Peres also hasn’t forgotten the shopworn, hollow old
slogans about Israel’s yearning for peace, slogans for which one might
still find dubious buyers only occasionally in America.Israel yearns for “peace with all peoples, with all Arab states
…. No more war, no more destruction, no more hatred,” he recited, as
is his wont, at the conference of the right-wing Jewish propaganda
lobby, AIPAC. Peres feels at home there, of course.With its arms outstretched for peace, Israel opened two criminal
wars in two years, and Peres didn’t utter a peep. With arms
outstretched for peace, Israel continues to build settlements in the
territories, and the president hasn’t said a word. No more destruction?
What about the terrible destruction Israel wreaked in vain on Gaza? Not
a sound from Peres. No more hatred? What exactly was Israel sowing in
Gaza? Peres keeps mum.
Similar to Levy’s point above, I was struck during Peres’s speech to AIPAC how cookie cutter it was. It could have been the same speech he gave 15 years ago (you can read and watch it here). The audience was appreciative, but I couldn’t see it holding much sway with the Obama administration or other government leaders. Times seem to have passed Peres by. Levy also points out another inevitable task Peres has taken on – selling the Netanyahu/Lieberman government to the world. Or as he puts it, “slapping the kosher stamp of approval on what the world sees as an abomination.”
Noam Sheizaf makes a similar point on in his Promised Land blog in the post, “I don’t listen to Peres, and you shouldn’t either.” There he accuses Peres, and the Israeli government in general, of doing something that Israel often attacks others for doing – “speaking in two languages. The first one is aimed to please the world . . . the second one – reserved for internal use only – deals with the things we really plan to do.”
