Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres was one of the great conjurers of modern politics, able to make life-altering
realities appear seemingly out of thin air. Like many other successful artists, or maybe all
of them, his world-spanning imaginative gifts were matched by his technical mastery of the
large systems of meaning he worked within, and by his gift for reading other people
correctly and persuading them to give him what he wanted. His friends and his detractors
might have both agreed that Israel was too small a stage for his talents, and that his effect
on history might have been even greater if he had lived in a bigger country. Others might
say that he could never have emerged anywhere else, that Israel was his muse.
A direct descendent of Rav Chaim of Volozhin, the greatest student of the Vilna Gaon,
Peres immigrated at the age of 11 from what was then Poland (now Belarus) to Palestine,
where he became aide de camp to David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the State of Israel.
What Ben-Gurion saw in Peres was a brilliant young man who spoke five languages
and whose combination of personal ambition and longing for the approval of a strong father
ensured his loyalty. When I asked Peres in a long 2013 interview about his memory of
returning to Europe after the Holocaust, in which his beloved grandfather, Rabbi Zvi
Meltzer, was murdered, along with the rest of the Meltzer and Perski families, he replied
with a story, which was still vivid in his mind, about a late-night meeting in a hotel room,
in which Ben-Gurion decisively preferred his answer to a question over an answer offered
by his rival, Golda Meir.
The list of Peres accomplishments is long, and any half-dozen of them would be enough to
comfortably fill the biography of a highly accomplished person who played a significant
role on the world-historical stage. He built many of the systems and relationships on
which Israels powerful defense establishment was founded; he got the weapons from
France that broke the embargo that was intended to strangle the Jewish state in its cradle;
he was the father of the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona, and what, according to
Colin Powells recent emails, are over 200 Israeli nuclear bombs. He was a prime
mover of the Oslo Peace Accords, which promised a peace that large numbers of Israelis
and Palestinians both yearn for and reject. He was the grandfather, spiritually and
practically, of the Israeli tech industry, whose capacity for innovation continues to
startle the world.
Peres detractors often got him wrong, as did many of his biggest fans, because he dwelt in
a relativistic universe, in which he functioned as an artist whose medium was political
power. His contradictions were part of his art, and of the highest order. He was
simultaneously the walking representative of Israels hopes for peace, and the bone-deep
embodiment of the countrys defense establishment. He was a passionate egotist who cared
deeply about the Jewish people and about the future of humankind. He charmed people
with his warm, grandfatherly manner, especially in his old age, yet he was seemingly
immune to most normal human emotion, including in situations in which other experienced
politicians would get carried away by anger or grief. He could be manipulated, just as he
manipulated others. He was a father of the settlements. He loved the idea of the
future, and scoffed at the past, which he would then recall in loving and highly specific
detail. He understood human beings and manipulated affairs of state without an ounce of
evident sentimentality. At the same time, he was a dreamer who devoutly believed that his
dreams would come true.
And why not? In his own life, many of his most unlikely dreams had, in fact, become
reality, starting with the most unlikely dream of reviving the Jewish nation in its native land
after a hiatus of nearly 2,000 years. While the State of Israel would certainly have been
established in 1948 without him, he arguably did more to build the young nation since that
year than any other single person. Putin, Xi, and Obama sought his advice and wanted to
talk with him, as did Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg, and Carla Bruni, and a long roster
of glittering names in his Rolodex. It is hard to imagine any of those people feeling the
same quickening of interest if offered the chance to spend two hours with any of his rivals
or detractors.
I was lucky enough to interview Shimon Peres at length three times over the past 10 years.
What has always interested me about him is his personal psychology, which reminded me
of a character from a great Viennese modernist novel, and also his memory for specific and
important historical facts that no one else alive still remembers, or ever knew. His aides
said that they enjoyed our interviews because they werent normal. In any case, I learned
a great deal from himabout the hinges on which history can turn, and how those hinges
are made, the power of empathy and imagination as political tools, and the differences
between political language, which is always relative, and literary language, which is a
closed system that insists on truth.
