view from central park: tehilla r. goldberg

A nuanced view, as Peres’ eulogies are written

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When I heard the news of Shimon Peres’ stroke, I didn’t think much of it. Maybe a passive refuah shlemah crossed my mind. He’s in his 90s and has lived a long and full life.

I did not agree with the Oslo Accords, and can still remember the chilling morning in 1993 when, as a graduate student, I picked up the thwacked newspaper from outside my apartment door and saw that by now iconic White House lawn photo, the “handshake.” I was horrified and confused. Arafat? Peace Accords?

The bloodbath that followed only confirmed my initial horror. I never got on the Peres and Rabin bandwagon. Many leftists elevated these men to illusory heights. On the extreme right, they were called false prophets.

In my humble opinion, Oslo was a political mistake. I attribute historic error, not malice, to the misguided. Israel’s government felt it had to try a different approach. It failed. Many had a prescient sense about its failure from the get-go.

I feel a sense of solidarity for those who were wounded by Oslo and aren’t exactly feeling love for the man in his vulnerable hour. At the same time, when a person is down, it seems to me that the menschlich thing to do is to find empathy for his plight. But aside from that, Oslo is not my only association with Shimon Peres.

The man is still alive, yet it already feels like a type of eulogy or posthumous evaluation of his life’s work is being processed. Many people personally hold Peres responsible for creating thousands of widows and orphans and countless destroyed families, and for legitimizing Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

At the time of Oslo, Peres infamously termed the victims of post-Oslo Palestinian terrorism korbanot shalom, sacrifices for peace. The glib cynicism of that term is offensive to those who suffered the pain of Oslo and who view Peres as having blood on his hands, is tough to swallow.

But Peres’ legacy is a complex one. With Dimona, Peres was responsible for securing Israel as a nuclear power. Also, at the end of his life, Peres’ presidency lent Israel an aura of dignity it so badly needed at the time, after being beat up by the President Katsav scandal. These are two brackets point to a lifelong servant and steward of the State of Israel.

Is Peres my personal role model or a paragon of righteousness? Hardly. Is he someone who time and time again, throughout a long life, lived to serve, shape and guide today’s Israel? Yes. For that relentless tenacity and contribution, he is recognized.

Just the morning of his stroke, he recorded a YouTube video encouraging us all to buy blue and white. The man is in his 90s, and he is thinking about leveraging his prestige to inspire yet another generation to support Israel.

The policy mistakes of epic proportions that cost lives and families, those will never be forgotten. Yet, more than anything, I think that video will encapsulate the spirit of Peres’ legacy. The man never stopped. Never.

As a child growing up in Jerusalem, there was a ditty us children sang about Peres never winning an election. He was the butt of jokes.

Yet it is he whose destiny outlived so many of his generation, the one who rose to preside over Israel and become a household name to generations before me and after me as well. As time marches on, I believe Peres’ complexity is what will characterize him.

Born in Poland in 1923, the grandson of Rabbi Zvi Meltzer of Volozhin, he held a candle for the community steeped in traditional Judaism, although he himself would abandon that life to become a stalwart of secular Israel.

He had a role in the tragic Ringworm Affair, in which children were radiated in the 1950s, and in the horrendous Yaldei Teiman affair involving disappearance of Yemeni children.

Yet he was also the one with the foresight to secure Israel’s nuclear power. He was a politician who never actually won an election on his own merit, yet rose to the highest roles in serving Israel, and did serve as prime minister for two years in a rotation agreement.

I understand why many are not interested in making any mi sheberachs for Peres. The era the Peres predicted, of “Hummus in Damascus and Gaza transformed into Singapore” didn’t come to pass. Instead, Damascus is soaked in the blood of civil war and Gaza is not hosting hummus, but Hamas. The pain of his errors are real.

But so are the accomplishments.

Making Peres out to be a saint who is the ultimate Light Unto The Nations, as some eulogies on the other extreme would have it, is silly. Peres was more complex than that.

Perhaps Peres never was the politician, but always could have been the diplomat. When, toward the end of his life, he represented Israel to the world as its president, he was stellar.

Although his life is the sum of its very different parts, it is the recent ending as president, the shining ending, by which many remember him now. Although it does not eclipse the more difficult chapters, it certainly does add light.

Copyright Intermountain Jewish News