On Terrorism

General Comment: For Peres, terror, like peace, is an abstraction. Terror is something to be fought independent of the terrorists who wage it. And anyway, it is destined to go away of its own accord - the immanent forces of history decree this to be so.

QQ "We are approaching the stage at which it will become clear that terror has no future and is fated to die."
[Speech at Inauguration of Winter Session of the Knesset, October 11, 1993]

COMMENT: Eight years later, Peres' predictive record will turn out to be zero but that will not stop him from plowing ahead, blinders firmly in place.

"Yesterday the countdown for the end of terrorism began. If the terrorism stops, we will enter into negotiations. We are not interested in violence for its own sake. We are interested in the end of violence in order to resume the contacts."
(Haaretz, September 12, 2001)

COMMENT: Peres seems to be concerned only with violence in so far as it interferes with the negotiations he pursues as ends-in-themselves. Is he indifferent to the murder of so many innocent civilians?

[Asked about continued Palestinian terrorism following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on America] "It's like having to quit smoking. You get to the point where you either stop, or fall victim to lung cancer. It's the same with the Palestinians. They should have made a statement last night that they are renouncing terrorism."
(Radio interview on Voice of Israel, September 12, 2001)

COMMENT: The day after the World Trade Center bombings, Israel's Foreign Minister flippantly compares terror to smoking.

"Arafat has to reestablish his credibility in the eyes of Israelis and in the eyes of the United States. . . . Arafat wants to belong to the club that fights terror. . . . But you cannot enter the non-smoking room with a cigar in your mouth."
(Peres speaking in U.S., October 21, 2001, on Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website)

"Terrorism is the cancer of our age. For the past decade a lot of countries wanted to deny that or make excuses for why they could go on dealing with terrorists. But after what's happened in New York and Washington, now everyone knows. This is a cancer. So every country must now decide whether it wants to be a smoking or a non-smoking country, a country that supports terrorism or one that doesn't."
(New York Times, Sept. 14, 2001)

[Asked what Israel will do to stop suicide bombings, Peres replied there are two ways, with one being to intercept the terrorist] "The second thing, we have to reduce the motives for terrorism of any sort. And the only way to do so is to renew the negotiations for peace and arrive at peaceful negotiation. You know, in a way, fighting terror is like fighting mosquitos. You cannot chase every mosquito individually. You have to dry the swamps, which means to really change the political situation."
(Interview on CNBC, "Hardball"with Chris Matthews, Aug. 15, 2001)

COMMENT: Just one month later, the United States would also speak of draining the swamp. However, it was referring to military action and financial controls.

[Question: The new policy is . . . there must first be an end to the violence and only then a beginning of the dialogue?]" PERES: I didn't say that. I said that the Palestinians themselves have an opportunity to pursue a new policy. If they want to talk about how to end the violence, we are ready to help them end the violence."
(Radio interview with Voice of Israel, September 2, 2001)

COMMENT: The more violence there is, the more Peres wants to negotiate. Peres continues, in the words of Norman Podhoretz, to go "hither and yon begging Arafat to declare yet another farcical 'cease-fire' that would precede yet another farcical series of 'peace' negotiations." (Commentary, October 2001)

"Our struggle is against terror. And if you want to maintain an international united front, the subject must be terror. The subject can't be the Palestinians or Arafat, it must be the menace of terror itself."
(Jerusalem Post Internet Edition, August 28, 2001)

COMMENT: Again Peres pulls his verbal trick, separating the act from the actor.

"It is necessary to understand that terrorism will not cease until the hand of the last terrorist in the world has been severed."
(Terror - A Global Threat, by Shimon Peres, October 21, 2001, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website)

COMMENT: Does this include Arafat?

"I told Arik [Sharon]: you say there is no such thing as good terrorism and bad terrorism. That is true, but by the same token there is no such thing as good occupation and bad occupation. No one in the world will be prepared to accept the continued occupation of the territories."
(Television interview quoted in Jerusalem Post editorial, October 21, 2001)

COMMENT: "It is the job of the foreign minister to explain the truth: Israel has been trying desperately to leave territories to which it also has legitimate claims, and has been prevented from doing so by the lack of a true partner for peace."(Jerusalem Post editorial, Oct. 21, 2001)

"Without two separate states, a binational state will come into being, to the great frustration of the two peoples. A binational tragedy would ensue which, in the course of time, would force Israel to stay armed against the Palestinians, whose bitterness could lead once more to terrorism."
(Shimon Peres, "Why We Need a Palestinian State,"LeMonde, August 22, 1999)

COMMENT: When has the terrorism stopped? Will not a Palestinian state produce worse terrorism and irredentism from a more powerful foe?

"Terrorism knows no borders or identity cards. It floats like clouds in the skies, instead of marching like armies."
(From Peres speech at Yale, reported in Connecticut Jewish Ledger, Feb. 21, 1997)

COMMENT: Terrorism has state sponsors to provide training, havens, infrastructure, financing, etc. - it does not "float like clouds in the skies,"although Peres seems to.

"For the first time in this century, Palestinians are combating Palestinian terrorism. For the first time, the Palestinian covenant was changed by the Palestinians."
(Speech at AIPAC conference, April 28, 1996, printed in Near East Report, May 6, 1996)

"I want to thank Foreign Minister Cem as the first visitor in this [Jewish] new year, on a day that Israel enjoyed sunshine without a "bomb-shine"."
(Press conference, Tel-Aviv, Sept 21, 2001)

"Arafat himself used to say "I don't ask for the moon."He doesn't have to arrest the moon, he has to arrest 10 or 15 troublemakers who are really initiating most of the terror."
(Remarks at National Press Club, Washington, D.C., October 22, 2001)

COMMENT: In the course of a single raid, in October 2001, the Israel Defense Forces arrested 42 terrorists from four different terror organizations.

"It does not matter what weapons are possessed by the Palestinians [since] guns don't matter - what matters is suicide bombers."
(Israel Radio, November 1, 2001).

COMMENT: On October 28, 2001 two Palestinian "policemen"with automatic rifles murdered four women at a bus stop in Hadera and wounded dozens of other civilians, and Arafat's Fatah murdered 22 year old Yaniv Levy sitting in his car outside Kibbutz Metzer. To those victims, guns mattered.