By Rabbi Dow Marmur
JERUSALEM–One of the arguments against electing Shimon Peres as President of the State of Israel was that he wouldn’t be above the fray, as is expected of a titular Head of State, but deep in it. However, after the embarrassment of his predecessor having to leave office before his time was up in ignominy because of the charges of rape and similar offences against him, a majority of the members of the Knesset, the body that elects a President, rightly decided that the country needed someone greatly respected in the international community who could be a worthy spokesman and dignified exponent of the Jewish state.
There is no individual who fits that description better than Shimon Peres. He has indeed been the best face Israel can have. But he has continued to play a part – or, as some would say, meddle – in foreign policy. This has been particularly necessary in the light of Yvet Lieberman being Foreign Minister.
But now Peres is reported to have things to say to and about the Prime Minister, too. In the light of the latter’s current bout of ominous and dangerous intransigence over Jerusalem (to paraphrase the Book of Genesis, “the voice is the voice of Bibi but the hands are the hands of Yvet”), the President has intervened.
He’s said to have made the wholesome distinction between the East Jerusalem of largely uninhabited publicly owned land, where new Jewish neighborhoods have been established since 1967 and where now more than 40% of Jewish Jerusalemites live, and Arab villages that now form part of the city and where the American millionaire Irving Moscowitz has bought land so that Jewish extremists can settle there. It’s to this unconscionable intrusion by fanatics that Peres seems to object. He knows, of course, that every Israeli government, irrespective of political color, has authorized building in the empty spaces but refrained from doing so in Arab neighborhoods.
The gang of which Netanyahu seems to have become the spokesman wants to build in Arab neighborhoods in order to preclude the possibility of that part of Jerusalem becoming the capital of the Palestinian state in a negotiated settlement. Peres, like most Israelis I know, realize that such a concession will be necessary if peace is to come. And like perhaps most Israelis, he seems to believe that it’s worth the sacrifice.
After all the politicians’ rhetoric it’s difficult for any of them to give up the idea of the “undivided and eternal capital of Israel,” but that’s one of the things they’ll have to do if they’re to return to the good books of the American administration. Peres may want to push them in that direction, even though formally his office is neither equipped nor entitled to do so. He may be breaking with protocol to help heal the country.
Though even I, critical of the right-wing government as I am, normally find the hard-hitting and sometimes outrageous columns by Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz difficult to take, he may have a point when he describes President Obama as Israel’s great friend, not the foe that he’s generally depicted in the media and in the street. For it’s only the kind of tough love that Obama is administering that can go beyond the rhetoric and move the politicians to act, even if they’ll have to limp to the finishing line.
Therefore, though we have good reason to raise our eyebrows at the President of Israel exceeding his mandate, we have every reason to be grateful to him, perhaps also to the President of the United States for creating the situation.
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Rabbi Marmur is spiritual leader emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. He divides his time between Canada and Israel