A Man of Security, not PeaceIf Shimon Peres is lucky, his new biography will be his legacy.
Posted Thursday, March 8, 2007, at 7:35 AM ET
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StumbleUponPeres might want to be remembered as the man who brought peace to Israel, but his most notable peace initiative—the Oslo accords—remains controversial. Here's what the new book tells us in a way that's hard to dispute: Peres' real achievements involve security, not peace. The arms deals securing Israel the means to defend itself right after its inception; the nuclear vision, against all odds and over many objections; the Entebbe operation—when the IDF was able to free hostages in a breath-taking raid on a faraway airport in Uganda.
And his personal story is also the reminder we need—especially at a time when voices are again calling for the destruction of Israel—of the significance of security in the 60 years of Israel's existence. Here's a boy from the village of Vishneva on the border of Poland and Belarus embarking on a journey to build a new homeland for his persecuted tribe. "Be a Jew, forever!" his grandfather Zvi Meltzer told the young Shimon Persky when he left home for Palestine in 1935. "These were the last words Shimon ever heard his grandfather say. Zvi Meltzer, and with him all the members of the Persky and Meltzer families who remained in Vishneva, were massacred by the Nazis during World War 2," notes Bar-Zohar.
This is a melancholy book for Israelis. Peres is the last founding father still active, and reading about his life is a reminder of the treacherous waters Israel had to navigate to become what it is today: a strong, vibrant, democratic, prosperous country in a bad neighborhood. But it is also a sad reminder of its declining class of leaders.
Peres, for all the flaws this book so mercilessly reveals, is a giant compared with Israel's current leaders. Reminding people of this will be the book's ultimate victory—and we can only hope that Peres, relentless and insistent as always, will not stand in its way.
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