Israel Matzav

Israel's new President - in his own words

This is a sampling of quotes from Israel's new President. Read them and weep. You can find more of them here.

On History

"Generally I have very little patience for history. I am bored with history, for the simple reason that you cannot change it. You can analyze it, and people say if you don't learn the past, you will repeat the mistakes of the past. Okay, learn the past - then you will not repeat the mistakes of the past, you will make new mistakes."
(Interview, The Jerusalem Post, July 12, 2001)

"PERES: I think that a person like me should be completely devoted to the future. The past interests me like last year's snow.
REPORTER: You certainly know better than all of us that it is possible to learn much from history.
PERES: It is a great mistake to learn from history. There is nothing to learn from history.
REPORTER: How can you say such a thing?
PERES: Human history is built on material rather than intellectual things. We are now going from the material to the intellect in the 21st century. The sources of strength are not territorial, or national, or mineral or numerical. The sources today are science, technology, imagination, creativity, education. This can't be bought with armies. History is written with the red ink of spilt blood.
(Maariv, May 23, 1996)

"I am totally uninterested in the past. If you wouldn't ask me I wouldn't talk about it. The past bores me. Listen, it bores me for two reasons: it never repeats itself and secondly it is unchangeable. So why should I concern myself with it?
(Interview with Michael Kapel, Australia/Israel Review, June 6-June 26, 1997)

COMMENT: The Hebrew word "zakhor" (remember) appears in the Bible no less than 169 times "in its various declensions" (Yerushalmi, Zakhor, p. 5).

QQ "I have become totally tired of history, because I feel history is a long misunderstanding." (Wall St. Journal, September 30, 1994)


QQ "In almost every foreign war, it (the U.S.) has conquered territories. But in none of them has it even attempted to retain either territories or resources, or to rule over another nation.
[Battling for Peace, p. 74).

COMMENT: Among the numerous territories retained by the United States as the result of war are:

(1) West Florida (i.e. parts of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, retained after the war of 1812); East Florida, ceded by Spain in the aftermath of the Seminole War

(2) Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and part of Colorado and Wyoming after wars with Mexico in the 1840s

(3) Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines after war with Spain in 1898.

On Judaism

" [Excerpt from an interview with Haaretz journalist Daniel Ben Simon the day following his defeat by Netanyahu in the 1996 election for Prime Minister]

INTERVIEWER: What happened in these elections?
PERES: We lost.
INTERVIEWER: Who is we?
PERES: We, that is the Israelis.
INTERVIEWER: And who won?
PERES: All those who do not have an Israeli mentality.
INTERVIEWER: And who are they?
PERES: Call it the Jews.

(Daniel Ben Simon, Another Land [in Hebrew], Arieh Nir Publishers, 1997, p. 13. )
COMMENT: Peres views Jews as the antithesis of "real Israelis."

CiJ Comment: And the MK's of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party were ordered to vote for him!

"There was no greater leftist than Moses. . . . The most socialist of socialists."
(Jerusalem Post International Edition, Feb. 26, 1999)

"In our history, in our 4,000 years of existence, we have never dominated another people."
(Speech at annual meeting of American Jewish Committee, May 3, 2001)


"The Oslo process was a moral and a Jewish choice. The late Yitzhak Rabin and I went to Oslo for moral reasons: not because we had no choice, not out of weakness, but with a sense of national mission and historic conscience. We went to implement the deep internal desire of our people not to control another people. Throughout all the years of Jewish history, we never controlled another people, and our occupation of the territories was the outcome of a security reality."
(Yediot Achronot, September 17, 2001)


QQ "As a Jew, may I say that the essence of our history since the times of Abraham and the commandments of Moses have been an uncompromising opposition to any form of occupation, of domination, of discrimination."
(Address to U.N. General Assembly, September 28, 1993)

COMMENT: The above quotes suggest that Peres has never read the Bible. The Bible chronicles the conquest of Canaan, the partial destruction of various resident nations like the Amalekites, Hittites, Hivites, Amorites, Girgashites, Perizzites and Jebusites and the subjection of populations like the Gibeonites and Moabites.

On Israel and Zionism

QQ "[To Ruth Matar, a Jerusalem resident who criticized him in American-accented Hebrew] Go back where you came from."
(Jerusalem Post International Edition, February 3, 1996]

COMMENT: 1) Peres himself comes from Poland 2) in his capacity as Foreign Minister, Peres was presumably committed to encouraging aliyah, not emigration from Israel 3) Ruth Matar made aliyah from the United States over 30 years ago.

"QQ (Speaking to the Labor Party Convention in 1996) By the year 2000, we will overcome Hamas, Islamic Jihad and terrorism. By then we will bring a comprehensive peace to the Middle East. By then we will establish a just society, with a national income greater than that of England, and greater than that of France. You all know that everything that we say we will do, we will do."
(Arutz Sheva News Service, March 25, 1996).

COMMENT: Not one of the promises so confidently made by Peres five [eleven now. CiJ] years ago has been fulfilled.

