The expected extravaganza has begun and it is difficult to say when it will lose steam.
If the media and the Left have it’s way, it will never end.
If the Rabin precedent teaches us something, we shall be convinced that we are now left orphaned, and the last hope for peace with our neighbors is now surely gone.
As with the Rabin extravaganza, the full weight of the state is being harnessed to sweep its citizens up in the whirlwind of adoration/mourning for a beloved father figure.
Do not even think of saying a critical word about Peres for the foreseeable future. Israel’s democracy and freedom of expression goes only so far…
I recall, some days after the Rabin assassination, I was in a shop. I heard two young men saying something negative about Rabin. I took out my little pad (no smart phones in those days with which to threaten with an instant photo) and with a very serious look, began to write and without looking up I asked them to please repeat what they said and for their names-They were very frightened. That was exactly the atmosphere then and the same looms over Israel’s citizens today.
Last night I listened to one of the hundreds of non-stop interviews with people adding their contribution to the deification of Peres.
An example:
One was with a former Intelligence chief who worked closely with and loved Peres. When asked about Peres’ stand on the 1981 strike on the Iraqi nuclear facility, he said that at first he was not supportive and then he was.
Wrong! To his last days he did not regret his fierce opposition to the strike that saved Israel and the world from a nuclear Saddam Hussein.
Peres never apologized for anything. Never.
The former intelligence chief just lied. the narrative must be preserved.
Expect this rewriting of history to continue, as it has in the case of Rabin and other darlings of the Left.
Peres has indeed done important things for Israel over the years, but, I like the description I heard just yesterday:
He was like one who fills a bucket with milk, only to kick it over afterwards.
The creation of the armed terrorist Palestine Authority was his baby.
When Rabin and Peres and Arafat were photographed accepting the Nobel prize for the Oslo crime, Rabin did not look very happy–Peres was beaming.
He never expressed any doubt. The thousands of Jews murdered since, were always, in his words, “The price of peace.”
In his later years, he shared his belief that history is not important. He lectured to many student groups convincing them that the(our) past is not important. The future is ours to create without the burden of the past…
Israel should strive to be the Singapore of the “New” Mid East. He even wrote a book about it . Everything in it was proven wrong but that won’t change his legacy ; at least not for the foreseeable future.
The world’s leaders are coming to pay their respects for the man who they admire – for weakening Israel’s claim to and passion for our land and for remaking Israel; as much like the nations as possible.
The world never does likes an Israel that is “too independent and Jewish”. We need friends, no?
It is interesting to note that the Palestinian Authority, Peres’ creation will not be sending its leader to the funeral. (Editor’s note: Abbas did come, against the wishes of most of the Palestinian Authority.)
This is perhaps the real lesson we can learn from his “New Middle East”