This interview, the last of any length given before his death this week, was conducted in
English (with occasional lapses into Hebrew and French) on Aug. 31 in Jaffo, at the Peres
Center for Peace, and was intended to be published before Rosh Hashanah 5777, to greet
the Jewish New Year. He was relaxed and alert, and in apparent good health for a 93-year-
old man who was about to receive a pacemaker.
***
So, have you seen the Stanley Kubrick movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey?
No, Im not familiar with it.
Its a movie set on a space station. And the highly intelligent computer, named HAL,
believes that there is something dangerous about the mission, and becomes more and
more unhinged, and HAL kills most of the people
[Laughs]
on board the ship. It ends, actually, with a very Shimon Peres-like moment, where
human beings do receive enlightenment from these super-extraterrestrial minds, who
are far more advanced than we humans are. Its a great movie. But its the very
beginning of the film that I want to talk to you about.
The film opens with a conflict between two groups of early humansapes, basically.
One group has an area that has some water, and another group of apes comes and
takes the waterhole from them. The leader of the first group of apes has the idea of
creating a weapon out of the bone of an animal. And with this innovation, the first
group of apes comes and they attack the second group of apes, and they kill one of
them, and they take back their waterhole. And then, theres a fantastic scene, which is
the image that sticks in my mind from the film, where the victorious ape throws his
weapon up toward the sky, and the shot transforms into an advanced spaceship that is
orbiting the Earth.
The meaning I take from this image is that the same aggression that motivates the ape
to kill is the thing that drives humans to create science, technology, art. And its
impossible to separate the two. That this thing in our nature that drove us to, and
drives us still, to be aggressive and to killis also the thing that, taken in a different
direction, drives us to conquer and master nature and science and technology. Do you
believe thats true?
No.
I didnt think so.
The film suffers, first of all, from one mistake: The idea that we want to create robots who
are like us. Nonsense! You can put in a robot whatever you want. To wash the floor, or to
fly. You cannot install in him imagination. No chance. Imagination is also the difference
between us and animals. The greatest animal on Earth is the elephant. A huge piece of
flesh. They say the animal has an excellent memory. OK, but he lacks imagination.
And opposable thumbs.
Imagination. Would he have imagination, he would kill us.
So why is mankind governing the whole world? We dont know actually why. The world is
not made just of science. This is primitive to think. There are still elements in our life that
we dont know. We know so much about human beings, but we also sense there is so much
to learn that we are still very far away from. At the beginning, our ancestors brought in the
idea of the Lord. Our thought was that the Lord did the things that we dont know. And
then Moshe Rabbeinu, who was a very wise man, he says, We dont know where he is.
We dont know how he looks. We dont know what he says. We never saw him. He calls us
from time to time.
I dont think the history of the world comes from a material basis. Its made from the
unknown thing which is called humanity. And we dont know what that is. Every time, we
discover a little bit more and more. But still, we dont understand the core of who we are.
So lets be a little bit honest, then. The Lord, or whatever it is, plays with things.
Look, for hundreds of years, we made our living from the land. Now land is something
tangible. Even mechanical. You want more land? Fight. There is no land without blood.
You have to defend your borders. For theres no land without borders. And for that reason,
our history is a history of war. War was the major factor in keeping our land.
I am asking myself, again, and I dont know the answer: Are we going to war because we
are aggressive by nature, as you said? Or are we aggressive because we have to go to war?
Are we going to war because we didnt have an alternative until science came?
But science doesnt take sides. And I believe that science without morality is the greatest
danger in the world. Because science is neutral: It can fall into the hands of good people
and bad people. It can fall into the hands of terrorists or the hands of innocent people.
I believe that we were born innocent. Our institutions teach us to make mistakes. Why?
Because in all the schools in all universities, we teach one thing: The things that happened.
There is no school, no university that can teach you what will happen, or how it can
happen. No school.
