: the right to educate their children in accordance with their ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi traditions. For Israel's body politic – already split along political, religious, social and cultural lines – the Emmanuel affair is yet another slash at the polity's cohesion. On Friday, the country's leading tabloid, Yediot Aharanot split its front page with two photos. One showed the over-dressed, black-clad ultra-Orthodox rallying under a withering sun; the other showed the outlandish pop singer Elton John at a sold-out nighttime concert near Tel Aviv. The headline sought to encapsulate Israel's dilemma: "Between Two Worlds."
Emmanuel is an underprivileged ultra-Orthodox settlement in the northern West Bank. Much of the population is Sephardi (with origins in the Arab world) and loyal to the Shas Party. A minority of residents are Ashkenazi (of European heritage) mostly Hassidim affiliated with the Slonim, Bratslav, and Gur dynasties. With Emmanuel's fortunes in decline, more well off families have left and, in recent years, been replaced by newly religious Sephardim. The hassidic parents say that their children were being negatively influenced by the "intolerable" deportment of the newcomers' daughters at the town's well-regarded, state-licensed and state-assisted Beit Ya’acov School.
With the Slonim parents taking the initiative, the Ashkenazim put up a fence, and created a school within the school for 75 of their daughters – also allowing a vetted group of Sephardi girls, whose families committed to living Ashkenazi religious lifestyles, to join them. The remaining 175 Sephardi girls were left to be educated on the other side of a barrier.
Sephardi ultra-Orthodox leaders challenged the segregation in the courts which repeatedly ordered Ashkenazi authorities to reintegrate the school. When the Education Ministry took down the barrier, the Ashkenazi parents – following rabbinic orders – sought to evade the court's ruling by bussing their girls outside the district. The court blocked this evasion and the controversy came to a head last week.
What distinguishes the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox from the Sephardim is the extent to which they will go in their unceasing struggle against modernity. This quest for insularity explains why Ashkenazi haredim keep their children out of the Israel Defense Forces and why they forbid television, and strictly regulate exposure to radio, newspapers, Internet, and mobile phones. The obsession with preserving a cloistered way of life is also why many of their men never enter the work force.
Chauvinism, too, plays a role. Ashkenazi haredim maintain a sense of religio-cultural superiority toward their Sephardi brethren. In Emmanuel, for instance, while the little Sephardi girls might wear knee-length white stockings under modest frocks, more is expected of little Ashkenazi girls who are obliged to wear white waist-length tights, even more modest skirts, and long-sleeve blouses worn with collars buttoned to the top. They are also forbidden to ride bicycles – “for the sake of modesty.”
In a new twist, Shas spiritual leader Ovadia Yossef, whose son Rabbi Yaakov Yosef had spearheaded Sephardi litigation efforts, declared that ultra-Orthodox Jews who turn to the secular judiciary to pass judgment on religious disputes risk losing their places in heaven. The son has now dissociated himself from the case citing temporal threats to his life not the risk of eternal damnation. Having embarrassingly aired their dirty laundry in public, the ultra-Orthodox world –Ashkenazi and Sephardi, Hassidic and Lithuanian -- has now closed ranks.
Mainstream Israel – secular and traditional -- has become increasingly jaded by the conduct of the haredi world particularly its willingness to benefit from the state while rejecting its core values. There is a prevailing sense of resignation that 10 percent of the population will continue to hold inequitable political sway over the allocation of resources unless the system of proportional representation – which artificially boosts parochial and single-issue parties -- is fundamentally revamped.
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
POLLING JEWS
POLLING JEWS – What do predominantly liberal Asian-Americans think of President Barack Obama's policies on Tibet? Where do America's 2.35 million Muslims stand on Washington's conduct of the war in Afghanistan-Pakistan? It's hard to say. Yet minute shifts in American Jewish public opinion are carefully tracked.
