RUTHFULLY YOURS

“There are more out than in.” That was the favorite remark of this writer’s high school Latin teacher. What he meant was that there are more crazies outside the asylum than inside. He was proven correct once again with the results of a recent Ha’aretz poll that showed that Israel’s President Shimon Peres is the country’s most popular public figure.Shimon Peres is the chief architect of the Oslo Accords, the plan which ceded large tracts of Israeli territory to Yasser Arafat, “the father of modern terror.” The ensuing chaos – easily predictable to those who don’t belong in a mental institution – resulted in the murder of thousands of Israelis and the reinvigoration of Israel’s enemies who were inspired once more with hope that Israel could indeed be destroyed.

“Out of 16 senior public figures, Peres was by far the favorite in a poll conducted for Ha’aretz by Dialog. … Support for Peres came from all groups: religious and non-religious, ultra-Orthodox and immigrants from the former Soviet Union,” according to the Ha’aretz report.

Ironically, Mr. Peres was least favored among the group that should have favored him most. “Only among the Arab population,” the report continued, “was the satisfaction rating for Peres lower, despite his work for peace. A majority of Israel’s Arab citizens said they were dissatisfied with the president.”

When Mr. Peres isn’t conducted some villainy, he’s spouting inanities. But like the character Chance played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 film “Being There”, Peres’ idiocies are interpreted as profundities. Unfortunately, those of us who understand the truth can only watch the television and splutter, much as did Louise, the maid who raised Chance in “Being There”: “Had no brains at all, was stuffed with rice puddin’ between the ears! Shortchanged by the Lord and dumb as a jackass an’ look at him now!”

So proficient is Peres at making nonsensical comments that a collection was compiled in 1995 containing the juiciest samples. The booklet, “Shimon Says”, may even have played a role in Peres losing to Moshe Katsav for president in 2000. Dr. Yitzhak Ben Gad, then-Israeli consul in Chicago and deputy mayor of Netanya, wrote: “At the very beginning of the presidential race, polls showed that Mr. Peres was leading two to one amongst the 120 Knesset members. In my opinion, one of the main reasons behind many MK’s change of vote in favor of Katsav was the pamphlet ‘Shimon Says’ … Some of the material from the pamphlet was translated into Hebrew and distributed among the MKs. The numerous quotations of Peres’ ridiculous expressions and views as they appeared in the pamphlet most definitely led to the rethinking of many MKs.”

Some examples included “Science will replace soil”; “I am very concerned that we are going from a world of enemies to a world of dangers”; and, “I am totally uninterested in the past. If you wouldn’t ask me I wouldn’t talk about it. The past bores me. Listen, it bores me for two reasons. It never repeats itself and secondly it is unchangeable. So why should I concern myself with it?”

In 2007, Shimon Peres did succeed in becoming Israel’s president. Although the presidency is largely a ceremonial role in Israel, this hasn’t stopped Peres from making mischief. At the start of the month, Peres visited the U.S. and met with Barack Obama where he argued for a return to peace talks. President Obama said: “[Peres] and I both share a belief that this [the “Arab Spring”] is both a challenge and an opportunity… that with the winds of change blowing through the Arab world, it’s more urgent than ever that we try to seize the opportunity to create a peaceful solution between the Palestinians and the Israelis.” In other words, let’s disregard the uncertainty brought about by this tidal wave of Arab unrest that has nothing whatsoever to do with the Israel-Arab conflict and keep singing the same old song of the need for a Palestinian Arab state.

Shimon Peres has always been welcomed with open arms by the White House, which sees him as an ally in its persistent efforts to push Israel back to the pre-’67 borders.

In “Squeezing Israel” (The Jerusalem Post, Oct. 1, 1982), Shmuel Katz wrote about Peres’ role in the Reagan Administration’s attempt to play off Israel’s competing political parties to order to help “bring about the re-confinement of the Jewish state to the Armistice Lines of 1949.”

He talked about Shimon Peres, “the twice-beaten leader of the Labour Party”, going to the White House and putting himself at odds with the policy of Israel’s Likud government.

Shimon Peres has allowed himself – also in his public appearances in the U.S. – to stray far from the accepted norms of what is morally permissible in the political struggle. He is the first opposition leader in a democracy to campaign openly abroad against the foreign policy of his own country, to intrude himself into the handling of its diplomacy, and to allow himself to be manipulated into giving advice in effect to a foreign leader on how to contend with the policy of his own democratically elected government.

There is, however, a deeper significance in the fact that Mr. Peres has spoken approvingly of the “Reagan plan.” Many people have seen his remarks as an endorsement of the plan. It is certainly very nearly a complete endorsement. What else indeed does it mean when Mr. Peres says (on ABC television) that “we found in the president’s position a very close approach to our own?”

A very close approach? To a plan which calls in fact for the surrender of Gaza, of Samaria, of Judea including east Jerusalem? A “very close approach” to the traditional State Department doctrine which denies Israel’s rights beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines?

A very close approach to the Rogers Plan – if newly-painted-and-powdered – whose acceptance Labour Prime Minister Golda Meir – in an interview in The New York Times on December 23, 1969 – declared (I wrote in error in a previous article that she had made the statement privately) “would be treasonable.”

Of course, the circumstances of Mr. Peres’ trip this time around is different. He goes at the behest of Israel’s nominally nationalist government, to smooth the path for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s upcoming visit in May. Reports have it that Netanyahu plans to put forth his own peace plan in the hopes of staving off a UN vote in favor of a PLO state.

With Peres paving the way, we can only imagine what Netanyahu’s plan will look like. Looking through “Shimon Says” for clues, this writer hit on one statement that Peres made in an interview to Israel radio on Sept. 13, 1997. That time he didn’t speak as a pudding headed clown, but as a prophet.

Peres said: “The Oslo process will obliterate everybody.”