Think of the school that the children of Aleppo are attending now. Theyre attending
a university where on one side you have a teacher who bombs them with chlorine gas
with the help of Iran and Russia, and on the other side, you have the teachers from
ISIS who wish to reestablish the seventh-century caliphate. And they see their
brothers and mothers and fathers, some of whom have entirely democratic and liberal
intentions, ripped to pieces, and the great nations of the world dont care what
happens to them, and spit on them.
They are teaching you the future?
What other future can the children of Aleppo possibly learn? The world they inhabit
is evil, and it teaches them bad lessons.
Look, in the Arab world, there are 400 million people. Maybe 60, 70 thousand are
terrorists. But many millions more are students at universities. The problem is when they
graduate from the universitiesand by the way, among the students 60 percent are women,
and only 40 percent menthey dont have anywhere to work, because there is no high-tech
in their countries.
What we are trying to work on now is to teach them to do what we are doing here. We
enable the students to build their own companies. I think the universities even are a waste
of time. Give me $10,000 to attend a lecture by an economist? No chance. They explain
why we are poor. I can be poor without explanation. What they are telling are old stories.
Instead, teach them: What is innovation? What is science? If youll bring something from
the past, its not innovation. The past doesnt have a future.
How can a country that wishes to live in the future survive in a region that lives in the
past?
No. No. There are already thousands and thousands of students in the Arab world that have
smartphones. They are connected to the modern world.

Israeli President Shimon Peres with Googles Sergey Brin, March 2009 (Photo credit:
Christophe Wu, Google)
We have two systems of governments in our time. The old ones, the political ones, are
down below, without prestige, without trust, because they are representatives of the past.
Those leaders stand up and say, Im great, I am strong. The people say, Can you bring
an end to terror? No. Can you bring an end to the social gap? No. So why do you
think you are a great leader?
If you look at a country like Egypt, which cant grow enough wheat to give bread to
its people, and you look at Syria, which manufactures corpses, you feel optimistic that
the consciousness of the people in those places will change and embrace a new reality,
which is fueled by advances in science and technology?
Yes. The best example is China. China is a 4,000-year-old culture, a very rich culture with
no idea of a golden heaven. But the second China, the new one, was born 39 years ago, and
it was one of the poorest countries on the planet. They didnt get money from America, and
they didnt get money from Russia. They had a leader who was, on one hand, a
philosopher, and on the other hand, a brutal guy. In the 39 years since Deng, China has
become almost equal to America.
And now I come to my own ego. I began relations between this new China and Israel.
My sense is that when you watch Russian movements and actions, sometimes theres
an unseen gravitational force that comes from someplace, and I often feel that place is
China. I feel that the two countries are loosely coordinating their policies in some
specific areas, including here.
No, there is no coordination.
Theres a Chinese warship with the Russian ships off the coast of Syria, and the
Chinese are training Syrian troops inside China.
Let me tell you a story that I have from Kissinger. I think he also wrote it down somewhere.
It was the 70th birthday of Stalin, and the Russians insisted that Mao Zedong come to
participate. Mao didnt want to. He hated to fly, and he didnt like the Russians. But the
pressure was tremendous: We are brothers, we are Communists, and this and that.
And, finally, the Politburo of China decided that they will go. Mao didnt like to fly, so
they took a train. It was winter, so it took him 16 days to travel from Beijing to Moscow.
That sounds awful.
Before they went, the Politburo met to decide, What sort of a gift are we going to bring to
Stalin? Well, China has gold, lets give him a collection of gold. They have the white jade,
which is even more expensive than gold. So maybe a collection of white jade.
Then Mao Zedong said, Sorry, what are we, a colony? We are paying a tribute to them?
And then one of the members of the Politburo suggested a collection of Chinese vegetables.
[Laughs]
Poor Mao, he arrives in Moscow, sick from this winter train ride. They put him in a small
place, and they didnt pay attention to him. And they told Stalin about the gift, he says,
Oh, he wants to poison me. Send it away. And Mao Zedong was terribly insulted. So he
says, I am finished with the Russians. He told this story to Kissinger. And then the
Russians all of the sudden realized what they did. So they sent a nice boy, Kosygin, to
apologize to Mao. The Chinese put him in a tent, with mosquitoes.
