Israel and the World Honor Shimon Peres as He Is Laid to Rest

Saturday Politics is about the most profound of political issues today -- humankind. ~~~~~~ Shimon Peres was laid to rest Friday. The funeral was attended by the world and its leaders to pay last respects to a man who had tried his best to change the world while protecting Israel and the Jewish people. Israel's President Reuven Rivlin gave a eulogy that was both fitting and poignant. Here it is in full : " 'Laugh and play with my dreams, I am the dreamer who wanders. Play because in man I will believe, and I still believe in you.' So wrote the poet Shaul Tchernichovsky, and so you played, our dear President, during the uplifting moments of elation, in times of difficulty and crisis, and with the small joys of day-to-day life, “because in man I will believe, and I still believe in you.” I am speaking to you today for the final time Shimon, “as one President to another”, as you would say each time you called to offer strength and good advice. As I speak, my eyes search for you, our dear brother, our older brother, and you are not there. Today you are gathered to your forefathers in the land which you loved so, but your dreams remain, and your beliefs uninterred. As one man you carried an entire nation on the wings of imagination, on the wings of vision. The “Brave son”, was the pseudonym you chose as a youth, as the name of Isaiah the Prophet, a visionary. Yet, you were not only a man of vision, you were a man of deeds. Like you, I was also born into the Zionist Movement in those decisive years between vision and fulfillment. I was fortunate to look up to you as a partner in the building of the State of Israel from its very foundations. For both of us, the State of Israel could never be taken for granted. However, with much thanks to you Shimon, for our sons and daughters, for our friends -- and yes for our opponents -- the State of Israel is an indisputable fact. You had the rare ability, Shimon, to conceive what seemed to be the inconceivable, and see it to fruition. Your eyes saw far ahead, while your feet covered great distances on the landscape of Jewish and Zionist history. You always walked onward and upward, as a skilled mountaineer who secures his hook before ascending ever higher to the peak. This is how you lived your life. At first you would dream, and only when in your mind’s eye could you truly see the State of Israel reaching new heights, would you then begin to climb, and take us all with you towards the new goal. You succeeded in moving even the most stubborn of politicians, and to melt away even the hardest of hearts of our opponents. You strived until your final breaths to reach the pinnacle of the Zionist dream : an independent, sovereign state, existing in peace with our neighbors. Yet you also knew that true peace could only be achieved from a position of strength, and you were sure to secure the path to this goal. Few among us understand, and much more will be written about how many mountains you moved, from the days of the State’s establishment and till today in order to ensure our security and our military qualitative edge. How deep was your belief in the sacred combination of ethical leadership and military prowess, that Israel must act not just with wisdom, but with justice, faithful at every moment to its values as a Jewish and democratic state, democratic and Jewish. My dear Shimon, you were the only one in the history of the State of Israel to serve in the three most senior positions in government: Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, and Finance Minister. You are the only one to have served as Prime Minister and as President. It is no exaggeration to say that : more than you were blessed to be President of this great nation, this nation was blessed to have you as its President. In all these roles you were our head, but even more so, my dear friend, you were our heart; a heart that loved the people, the land, and the State. A heart which loved each and every person, a heart which cared for them. Your stubborn faith in mankind and the goodness of people -- in the victory of progress over ignorance, in the victory of hope over fear -- was your eternal fountain of youth, thanks to which you were the eternal fountain of youth for all of us. The man of whom we thought time could never stop. With all your love for history and tremendous knowledge of history, you despised wallowing in the past, or being entrenched in a sense of self justice at the cost of the possibilities and opportunities that tomorrow brings. “The future is more important than the past” you said. “What happened yesterday does not interest me, only tomorrow does,” you would say. The love you received, which transcended political divides in the later years of your life -- from your supporters and opponents -- was an expression of the yearning of all of us to be infected by your unequivocal optimism. Even when we did not agree with you we wanted to believe that perhaps you were right. Believe me, it was not easy to refuse your optimism, and at times your innocence. Who more than you knew the heavy price of innocence, and yet, who more than you believed that heavier still was the price of mediocrity and being of little faith? Shimon, I unashamedly confess, on the eve of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, at your graveside among the graves of the leaders of our nation, also your forgiveness must be asked. We will ask your forgiveness. It was permitted to disagree with you. Your opponents had a duty to express their opinion. However, there were years in which red lines were crossed between ideological disputes and words and deeds which had no place. You always acted according to what you believed with all your heart was best for the people, whom you served. As President, you were for us an honest advocate. You taught many around the world to love the State of Israel, and you taught us to love ourselves, not to speak ill, and see the good and the beautiful in everything. This is a sad day, Shimon, this is a sad day. The journey of your dreams which