Rest in Peace to Peres, and the Peres Illusion Part I

Shimon Peres was the ultimate survivor as a politician,
but he also symbolized a leadership disconnected
to the needs of everyday citizens, and it got worse
the older he got.

BS"D (With Heaven's Help)

My page is not focused on religion or God, but for this topic it's an essential element. In Judaism one is not supposed to speak ill of the dead, at least not one who has recently passed, and should aspire to see the best in anybody. Even the lowliest person, or one's personal enemy. Especially so as we approach the Jewish new year of Rosh Hashanah on Sunday night, where we continue the process of repentance both as a community and as individuals. So hearing last night about the passing of Shimon Peres, one of the most important statesmen of his time, I was struggling to find the best way to do that, and it's probably not gonna happen, but here goes.

The problem was not the lack of positive things to say about his astonishingly long career and very real accomplishments. I could never hope to reach his level of professional achievements. What weighed on me was the ultimate failure of his life and his refusal to admit the error of his ways despite the price in blood that the people of our faith and the citizens of Israel have suffered because of it. I think that the best I can do is hope that there will ultimately be forgiveness in the Lord's judgment of this man, as well as the families of the many people who lost loved ones due to the disastrous policies that he promoted and directed.

The Ultimate Survivor

It is breathtaking that a person who's political career began in the 1940s remained active into the 2010s. He immigrated to British Palestine in 1934 at age 11 from Poland. Unlike many of his political rivals that started out as military officers, Peres began as an official in the Workers Party of Israel (MAPAI) prior to the founding of the state, and as an operative of its Ministry of Defence during its early years eventually rising to the rank of director general. He was instrumental during the 1950s in preparing the nation's young, under-armed military for the conflict against Egypt known as the Suez Crisis in 1956. In 1959 he was elected with MAPAI to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and became deputy defence minister. He was the personal protege of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel and with him they broke with MAPAI in 1965 to form the Israeli Workers' List (RAFI) splinter party which would eventually merge back into the original party and would become the modern center-left Israeli Labour Party after several iterations. 

Peres' actions both in the ministry of defence and as a parliamentarian were far-reaching and he punched way above his weight as a civil servant in a state where civilian politicians and military officers jockeyed for incluence. He was very adept at reaching weapons purchase or aid deals, reaching them with France (1940s-60s) and the USA (Hawk missiles, 1960s). But perhaps the most important contingency he took was to demand budget funds and planning for a nuclear reactor at Dimona as opposed to another regiment of infantry as many military officials demanded at the time. His insistence paid off by making Israel the only known (still not acknowledged) nuclear power in the Middle East.

An IAF Dassault Mirage III, one of the
many such aircraft acquired thanks to
Shimon Peres' activities as a defence official.

In 1967 Peres' arms deals paid off as the modern Dassault Mirage III  jets purchased from France out completely outperformed the Soviet MiG planes deployed by Egypt, Syria and other Arab states during the Six Day War. It is likely that we will not know the full ramifications of Peres' early career as a defence official, but it's certainly a point in his column of merits. Yet when he rejoined the cabinet in 1970 as Minister of Transport, Peres was overshadowed by an internal conflict in the Israeli political elite, known as the War of the Generals.

Fighting for the Crown -- Peres vs. Rabin

Peres, Rabin, and Yigal Allon during a Knesset hearing in the
1970s.

Ironically, the event that brought Peres to the leadership of MAPAI was the Yom Kippur War (October 1973) and its aftermath. The two main soldiers that clashed for the domination over Israeli security were former IDF Southern Command GOC Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon, and Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev. To summarize, it was Bar-Lev's faulty defense strategy in the Sinai against Sharon's recommendations that cost the bulk of the country's 2,800 fatalities in the War. The fall-out from the war was that the top-level brass of the IDF and Defense Ministry were discredited by a wave of public skepticism as the belief in invincibility gained in 1967 evaporated. Minister of Defence Moshe Dayan, Chief of Staff David Elazar, and even Prime Minister Golda Meir all resigned.

