Older and Wiser

Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks? They don't come much older than President Shimon Peres, but yesterday, while speaking to the Austrian chancellor he finally admitted (or figured out) something that most of us have known for a very long time - Hamas wants to destroy Israel!

(Do you think he drank too much coffee? Or have they given him those 'smart pills'?)

He almost admitted that pulling out of Gaza was a mistake! I wonder how long it will take him to see that Oslo isn't doing too well at the moment either (how does that Nobel prize look on the mantlepiece now?)

Everything he has been done and tried to do for the past several decades (at least) turns out to have been a mistake. (I hope I never have to come to a realisation like that!) All this time he thought the Palestinians were our friends!

Perhaps he is in the process of doing teshuva (it is Elul, even for the president). Perhaps he has finally heard the screams of the kids in Sderot!

Let us hope (and pray) that with this realisation about Palestinian - Israel relations he will also actually direct the government to do something, and to make Israel a safer and even better place to live.


Hamas wants to destroy Israel, says Peres

"We had a rough day in Sderot. Seven rockets fell and almost killed our children. It's an intolerable situation and there is one address for it – Hamas. There is a limit to how much Israel is willing to tolerate," President Shimon Peres told Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer on Monday.

In thier meeting in Jerusalem, the president told the chancellor, "Israel left Gaza completely. There is not one Israeli citizen in its territory. Today I ask myself why? Why is Hamas shooting? What is its goal?

"There is only one answer. Hamas is a religious-fanatic organization that does not want a Palestinian state for its people, but wants to impose the dangerous radical religious hegemony that is taking over the entire Middle East and gives a green light to kill innocent people in its name."

Peres continued to condemn Hamas' actions which he said harmed both the Palestinian and Israeli people. "Hamas has one goal," he said, "to destroy the State of Israel. This is a danger to the entire free world. There is a limit to how much Israel is willing to tolerate."

Peres was right!

I must congratulate our new president on his foresight. Martin Sherman has written an excellent essay for ynet showing how Shimon Peres got it exactly right in 1978 with his dire predictions of what would happen if the Palestinians ever got their own state. The only question is why he changed his mind, to declare last week that Israel must get rid of the territories (and thus showed exactly what he meant when he said that he would be an unbiased impartial president!). Is this a sign of senility in an 84 year old man? Or has the world changed as much as his mind?

This is another clear sign that Mashiach is on his way!!

The establishment of such (a Palestinian) state means the inflow of combat-ready Palestinian forces (more than 25,000 men under arms)
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into Judea and Samaria; this force, together with the local youth, will double itself in a short time. It will not be short of weapons or other (military) equipment, and in a short space of time, an infrastructure for waging war will be set up in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. Israel will have problems in preserving day-to-day security, which may drive the country into war, or undermine the morale of its citizens. In time of war, the frontiers of the Palestinian state will constitute an excellent staging point for mobile forces to mount attacks on infrastructure installations vital for Israel’s existence, to impede the freedom of action of the Israeli Air Force in the skies over Israel, and to cause bloodshed among the population...in areas adjacent to the frontier-line."

Shimon Peres, Tomorrow is Now, p. 232.

Mazel Tov Peres

Well, the impossible has happened! Shimon Peres has won an election (well, technically he didn't win because the other candidates both pulled out, but he would have won). He is now the president elect of Israel in an honest and open election. In two months he will be 84 years old, and he has just been elected for a 7 year term of office. By the end surely he will be one of the oldest politicians in the world (and who can imagine anything ever happening to him? He seems to be immortal, certainly he is politically eternal). So I was wrong, thinking that he could never win.

On the other hand, Barak won his election as leader of the Labour Party with only a small amount of cheating (and only by Arabs and Druze, so it is probably OK).

Barak received a total of 34,542, while Ayalon got 32,117 of the votes (47.7 percent), while 683 of the party's registered voters abstained from voting. That means the difference between them was 2,425! That is a very small margin of victory. Ayalon was gracious in defeat. Listen to this:

Ayalon praised Barak for his victory and said that he would cooperate with the new chairman. However, he told Israel Radio that irrespective of the result, which he said he accepted, he would submit a complaint to police and to the attorney general over misdemeanors he claimed were witnessed at several polling stations. "Labor is my house and my house must be clean," he said.

The head of a polling station in Shfaram was allegedly caught stuffing dozens of ballots for Barak. In Tira, police came to the polling station after its chairman complained he was attacked by a Barak loyalist. The Ayalon campaign asked to stop the voting in Julis, because people were voting there without identification.

I am beginning to like Ayalon more and more. The truth is that I knew nothing about him before these elections. Now he seems to be an honest person (which is impossible in politics), and even though I don't agree with his views, I can respect someone who respects me. This is what Wikipedia has to say about him:

On 25 June 2003, Ayalon launched, together with Palestinian professor Sari Nusseibeh, a peace initiative called "The People's Voice". The goal of the initiative is to collect as many signatures of Israelis and Palestinians as possible for the peace plan guidelines supporting a two-state solution without the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Although Ayalon promotes traditional left-wing ideas, he insists he is not a part of the Israeli left and spurns the Israeli peace camp for its hostility toward the Israeli public and especially toward the settlers. Ayalon managed to outrage many left-wing activists when he said that only Ariel Sharon and the Likud could bring peace.

He took part in the "Mate ha-Rov" demonstration in support of the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and made a very critical speech against the Israeli peace camp. He said:

We, who protest here, did not succeed in sinking through to the majority of the people. The majority is silent and therefore has no influence. I will tell you why the majority is not here. They are not here because we didn't manage to settle in the hearts [Hebrew: להתנחל בלבבות, originally a phrase invented by the settlers] of this true majority, the majority that makes the difference. We didn't manage to talk and perhaps we didn't even want to. We turned the settlers of Yesha into enemies and in an overbearing manner we banished them to the outskirts. We will only succeed when the grief of the evacuees will overcome the joyous cry of the evacuators. We claimed the desire for peace solely as our own. The majority sits at home and is quiet, although it wants out of Gaza the same as we do. The majority doesn't care, and shouldn't care, which person signs the accords to end the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict. In order to get out of Gaza, the majority of the people must not be silent. [2]

So, (apart from the fact that he teamed up with Peretz in this second round,) the only thing I have against him (and this is definitely tongue in cheek in case you thought I was serious) is that he bears an uncanny resemblance to Riff Raff (aka Richard O'Brian from New Zealand). Can you tell them apart?






Let's hope that somehow his the two victories of the two 'old' leaders will somehow usher in a 'new' era of politics. Unfortunately I don't think Israel is ready for the new just yet though (at least the politicians aren't). And when it goes pear shaped for Barak (probably within the year) I hope Ayalon tries again and does well.