Editor’s Note: Gideon Levy is a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. He has covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for 25 years. He wrote a column in Haaretz this week with similar themes to those in the article below. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely his.
Story highlights
Gideon Levy: Israelis loved Peres because he allowed them to feel better about themselves
The world loved Peres because he gave it hope that Israel could be different, Levy says
Shimon Peres, the ninth President of Israel, who died this week at 93, personified the acceptable, kind face of Israel. It was a face, however, that wore a mask – or at the very least a heavy layer of makeup.
For many years, Peres enabled Israel to continue its policy of occupation – a policy at odds with his claims of striving for peace and making efforts to end Israeli occupation.
Placed next to his positive contributions to the security and construction of Israel, this record leaves a stain on his legacy.
He was the last of the founding fathers of Israel. Of course, he was a founding father of Israel’s many successes. But he was also a founding father of its not so few failures.
Peres, the kind Israeli in the eyes of the world, provided legitimacy for Israel from the international community at a time when it was an outcast. But he also allowed Israel to go ahead with the occupations. He allowed it to build more settlements while simultaneously claiming that it was striving for peace.
Both Israelis and the rest of the world loved Peres. Israelis loved him because he allowed them to feel better about themselves. The world loved Peres because he gave it hope that Israel could be different. He also absolved it from the responsibility of having to do something about Israel’s occupation. The world told itself that it could trust Peres to do this. But he never did. And nor did he ever seriously intend to.
Who, or what, could possibly be more Israeli than Shimon Peres? Back when Israel wanted to give the impression that it was a country of peace, it had Peres. But that was a different Israel. In 2016, Benjamin Netanyahu represents the modern Israeli. Peres may only have recently died, but his Israel died long before him.
His Israel was an Israel of tremendous achievements but also of shadows and lies. It’s impossible to talk about Peres’s legacy without also describing the country he leaves behind.
If Peres was really a champion of peace, then surely Israel would now be a country of peace. But is there anybody in the world who accepts that today? If Israel is standing on the edge of a moral abyss, Peres is partially responsible. If it is an apartheid country, then he is its founding partner.
The heads of state attending his funeral praised his contribution to peace. But what peace? This is the man who was part of an Israeli government that brought the Dimona reactor, planned the 1956 war and the first Israeli settlements.
Even his greatest achievement – the Oslo accords that he signed together with Yitzhak Rabin on behalf of Israel, for which both men were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – has left a mark on the world more complicated than many are prepared to admit. The accords totally ignored Israeli settlements and did not bring about Israel withdrawing from a single one of them.
Yes, he was an impressive man. Few politicians have ever talked about peace in quite the way that Peres did.
By the end of the 1970s, Peres was saying in virtually every speech: “It’s impossible to rule over another people against its will.” But if he believed this to be so, why did he do so little to end Israeli occupation?
Of course, he wanted peace. But when we talk about Peres’s legacy, we must be honest with ourselves: He never treated the Palestinians as equals to Jews. Human rights and international law were of no interest to him. Clearly, Palestinian suffering did not move his heart.
It’s so nice to praise Peres: He was the hero of the Israelis who feigned peace and wished justness. Now, there’s no one left to at least try to feign it.