Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
My heartfelt sympathies to you and the Belgian people for the acts of protest carried out in Brussels this week. This really is a wake-up call for us all.
You and I must really speak about how to deal with the atrocities and protests, including the attacks on Brussels, by these misunderstood activists.
Mister Prime Minister, I have a great deal of experience in dealing successfully with terrorism and this is why I wish to come to your assistance.
The first thing you must realize is that one can only make peace with one’s enemies. With one’s friends there is no need to make peace. There is no military solution to the problems of terrorism, and this is why you must seek a diplomatic solution. “No Justice, No Peace,” as they say.
You must invite the leaders of this activist organization to the Belgian Parliament and perhaps tour the EU district. You must learn to feel their pain and understand their needs. You must offer to turn parts of Flanders over to them so that stateless Muslims can have their own state. I have no doubt the Muslim world will applaud your efforts.
You must meet the demands of the protesters in full. In addition, you must offer them Internet services and five-star tourist hotels in exchange for their promising to abandon violence. After all, that is how we in Israel, under my leadership, turned Yasir Arafat into a peace partner!
You see, military force serves no role any more. It is passé. It is archaic. Today, economic interests dominate the world and the Islamist activists of the earth will surely make peace in exchange for some profits from participating in global trade.
The fact is, you have been insufficiently sensitive in understanding the needs of Muslims. You took fundamentalist rhetoric at face value, whereas we in Israel know all this talk is empty and these people simply want peace.
Sure, Muslim fundamentalists praise Hitler and celebrate atrocities, but what is it that they REALLY want? How about sitting down with them in an effort to understand them?
You have been trying to rule over others and failed to be sensitive to their needs and aspirations. You must put your own house in order and eliminate inequality and injustice inside Wallonia, and then the terrorists will no longer target you.
The key is to build a new order in which everyone is so busy with important matters like developing tourism and making investments in high technology that they simply have no time to pursue violence.
Moreover, if you strike at the perpetrators of terrorist attacks, you will simply extend and enlarge the cycle of violence. Your bombs will no doubt injure some innocent children and civilians alongside any terrorist activists you strike, and that will simply enrage the rest of the world and lead the victims to seek revenge.
And if you refuse to negotiate with them, their leaders will be toppled and really violent fanatics will take their place. In that case, you will have lost the window of opportunity to make peace. Begin by declaring a unilateral ceasefire!
Mister Prime Minister, blessed is the peacemaker. All we are saying is give peace a chance. You will be cheered and awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of your statesmanship. Do not allow yourself to be drawn into the gutter of violence. Violence never achieves anything. History is no lesson. History is the dead past. End the cycle of violence. Show restraint. Forgo the juvenile impulse to avenge.
Mister Prime Minister, the proof is in the pudding. My own peace policies have eliminated war and bloodshed and terror from the Middle East. We no longer have terrorists to deal with in the Levant, only potential peace partners. If you follow in my footsteps, you can achieve the same lofty results.
Peacefully yours,
Shimon Peres
Peacemaker-at-Large