Why do the views of US Jews, who comprise at most 3% of the population, seem to matter so? Just asking the question makes some people flinch because of the inference that there is something illegitimate about Jewish influence. Actually, it is America's meritocracy that has rewarded Jewish educational and socioeconomic achievement -- at least 139 of the Forbes 400 are Jewish -- allowing Jews to be "over-represented" in medicine, science, law, media, entertainment, and politics. There are no Jews in the Obama cabinet, but two of the president's top aides are Jewish as is the vice president's chief of staff. On Capitol Hill, 13 senators and 31 House members are Jewish.
Jewish public opinion matters, therefore, says Hebrew University political scientist Tamir Sheafer, because Jews are perceived to be an important, well-organized and powerful interest group. They are major financial contributors to political campaigns and in certain states the high turnout of Jewish voters (usually for the Democratic candidate) can help swing an election. For Kenneth D. Wald of the University of Florida, "Jewish opinion matters because Jews, despite their small numbers, are hyper-political, far outperforming non-Jews in registration, turnout, volunteering, campaign activity, contributions and mobilization." Wald says politicians pay attention to Jewish opinion because "passion and intensity outweigh numbers."
Late last week, a McLaughlin & Associates poll showed that if US presidential elections were held now only 42 percent of Jewish voters would re-elect President Barack Obama; a dramatic drop considering that 2008 exit polls gave candidate Obama 78% of the Jewish vote. Asked if they approved of the president's handling of America’s relations with Israel only half said they did. An earlier survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee, however, found that 55% of Jews approved of Obama's approach toward Israel. Conservatives have suggested that Obama's adversarial approach toward the Netanyahu government has cost him Jewish support; liberals postulate the president's perceived drift toward the pragmatic center on domestic issues could just as easily be the explanation. In any event, 70% of Jews say they feel a bond with Israel, yet experts agree this attachment does not top their agenda.
How does all this translate politically? Oddly enough, the Obama administration would not be the first to seek support from the Jewish community to sustain Washington's long-standing approach of dissociating its "rock solid" backing for Israel from opposition to its West Bank and other security policies. With only 37% of American Jews in the AJCommittee survey disapproving outright of Obama's handling of relations with Israel, community leaders are just as likely to lobby the Netanyahu government to change its policies as pressure the administration in the opposite direction.
- April 2010
Why do the views of US Jews, who comprise at most 3% of the population, seem to matter so? Just asking the question makes some people flinch because of the inference that there is something illegitimate about Jewish influence. Actually, it is America's meritocracy that has rewarded Jewish educational and socioeconomic achievement -- at least 139 of the Forbes 400 are Jewish -- allowing Jews to be "over-represented" in medicine, science, law, media, entertainment, and politics. There are no Jews in the Obama cabinet, but two of the president's top aides are Jewish as is the vice president's chief of staff. On Capitol Hill, 13 senators and 31 House members are Jewish.
Jewish public opinion matters, therefore, says Hebrew University political scientist Tamir Sheafer, because Jews are perceived to be an important, well-organized and powerful interest group. They are major financial contributors to political campaigns and in certain states the high turnout of Jewish voters (usually for the Democratic candidate) can help swing an election. For Kenneth D. Wald of the University of Florida, "Jewish opinion matters because Jews, despite their small numbers, are hyper-political, far outperforming non-Jews in registration, turnout, volunteering, campaign activity, contributions and mobilization." Wald says politicians pay attention to Jewish opinion because "passion and intensity outweigh numbers."
Late last week, a McLaughlin & Associates poll showed that if US presidential elections were held now only 42 percent of Jewish voters would re-elect President Barack Obama; a dramatic drop considering that 2008 exit polls gave candidate Obama 78% of the Jewish vote. Asked if they approved of the president's handling of America’s relations with Israel only half said they did. An earlier survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee, however, found that 55% of Jews approved of Obama's approach toward Israel. Conservatives have suggested that Obama's adversarial approach toward the Netanyahu government has cost him Jewish support; liberals postulate the president's perceived drift toward the pragmatic center on domestic issues could just as easily be the explanation. In any event, 70% of Jews say they feel a bond with Israel, yet experts agree this attachment does not top their agenda.
