Shimon Peres: The Man Who Dreamed Too Much

Reflecting on the long and often controversial career of Shimon Peres, who died Tuesday night at the age of ninety-three, Amnon Lord tries to make sense of the man he deems a worthy successor to his mentor David Ben-Gurion:

Before and after everything, Peres loved his country. Even though it usually seemed as if the state of Israel was too small for him, he seemed pinned to this rock, this mountain, this valley, whose rounded shoulders were padded by a fur of thorns with the color of a lion’s mane. That’s how the land of Israel appeared to him from Kibbutz Alumot [which he helped found at age fifteen]. Somehow—no one understands how—Peres managed to maintain the romantic optimism of his love for the land. . . .

Shimon Peres was perhaps the first politician, aside from Ben-Gurion, who truly understood what sovereignty is, and the significance of the transformation that took place in 1948, when Israel achieved statehood. Peres, apparently under Ben-Gurion’s influence, developed the concept of “our own orientation” in the 1950s. That is, a strategy of not relying on superpowers and alliances. . . .

Before 1977, Peres was the biggest sponsor of Gush Emunim’s settlement project in Judea and Samaria. He is the man who formulated the most convincing arguments against a Palestinian state and the PLO. Such a state, he said, would undermine both Jordan and Israel.

Then, after the upheaval [of Labor's first loss in the 1977 elections], the best and brightest figures in the party started to gather around Peres: Yossi Beilin, Gideon Levy, Yisrael Peleg, Yossi Sarid, and others, [who went on to be the hard left's leading opinion makers]. . . . Later he was crowned by the European socialists who at the time reigned supreme: Bruno Kreisky, Willy Brandt, Pierre Mendès France, and finally François Mitterrand.

The result was a slow move left in the direction of the PLO. It was a long period which began in 1977 and reached its peak with the Oslo Accords of 1993. How tragic and how significant is the fact that Peres had a stroke on September 13, the anniversary of the signing of those accords? . . .

[T]today, as we say goodbye to Shimon, we will only say this: there were times when we lost you, [but now] it’s time for you to rest, you subversive and incorrigible Don Quixote.

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