If you want to imagine an avatar to represent Shimon Peres,
think of a jackal wearing the mask of a Bambi.
Like his contemporaries as well as those who governed Israel
after him, Peres stopped at nothing when it came to grabbing what belongs to
Palestinians and making it Israel's. In fact, those who took the helm from the
start till today have always been the jackals that did not hesitate to go after
their prey, and Peres was no less of a jackal when he saw a game he could take
down and get away with his act.
Unlike his peers, however, Shimon Peres neither celebrated
the triumphs scored by Israel, nor beat his breast after a successful
operation. Instead, he considered what he took from the Palestinians to be the
legitimate return to the Jews of the properties that were left on consignment
in the hands of the Palestinians for thousands years. If he felt compelled to
thank them for anything at all, it was not for what he took from them, but for
the safekeeping of the properties that they did during the absence of the Jews.
Aware that the world will not buy that line of thinking,
Peres developed the approach of interacting with others in a manner that
avoided the ruffling of feathers. Thus, what the others saw when interacting
with him was not the face of a jackal but the mask of the Bambi he wore when
speaking to Palestinians and to other foreigners. With time, he refined his
techniques so well, he was able to double-talk from both sides of the mouth,
and make it all sound like the words of a straight-shooter.
He was also aware that the constant looting of the
Palestinians may prompt someone near or far to challenge the criminal practice,
and so he asked the French who were his allies, to build him a nuclear facility.
He then did the very Jewish thing of stealing radioactive material from France
and from the United States. He later adapted the technique of the double-talk
to create the doctrine of nuclear ambiguity. He sold it to the Americans who
accepted to guarantee making the world believe that Israel has nuclear weapons
without having to bear the responsibilities that go with the territory. Go
figure.
The man is dead now – several decades after the
assassination of Rabin who was his comrade in the quest to forge an
accommodation with the Palestinians, and several years after the death of
Arafat who was their Palestinian partner in that quest. In fact, all three
shared the Nobel Peace Prize for what they accomplished. The thing, however, is
that no fuss was raised when the Rabin funeral was held, but much was raised
when the time came to bury Arafat and Peres.
Here is the story: Unable to hold a funeral fit for the
leader that Arafat was, the Palestinians asked Egypt to hold it in their name.
Egypt acceded to the request, and lo and behold, the Jewish pundits – mostly in
America – exploded with rage that the Egyptians would give Arafat what they
termed a state funeral. No surprise there as this was reminiscent of the same
people exploding with rage when the Nobel Committee awarded the prize to the
three leaders instead of just the two Jews. These creatures want to monopolize
everything, you know!
And now, the same sort of people is exploding with rage
again. The people are fuming this time because – get this – the Arab heads of
state are not flocking in droves to attend the funeral of Shimon Peres. You can
see an example of that in the article which came under the title: “Arabs
boycott funeral of Shimon Peres – their best partner for peace,” written by
Benny Avni and published on September 29, 2016 in the New York Post.
The problem with Avni and those like him is that they have
the ability to plunge into a sea of self-delusion, and stay in it till it
becomes their natural habitat and they get to believe it has also become
everyone else's habitat. And so, it happened that when many in the world
boycotted Israel, those characters psyched themselves into believing that the
Arabs had become the bosom buddies of the Israelis. And they have been living
with that delusion for several years now.
Thus, when it happened that the Arab heads of state did not
flock to the Peres funeral, the Jewish pundits of America
did not stop to question their assumption of the Arabs being the buddies of Israel .
Instead, they expressed surprise that Egypt's al-Sisi – whom they call a close
Israeli ally – will be a no show. The same goes for Jordan's King whom they
view as being a friend and admirer of Peres. And there is the Moroccan King
that must be a bosom buddy of Israel
because he hired a Jew to advise him personally … the way they see things.
Poor folks! No cure has ever worked on these people in more
than 3,000 years of prayers. As soon as you rid them of one fantasy by which
they delude themselves, they create a new fantasy and plunge into it.
In fact, they were punished in all sorts of ways by all
sorts of societies in all sorts of places, but they kept coming back to doing
the same thing again and again.