So you believe that Maos curse still holds?
The Chinese have already had three revolutions. Russia did not. Mao Zedong brought order
and expelled the foreigners. He united China by force. Then he became an emperor, and he
lost his mind. The Cultural Revolution was a loss of mind. He couldnt sleep at night. He
would take a train in the middle of night to wherever he wanted, and they would stop all the
trains in China. Mao would have parties with the young secretaries from the office, and he
gave them syphilis. The country was plunged into chaos.
Then Mao died, and along came a small Chinese man by the name of Deng, and he says,
Gentlemen, the revolution is over. Lets get down to business. Keep your slogans, keep
your symbols, it doesnt matter. But we are going to enter the market economy. And they
changed China.
The market economy means that you cannot be alone. You must behave as the world does,
as a global business. The Indians were better than the Chinese at first for the simple
reasonthe Indians speak English. So they could join in the global companies right away,
but basically in services. They sold you tickets for airplanes. Since China didnt speak
English, they had to learn to manufacture things. But it went slowly.
Then came the third Chinese revolution, which is industry built on science. And they do use
science, with all their might. So that is the third revolution.
Then came a fourth revolution. Because the billionaires become corrupt, corrupted. And
who are they? The sons of the elite, who were able to send their children to study in
America. So they decided to have a fight against corruption. And then they learned, and all
of them are learning, that the world is divided, actually, in two blocs. The Pacific and the
Atlantic. The Atlantic is the old empire. The Pacific is fresh and great. And they have
started to create Eastern institutions.
Its interesting to see your eyes light up when you talk about the Chinese organizing a
Pacific bloc, because you really do seem to believe that is going to be an engine of
history and progress.
I was among the first to visit China. And they knew from my biography that I am a
graduate of an agricultural school. So the foreign minister says, Have a look at the Chinese
agriculture. I couldnt believe my eyes. It was so primitive! So backwards. I said, What
are you doing?
We suggested to them that we start with seeds: An Israeli seed of wheat gives you a yield
that is three times more than the Chinese one. Then they did the same with milk. And we
are today the best friends of China.
Thats the reason why, when I come to China, they still ask for my advice. I sat for three
hours with Xi, and I told him, Look whats happening to you. You are today economically
almost like America. And you smell power as well. But listen to me: You have to decide
either to be a giver or a taker. The biggest mistake is if youll use the power to take. The
greatest wisdom is if you give.
Speaking of takers: Theres a very nice man who lives in Israel now named Leonid
Nevzlin. I think you know him. He and his good friend Mikhail Khodorkovsky started
a company called Menatep, or Yukos, which, back in the 1990s they saw as the bearer
of the kinds of values that you describe. And they believed that this company would
help to transform the culture of Russia, and also hopefully make them rich. Then
Vladimir Putin came along, and he had the idea that the state should control that kind
of wealth. So he took away their companies, and he put Khodorkovsky in jail in
Siberia.
And since then, Putin, who rules the land that both of our families come from, has
continued to play by these outdated rules that you say belong to the past. He re-
equipped his army, then he ate Crimea, then he ate the eastern part of Ukraine, and
now he bombs Syria from bases in Iran. And if you asked Putin who influences big
events today, he would say, I do.
You have talked with Putin?
I have always wanted to talk to Putin. It would be a very interesting conversation to
read. But its a tough get.
I am very good friends with Putin. And I shall give you, in brief, the content of one of our
recent discussions.
I told him, Youre 63 years old, Im 93 years old. Tell me, what do you want to achieve in
the coming 30 years? What are you fighting for? Are you hoping to piss off America?
He says, No.
America wants a piece of Russia? No. You have trouble discussing things with Obama?
He says, Why do you ask?
I said, Look, I am not a spy, whatever, tell me.
He says, What do you think?
And I said, America will win no matter what you do.
Why? he asked.
Because they are lucky, and you are not.