began in Vishnyeva, comes to its end in Jerusalem our capital, which is also a dream which became a reality. Your death is a great personal and national loss, as it is also the end on an era, the end of the era of giants whose lives’ stories are the stories of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel. This is our profound feeling today. A feeling of the end of an era in the nation’s life, the end of a chapter in our lives. Our farewell to you is also a farewell to us from ourselves. When we see world leaders -- our friends from near and far -- who have come here to bid you their final respects, we understand that not only here but across the world you will be missed. And all of us already miss you. Farewell Shimon. The man whose ‘ways are pleasant, and all of his paths peaceful’. Rest in peace, and act (in Heaven) as an honest advocate for the people of Israel whom you loved so. “Because my soul aspires for freedom, I did not sell her for a golden calf. Because I will also believe in man, in his spirit, his spirit of strength.” Farewell Mr. President." ~~~~~~ Alon Pinkas, who was Shimon Peres’ foreign policy advisor and consul general in New York from 2000-2004, tells this story : "At 10:45 a.m. on 9/11 -- minutes after the North Tower of the World Trade Center had collapsed -- New York’s cellphone service was almost nonexistent. Yet, as I walked up Third Avenue, my phone rang. Peres was on the line. 'You OK?' he asked. 'You know where Don Rumsfeld is? Talk to me.' I answered, 'Shimon, I’m the consul general in New York. Rumsfeld runs the Pentagon. How the hell do I know where he is?' Peres said, 'Fine These **** hit New York! New York! Do you get that? I’m coming over.' A week later, he did. 'Would you have gone to any other country that underwent something like this,' I asked. 'No,' he said." ~~~~~~ The New York Post Editorial Board this week said of Peres : "He was once one of Israel’s leading hawks. More than anyone else, he molded the new nation’s defense industry, built its air force, acquired its first sophisticated weapons and enabled Israel to develop nuclear weapons.That capability, he once said, was acquired “not in order to have a Hiroshima but an Oslo.” ~~~~~~ Jay Nordingler wrote in the National Review, that bastion of American conservatism, that Peres gave an address of really arresting beauty when he received the Nobel Prize for the Oslo Accords. Nordlinger quotes some of it : "I was born in a small Jewish town in White Russia. Nothing Jewish now remains of it. From my youngest childhood, I related to my place of birth as a mere way-station. My family’s dream, and my own, was to live in Israel, and our eventual voyage to the port of Jaffa was like making a dream come true. Had it not been for this dream and this voyage, I would probably have perished in the flames, as did so many of my people, among them most of my own family....For two decades, at the Ministry of Defense, I was privileged to work closely with a man who was and remains, to my mind, the greatest Jew of our time. From him I learned that the vision of the future should shape the agenda for the present; that one can overcome obstacles by dint of faith; that one may feel disappointment -- but never despair. And above all, I learned that the wisest consideration is the moral one. David Ben-Gurion has passed away, yet his vision continues to flourish : to be a singular people, to live at peace with our neighbors....The wars we fought were forced upon us. Thanks to the Israel Defense Forces, we won them all, but we did not win the greatest victory that we aspired to : release from the need to win victories." ~~~~~~ Dear readers, the death of Shimon Peres has put a hole in my spirit that will not be filled. The loss feels like the loss of every parent and every friend. My eyes fill with tears when I think of him gone. Yet, when I see his familiar face in a journal or on television, I cannot help but smile at that image of the world's grandfather. And a tough and firm, but loving, grandfather he was. Shimon Peres was more than a major figure. His early work was seminal in creating a strong Israel. But he wanted peace and felt it required major accommodation. He was and will be proven right about that, but it will take time to find a Palestine that wants an accommodation and peace. And so he began to dream of peace out loud, to coax the world and Israel's enemies to follow him, so that everyone could understand what Israel really desires. For all the disagreements the world's conservatives like to find in Shimon Peres, there is one strength that they cannot fault : he remained faithful to Ben-Gurion and Ariel Sharon always, and that is not to be lightly dismissed. They all knew that Israel must find a way to deal with the Palestinians and their terrorist leaders. A blitzkreig to eliminate Hamas would only widen the conflict and put the UN, and for now the US, clearly at odds with Israel. Sharon's disengagement could have worked with just a little bit of Palestinian good faith cooperation, but now that Saudi Arabia is making very subtle overtures to Israel, disengagement might have a chance to receive the Arab support it would absolutely need to succeed. There has to be a solution. Shimon Peres was right about that, and it gives force to Alon Pinkas' favorite Shimon Peres statement : "In the end, you are as big as the fight you pick, so pick one that really matters, one that is worth living for." As Shakespeare put into Hamlet's eulogy for his father's death : “He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.” That phrase has been used so often for so many people that it risks being trite. But, in the case of Shimon Peres it tells a fundamental truth. We shall not see his like again. So, let us follow his advice and pick a fight worth living for. ~~ "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved : he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper : the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil : he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore." (Psalm 121, King James Version). Requiescat in Pace.