In their place were chosen by the party Israeli Ambassador to the USA Yitzhak Rabin (ex-Chief of Staff) as the new prime minister and Peres as the new minister of defence. In later years it was portrayed falsely that the two were harmonious partners. The fact is that Rabin and Peres never trusted one another; at one point Peres was called by his boss an "indefatigable subverter". For three years they led the country, but as two officials that had spent the majority of their careers in the defense establishment or high government positions neither was capable of cleaning up the political corruption endemic to Labour's one-party rule. So in 1977, Rabin resigned as MAPAI leader due to the issue of his wife holding a suspicious bank account in the US, and Peres immediately took over for three months as the new prime minister.

Instead of being his moment of triumph, the June 1977 would be called the Revolution as the opposition Likud Party swept into power under the firebrand Menachem Begin. Peres became identified instantly as a member of the corrupt, Ashkenaz (European), elite. Peres also had to adjust to being an opposition politician for the first time in his career. In 1984 he was able to win enough seats to force a coalition agreement with Likud rival Yitzhak Shamir making him prime minister again, but it was only for half of a term. 

All in all Peres lost in the 1977, 1981, and 1988 elections as head of the Labour Party. Within the party he had only one rival with any support, Rabin, but among the average Israeli voter he was taken to be the "eternal loser", the one politician whose worst enemy was himself. Many Israelis would agree he was the more polished, qualified, and professional option compared to Shamir, yet his arrogance and disconnect from their lives meant they would always choose someone else. 

The Stink Play

In 1990 Peres and members of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party attempted to perform a maneuver where they would gain enough votes to unseat Shamir without a new election and have Peres voted as the new prime minister by Knesset members. This work of subterfuge was torpedoed by a number of politically influential rabbis that saw Peres as not being trustworthy to hold his end of any agreement. The failed maneuver, nicknamed HaTargil HaMasriakh, was the last straw for Labour's top leaders.

So in the early 1990s Peres was eventually ousted from the leadership of Labour in favour of Rabin who would win back power in 1992. However, in order to ensure the full backing of the entire party's leadership Rabin had to accept his nemesis' place in his leadership circle, naming him foreign minister.

His finest hour, their darkest abyss

Shimon Peres is at center stage
accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with
co-laureates Yasser Arafat and
Yitzhak Rabin.

As foreign minister Peres would reinvent his career. As both a prime minister and opposition leader, Peres (as well as Rabin) were both considered war hawks having been deeply involved in squelching the First Intifada and fighting a series of wars in Lebanon. After 1992, and possibly without Rabin's initial knowledge, Peres and his acolyte Yossi Beilin would flip that on its head. It was Beilin and others that established the first contact with Palestine Liberation Organization negotiators in Oslo, Norway that lead to the "Declaration of Principles" and Oslo Accords in 1993 between Israel and the PLO.

For his central role in facilitating the process, Peres was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Yasser Arafat and Rabin. Yet instead of beginning an era of peace in Israel the Oslo Process would facilitate several waves of terror by both PLO partisans and Islamist fanatics from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad of Palestine (PIJ). Under Yasser Arafat the new Palestinian Authority would begin a cat-and-mouse game, or low intensity conflict, of having its own loyalists commit murders by bombing, shooting, and stabbing against Israeli soldiers and civilians, while it also engaged in a peek-a-boo process of both fighting Hamas for its own purposes and subcontracting terror operations to it. 

The logical heir, and the natural failure

The Rabin murder traumatized Israeli society, but it did not
affect Peres' flawed leadership of the country.

The worst wave of terror during this era occurred during late 1995 and culminated in a massive peace rally by Labour supporters and others in the peace camp to bolster the public show of faith in the peace process. Immediately following the rally Rabin was tragically murdered. The accepted version holds that the assailant was Israeli Jewish right-wing fanatic Yigal Amir. The universally known fact is that Amir was closely in contact with a government informant, and there are plenty of credible leads that show that while Amir may have been the shooter, Rabin may have been set up, perhaps even by members of his political circle like Peres. To explain the entire story would require an article all its own, but as of this writing he has not been implicated.

Until next time:

There you have it. So without him his country may have never survived, but I bet a lot of you are not aware of Peres' long bitter political history, his trouble fulfilling his leadership potential with ballot box support, and his rancorous feud with Rabin that possibly resulted in the most famous political assassination in their country's history. Please write back or comment for more information or your thoughts..