[Laughs]
I told him more. When an American wakes up in the morning, what does he see? Mexico
in the south, and they accept Mexicans in their country. Canada in the north, they are the
best friends in the world. And on the right and on the left, there are fish in the water.
What does Obama have to worry about? You, you wake up in the morning, whom do you
have? Japan, China, Afghanistan? My God! They know that you have plenty of land, and
you dont give them a penny. You have 20 percent of the sweet water, and you give
nothing. So when the snow in Siberia melts, the first thing you will see there are Chinese.
Because there are plenty of Chinese in the east, and not so many Russians.
The second thing I told him was: America has the best proportion between the size of the
land and the size of the people. You here have the worst. Twenty million square kilometers.
My God. But what you dont have are people. Your people are dying. Dont be impressed
by the applause and what people are saying. They wont forgive you. Why do Russians live
for only 62 years, while Americans will live 82 years?
And then I told him: You behave like a czar.
I am very open.
Yes, I get that.
I said, What did the czars do? They developed two cities, St. Petersburg and Moscow, as a
showcase. Whatever you want, you will find there. The rest of Russia is like Nigeria
covered with snow. Your people are dying. You dont give them life. You think theyll
forgive you?
Why is America great? I asked him. Because they were givers. Why is Europe in
trouble? Because they are takers. America is giving; people think its because they are
generous. I think its because they are wise. If you give, you create friends. The most
beneficial investment is making friends.
America had the guts to take the Marshall Plan, a huge piece of their GNP that they gave
to this dying Europe. And in this way, they have shown that this is the best investment in
the world.
There is no European country that didnt take an empire. The French and the British, the
Portuguese, everybody. And what happened? They were thrown out of there and left with
nothing. England, the greatest empire from sunrise to sunset, all the oceans, and the nice,
nonviolent Indians threw them out and left them with nothing but three small islands, they
dont know what to do with them.
Believe me, I told Putin, enemies and animosity are the greatest waste in life. You are
investing in a foolish thing.
You saw America come to the Middle East after the British left, not as an empire,
exactly, but certainly as the guarantor of arrangements between states, and now
youre seeing America not leave the region entirely, but the tide is going out.
Well, I mean, you can afford it, because your investment in friendship still exists. You have
NATO. You have Europe, which means 600 million people who are still with you.
Putin says, Look, what do they want from me? What do you need NATO for? The Soviet
Union doesnt exist anymore. The Warsaw Pact was dismantled. I am ready to be a member
of NATO, like you! But why do they need Georgia in NATO? Why do they need Romania
in NATO? They want to go to Europe, go to Europe. But which army do they want to
fight?
And then he said: You think I didnt know that Crimea is Russian, and that Khrushchev
gave it to Ukraine as a gift? I didnt care, until then you needed the Ukrainians in NATO.
What for? I didnt touch them. They wanted to go to Europe, I said, Great, go to Europe.
But why did you need them in NATO?
Putin told me he talked with Obama. He said, I told Obama, You know what? Im ready
to join you in the Middle East. Economically, not militarily. I invested $4 billion in Libya,
we are working toward a transition there. Then one morning, I read that Obama cut the
connection with Libya. I lost $4 billion. So I asked him, Why did you do that? Did you
think about what will happen there afterwards?
Maybe Obamas mind was on something else.
I said to Putin, Look, in spite of all this, why dont you do what the Americans do? Create
another government, or a governing body that allows for the growth of companies. You
only have a government. In the government, you have the most ambitious people. They are
corrupted, they are corrupting others, they are not loyal. Have the companies, and let them
do what the American companies do.
Well, he says, what do you suggest? I said, We have a million Russian-speaking
people in Israel. We are best, or among the best, in science. We are ready to help you.
Work outside of the government. Or leave the government, they are corrupted anyway. You
wont win.
[Laughs]
He says, OK, lets try. And so we are trying now. And the absurdity of this story is that
there were some American companies that invested a great deal in Russia, and now they are
in big trouble. They asked me to help them out.
