Shimon Peres is the new honey-bunny of American liberals, the anti-Netanyahu. Chris Matthews adored him last night. And The New York Times has a big piece on Peres by an… Israeli journalist, Ronen Bergman. Writes Bergman:
Peres is Israel’s elder statesman, who, very late in his life, has attained a degree of popularity that eluded him throughout his earlier career. In a survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute, 84 percent of Jewish respondents said Peres was trustworthy, while 62 percent thought Netanyahu was.
So a poll publicized respectfully by the New York Times as a measure of Peres’s “popularity” excludes Palestinian citizens of Israel– and it’s from a “Democracy Institute”! How would Americans feel about a poll of Americans, excluding blacks?
And doesn’t the explicitly-racist poll undermine Peres’s subsequent statement:
“Most of the world will support the Palestinians, justify their actions, level the sharpest criticism at us, falsely label us a racist state.”
More. Peres says:
He [Netanyahu] also made the Bar-Ilan speech [in which Netanyahu accepted the idea of a Palestinian state].”
But as Akiva Eldar points out, Netanyahu has abandoned the speech and his coalition would vanish if he endorsed it. Let alone a word from author of just how watered down Netanyahu’s conception of a Palestinian state was; in apartheid South Africa we would have called it a collection of Bantustans.
Bergman does at least ask this (which leads Peres to go all Brent Musburger on the reader):
Bergman: Today, there are 550,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are those who believe that the settlers have eliminated any chance of establishing a Palestinian state, because no one would be able to evacuate these politically motivated people from their homes, which is a necessary condition for any agreement with the Palestinians.
Peres: The settlers have not eliminated the chance for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The settlements today cover 2 percent of the entire area. The Palestinians have already accepted the Clinton parameters, which include leaving three blocs of Jewish settlements and exchanging other territory for them. In my opinion, many of the rest will leave of their own free will. The difficulty with us is similar to that of the man with a hammer who thinks every problem is a nail. Problems are not nails. If there is good will, they can all be overcome. This applies, for example, to the issue of water. Soon there will be a surplus of water in Israel, thanks to seawater desalination, and we will be able to make up the Palestinians’ shortage of potable water. Look, the whole world is in turmoil. The Palestinian problem isn’t the main problem in the Middle East. But there are a billion and a half Muslims. The Palestinian problem affects our entire relationship with them. If the Palestinian problem were to be solved, the Islamist extremists would be robbed of their pretext for their actions against us. Of course, this requires concessions. The problem in this case is not only the prime minister but also his coalition. I am not claiming that peace with the Palestinians will solve all the problems. People who think in sweeping terms are being superficial. There are two things that cannot be made without closing your eyes — love and peace. If you try to make them with open eyes, you won’t get anywhere. Peace is not an exciting thing, and it entails accepting many compromises and tedious details. A woman, too, can sometimes be exciting and sometimes less so. There’s no perfection. Making peace is complicated.
No follow up here from Bergman on Israel’s lack of compliance with international law and demands, though Peres cites international demands on Hamas:
If Hamas accepts international demands, forsakes terror, stops firing missiles at us and recognizes the existence of the State of Israel, it will be possible to open negotiations.
At least Peres mentions water — and pretends there can be an equitable resolution of water problems. For 50, 60 years, Israelis talking I/P refused even to admit there was an issue about water. I always thought it was a paramount problem. (Desalination of water requires — by present technology, maybe by ANY technology, application of much ENERGY. In that sense, just as CORN and SOY “are” oil, water is also oil. Or something a bit greener. Where are the Palestinians supposed to get all that oil to replace their own water, stolen over the years by Israel?)
If I had a dime for every lie that this two faced criminal has told I would be a very wealthy individual.
Are there still those sufficiently naive to be taken in by this fraud.
When Israel scores low on an international intelligence survey,those Arabs come in real handy.
Abe Foxman is busy over at the JP trying to soften his earlier stance on Hagel,s nomination, so we wont have the pleasure of reading his comments on Israel,s racist Jewish participants only poll.
Shimon Peres is the anti-Netanyahu only in the sense that he would like to have Netanyahu’s position/job.
Peres could never win a prime ministerial election on his own. He was never liked by the Israeli public and only managed a short stint as PM as a result of a rotation agreement within a national unity coalition.
And in 1995 he got to the PM office by mere accident when he replaced Rabin as his deputy PM.
Anyway, the idea of Peres as some kind of liberal savior of Israel — at least in the American media — is laughable given his track record.
What does Chris Mathews know about Israel politics? Nothing.
If you wanted to conduct an honest poll, you would survey both Israeli Jews and Palestinians (who live in Israel, the Occcupied Palestinian Territories, and in refugee camps in Lebanon and elsewhere). The total population surveyed would be approximately half Jewish and half Palestinian.
My guess is that results would look approximately like this:
Respondent Is Peres trustworthy? Is Netanyahu trustworthy?
Israeli Jew 84% yes 15% no 62% yes 38% no
Palestinian 0% yes 100% no 0% yes 100% no
OVERALL 42% yes 58% no 31% yes 69% no
The headlines would then be
NEARLY 60% THINK SHIMON PERES UNTRUSTWORTHY
and
OVER 2/3 THINK NETANYAHU UNTRUSTWORTHY
If you’re looking for an analogy in the US, ask yourself how last November’s Presidential election would have turned out if blacks and Hispanics didn’t vote. Romney would have won.