"In order for Israel to remain a Jewish state, Israel needs a Palestinian state and we have to do it right away."
(Jerusalem Post, May 19, 1998)


"As far as I'm concerned, it is in the Israeli interest to have a Palestinian state. . . . I would like to see a Palestinian state, and a successful one."
(Interview published in Al-Ahram Weekly, December 2-8, 1999)

COMMENT: A Palestinian state would be an impoverished, radical, irredentist dictatorship threatening both Israel and Jordan.

Spokesman for Arafat

Challenged as to whether Arafat has any intention of making peace, Peres responded:] "How do they know what is really happening in the heart of a leader? All they have is words, but that is just part of the story."
(Interview with Peres, The Jerusalem Post, July 12, 2001)

COMMENT: It is a major responsibility of Israel's Foreign Minister to assess Arafat's intentions, based upon his words and actions.

QQ "Papers are papers and realities are realities. We cannot judge the PLO and its leader just by what he is saying. Would we do so, we would be completely wrong and we would be in troubles."
(Heritage, Los Angeles, June 3, 1994)


QQ "(Responding to Arafat's exhortation of an Arab audience to Jihad against Israel and his praise of suicide bombers as "martyrs and heroes") What counts is not the intentions of the Palestinians." [Pressed by the journalist: Are you saying that it makes no difference whether Arafat genuinely wants peace or just wants to get as much as he can?] PERES: Yes, I do believe it is irrelevant."
(Jerusalem Post International Edition, August 26, 1995)

COMMENT: Note the similarity of these last two statements, made years earlier, to the one made on July 12, 2001 above. For a Foreign Minister to say that the intentions of the opposing party are "irrelevant" boggles the mind.

[When Sharon blamed Arafat for attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians] "Some dissident groups and some forces under Arafat participated in the killings without the knowledge of Arafat."
(Speech to Washington Institute for Near East Policy, May 2, 2001)

COMMENT: Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak writes: "During the last 10 months, based on intelligence information, I believe that Mr. Arafat has been guiding terrorism activities and has turned a blind eye to terror attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad." (New York Times, July 30, 2001)


[Asked on the Larry King show why there has been recent fighting between Israel and the Palestinians] "I think the story is now revealing itself. There are three or four armed groups among the Palestinians. It is for Mr. Arafat to decide, either he's going to control all of them or he'll become a prisoner of them and become a victim of them. Most of the killing and shooting were done by the Jihad and by the Hamas. It's an assault of private organizations and private arms. Arafat has to decide, either he will control them or be controlled by them".
(Transcript of Peres interview by Larry King on CNN, October 7, 2001)

COMMENT: Defense #5: Peres shifts the blame to "three or four armed groups,"claiming they threaten Arafat.

"Arafat's statements in Durban were harsh and disappointing. I was sorry to hear his speech from there, especially because we expect him to end the incitement. But there is a need for meetings with him, and that is why we are making an effort to set a place and time. "
(Jerusalem Post, September 3, 2001)

COMMENT: How about an end to incitement before a meeting?

[In the wake of the horrific terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, Peres stated] "This is a genuine opportunity for [Arafat] "to get out of the world of terrorism, and this is in fact the real test. He cannot hang on to both things at once, no one can, simultaneously busying himself with terror and at the same time being accepted by the world. What happened yesterday in America sharpened this choice into one that can no longer be a matter of compromise."
(Haaretz, September 12, 2001)

COMMENT: After 8 years of Oslo, Peres discovers Arafat is still a terrorist!

[At a press conference with the Norwegian Foreign Minister a reporter asked, "Mr. Sharon has compared Arafat to bin Laden; what's your opinion on that? Peres responded] "I am very poor in comparisons. I don't believe that Mr. Arafat is Mr. Bin Laden. These are two things apart. Arafat was elected the leader of the Palestinians... In the Oslo agreement we agreed to solve our differences without violence, and our call to Mr. Arafat is to remain true to the Oslo spirit."
(Transcript issued by Ministry of Foreign Affairs, September 24, 2001)

COMMENT: In the never-never-land occupied by Shimon Peres, Oslo is alive and well and the PA is a democracy.

[When an interviewer tells Peres that the Israel Defense Forces Deputy Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon "had it with Arafat when he realized that Arafat was lying to his face,"Peres replies] "I don't know any one person in the Middle East who speaks nothing but the truth. So what do you suggest that we do? Take a vacation, immigrate to Uganda, and wait until they learn to speak the truth?"
(Interview, Yediot Achronot, October 1, 2001)

COMMENT: Peres assumes that Israel's choice is either to satisfy Arafat or "move to Uganda." Apparently it does not occur to Peres that Arafat should move to Uganda.


[Asked by the Yediot Achronot interviewer if he thought Arafat would abide by the most recent ceasefire agreement he had concluded with him, Peres replies] "What is so bad with the ceasefire that we have reached in Beit Jallah? It has been two months and no shots have been fired on Jerusalem. Even a week would be good. Even one day."
(Yediot Achronot, October 1, 2001)

COMMENT: Within two weeks of this statement Arafat's forces were firing from Beit Jallah.

I could go on but I think this is enough to give you a flavor for the delusional buffoon who is being elected President of Israel today. You can find more here. Feel free to post your own favorites in the comments!

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:21 PM