How does all this translate politically? Oddly enough, the Obama administration would not be the first to seek support from the Jewish community to sustain Washington's long-standing approach of dissociating its "rock solid" backing for Israel from opposition to its West Bank and other security policies. With only 37% of American Jews in the AJCommittee survey disapproving outright of Obama's handling of relations with Israel, community leaders are just as likely to lobby the Netanyahu government to change its policies as pressure the administration in the opposite direction.
- April 2010
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
The New Shimon Peres
Marking his eighty-seventh birthday this week, Israel's president flew to Cairo for a two-hour meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, captured headlines in Britain for his frank talk about British attitudes toward Jews and Zionism, visited bereaved military families, and welcomed new North American immigrants at Ben-Gurion Airport. Perceived not so long ago as among Israel's most polarizing and untrustworthy figures, Shimon Peres nowadays enjoys unprecedented status. A politician who once mercilessly undermined prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin stands loyally behind Benjamin Netanyahu while speaking publicly as an above-the-fray statesman.
Peres has been an element of the political landscape since settling in Palestine from Belarus in 1934. As a young man he became active in left-wing Zionist politics and helped procure arms for the fledgling Haganah. At independence in 1948, David Ben-Gurion placed him in the defense ministry, where for years he fulfilled key roles. Along the way, he became a Knesset member and a founder of today's Labor party, although his rivalries within Labor over the decades have been no less vitriolic than his ideological disputes with the Right. Mapai's Moshe Sharett despised him. Rabin profoundly distrusted him.
As the latter's foreign minister in the early 1990's, Peres initiated negotiations that led to the signing of the Declaration of Principles with the PLO in September 1993. That won a Nobel Peace Prize for him, Rabin, and Yasir Arafat. Prior to the signing ceremony on the White House lawn, Peres assured Israel's cabinet that Palestinian intentions toward Israel had completely changed.
In the event, Israel's terror-related casualties since Oslo exceeded those of the preceding half-century. But Peres was undeterred. Intoxicated by Oslo's potential, he took to speaking in often impenetrable aphorisms ("We must strive for fewer weapons and more faith"), as if willing the peace that Arafat conspicuously declined to enter into, insisting that it was simplistic to judge the Palestinian commitment to peace by Arafat's performance.
After Rabin's 1995 assassination, Peres served seven months as prime minister before being swept from power. Rejected by the electorate, he was embraced by European countries that provided the wherewithal to establish him at the head of the Peres Center for Peace. In 2000, he suffered another embarrassing defeat when the Knesset rejected him for the presidency in favor of an obscure figure, Moshe Katsav. Yet he was back in 2001 during the second intifada as foreign minister in another national-unity government, this one headed by Ariel Sharon. In the aftermath of the 2005 Gaza disengagement, he joined Sharon's newly formed Kadima party and in 2007 was finally elected president after Katsav resigned.
These days, Peres is honored both for redeeming a presidency sullied by his predecessor and as the embodiment of an organic link to the founders' generation. In between a hectic schedule that has taken him on 27 state visits abroad, he has managed to complete a biography of his mentor and hero David Ben-Gurion. While hardly ever looking back, seldom admitting mistakes, and never showing remorse, the man once described in a New York Times profile as "one of Israel's most mocked figures, considered an eternal loser and dreamer who harmed his career and reputation through selfishness, timidity, vanity, and political deafness" has somehow rehabilitated his public persona.
