On Judaism

General Comment: Peres does not identify with Jews or Judaism, of which he shows himself 
surprisingly ignorant. He subscribes to a form of Marxist universalism, distorting Jewish history 
to conform to his own views.
}~ [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."
}~ Judaism, from the very beginning, belongs to the history of the future. (Speech to annual 
meeting of American Jewish Committee, May 6, 2001)
}~ There was no greater leftist than Moses. . . . The most socialist of socialists. (Jerusalem 
Post International Edition, Feb. 26, 1999)
QQ }~ There should be another Genesis. [Speech at White House on signing Oslo I, 
Sept. 13, 1994]
}~ We are living through a time when there is an unprecedented opportunity to make our 
region into a good place for our peoples to live in. It is the Genesis. [Speech at Beit Gabriel, Jan. 
10, 1996]
COMMENT: Two years after calling for a new Genesis, Peres announces it has arrived.
}~ 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.
}~ My grandfather taught me Talmud. It was not as easy as it sounds. My home was not an 
observant one. My parents were not Orthodox but I was hareidi. At one point, I heard my 
parents listening to the radio on the Sabbath and I smashed it. (Interview with the Israeli 
magazine Mishpacha; quoted on israelwire, February 21, 2000)
COMMENT: Peres apparently defines being "hareidi" as smashing things.
}~ [Explaining to the National Religious Party Knesset members why they should vote for 
him in his failed bid for Israel's Presidency] I am not a secular Jew, but a believing Jew who 
keeps religious tradition. (Haaretz, June 13, 2000)
}~ You know the difference between politics and religion. Politics is the art of compromise. 
Religion is the commitment to reject compromises. (At press conference, National Press Club, 
Washington D.C., October 22, 2001)