Historians will have to work on a big canvas in assessing Peres's achievements. He was crucially responsible for building Israel's nuclear deterrent, keeping the country well-armed, and in the mid-1980s, bringing down runaway inflation. Yet any balanced appraisal of his career must make sense of what many now agree was a staggering if not inexcusable strategic blunder: transplanting Arafat and his ethically corrupt, politically unreconstructed, and violently intransigent cadre from their Tunis exile to the helm of a nascent Palestinian polity in Ramallah, at the cost to Israeli society of untold trauma and civilian blood, and in exchange not for peace but for war.
Never having provided a convincing explanation for his turn from security mandarin to flighty dove, Peres is now back in the political center. Longtime observers may be forgiven for wondering whether, were he to live long enough, and were further opportunities to beckon, he might not re-make himself yet again for the sake of the limelight.
-- August 2010
Peres has been an element of the political landscape since settling in Palestine from Belarus in 1934. As a young man he became active in left-wing Zionist politics and helped procure arms for the fledgling Haganah. At independence in 1948, David Ben-Gurion placed him in the defense ministry, where for years he fulfilled key roles. Along the way, he became a Knesset member and a founder of today's Labor party, although his rivalries within Labor over the decades have been no less vitriolic than his ideological disputes with the Right. Mapai's Moshe Sharett despised him. Rabin profoundly distrusted him.
As the latter's foreign minister in the early 1990's, Peres initiated negotiations that led to the signing of the Declaration of Principles with the PLO in September 1993. That won a Nobel Peace Prize for him, Rabin, and Yasir Arafat. Prior to the signing ceremony on the White House lawn, Peres assured Israel's cabinet that Palestinian intentions toward Israel had completely changed.
In the event, Israel's terror-related casualties since Oslo exceeded those of the preceding half-century. But Peres was undeterred. Intoxicated by Oslo's potential, he took to speaking in often impenetrable aphorisms ("We must strive for fewer weapons and more faith"), as if willing the peace that Arafat conspicuously declined to enter into, insisting that it was simplistic to judge the Palestinian commitment to peace by Arafat's performance.
After Rabin's 1995 assassination, Peres served seven months as prime minister before being swept from power. Rejected by the electorate, he was embraced by European countries that provided the wherewithal to establish him at the head of the Peres Center for Peace. In 2000, he suffered another embarrassing defeat when the Knesset rejected him for the presidency in favor of an obscure figure, Moshe Katsav. Yet he was back in 2001 during the second intifada as foreign minister in another national-unity government, this one headed by Ariel Sharon. In the aftermath of the 2005 Gaza disengagement, he joined Sharon's newly formed Kadima party and in 2007 was finally elected president after Katsav resigned.
These days, Peres is honored both for redeeming a presidency sullied by his predecessor and as the embodiment of an organic link to the founders' generation. In between a hectic schedule that has taken him on 27 state visits abroad, he has managed to complete a biography of his mentor and hero David Ben-Gurion. While hardly ever looking back, seldom admitting mistakes, and never showing remorse, the man once described in a New York Times profile as "one of Israel's most mocked figures, considered an eternal loser and dreamer who harmed his career and reputation through selfishness, timidity, vanity, and political deafness" has somehow rehabilitated his public persona.
Historians will have to work on a big canvas in assessing Peres's achievements. He was crucially responsible for building Israel's nuclear deterrent, keeping the country well-armed, and in the mid-1980s, bringing down runaway inflation. Yet any balanced appraisal of his career must make sense of what many now agree was a staggering if not inexcusable strategic blunder: transplanting Arafat and his ethically corrupt, politically unreconstructed, and violently intransigent cadre from their Tunis exile to the helm of a nascent Palestinian polity in Ramallah, at the cost to Israeli society of untold trauma and civilian blood, and in exchange not for peace but for war.
Never having provided a convincing explanation for his turn from security mandarin to flighty dove, Peres is now back in the political center. Longtime observers may be forgiven for wondering whether, were he to live long enough, and were further opportunities to beckon, he might not re-make himself yet again for the sake of the limelight.
-- August 2010
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
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