We had fun talking about history last time, and we both like the French, so I have
another historical question for you. How well did you know Pierre-Marie Koenig?
Knig? He was a good friend of mine. Pierre Knig. Huh.
I wanted to ask you about him. Tell me about how that friendship developed, and
what was he like? He led one of the bravest fights in World War II.
He was the big hero of the Bir Hakeim [a battle in Libya that along with the defense of
Tobruk forced the cancellation of a planned Axis invasion of Malta, and delayed Rommels
invasion of Egypt]. In the Bir Hakeim there was an Israeli unit, Jewish fighters. You know,
when I met for the first time de Gaulle, he told me that he couldnt believe that the Jewish
people can become soldiers. Pierre Knig became minister of defense.
You know where I am going with this.
Yes. Let me interrupt with a short story. There were two ambassadors here in the Middle
East, French. Pierre Gilbert, who was the ambassador to Israel, and Couve de Murville was
the ambassador to Egypt. Both of them were extremely talented people, and real
intellectuals. Pierre Gilbert became a sworn friend of ours. And then de Gaulle decided to
nominate Couve de Murville as foreign minister.
[Laughs]
What France did for Israel was because of Pierre Gilbert. And so, since Pierre Koenig was
my friend, I asked him to go and have a word with de Gaulle. De Gaulle smelled what he
wants, so he didnt want the meeting. Pierre Koenig got in to see him anyway, and told
him, All my friends, all your friends, all our brothers in arms, think you are making a
mistake by firing Gilbert. De Gaulle interrupted him and says, Mon cher, Pierre. The
time has come for you to change your friends. Thats the end of the story.
[Laughs] You came to Pierre Koenig, and you said, Israel needs modern fighter
planes. Did you tell him that Israel needs to develop an atomic capacity, of course for
peaceful purposes?
I didnt start with him.
Who did you start with?
I had many starts.
Oh, I would imagine.
There are endless stories. Where did we start? We started here, we started there. But the
most meaningful start was with a gentleman called Bourgs-Maunoury. He was minister of
interior, which was actually the minister of defense, because of the war in Algeria. His
grandfather was the marchal, the general, who conquered Egypt for Napoleon.
He had a friend who was the director general of his office, Abel Tomas, a very strange guy.
I mean, he talked like a machine gun. EatI never saw an appetite like it. When our head
of the Mossad went through Paris, Abel Tomas came, he wanted to see me. So he invited us
for lunch. I think he has eaten at that lunch 25 oysters. I mean, an unbelievable appetite.
But he talked against Hitler like nobody else. The two of them were taken prisoner together
by the Germans. And both of them escaped. And Bourgs was at the time 30 years old. He
became a very brave fighter in the Rsistance. And Abel Tomas was with him, the two of
them hunting Nazis.
So I asked Abel toward the end of the conversation, On whose behalf are you talking? He
says, What do you mean? The minister of the interior, Bourgs-Maunoury, Maurice. I
told him, Can I see him? He said, Why not? So he asked me, When do you want to
see him? I told him, Even now.
He picks up the phone, calls Bourgs-Maunoury, and tells him who am I, and he says that
he would like to see me. So Maurice asks when, he says, He wants now. So we left the
restaurant and went straight to the home of Bourgs-Maunoury, whom I had never met
before. And he had a bottle of old wine that he opened. And I gave him a big story, and a
list of our requests. And he says, OK, I will help you.
I told him, We need planes and we need tanks. He says, Oh, but there are some
problems. Many of the things we have belong to NATO, so I cant give them. The planes
we are producingthey produced then the Mirage and other planeswere all financed
by NATO. And there is an embargo against the Middle East.
He says, Im ready to close my eyes, give you everything you want. But I have a
condition. That neither your foreign minister nor our foreign minister can have the slightest
idea about it. So I did it between the two of us.
And then there was the campaign against the Suez, but this is a different story.
Are you saying that was a French idea and not something you and Dayan cooked up?
It was a French idea. Because he called me up. At the beginning, it was French and British.
They knew that Ben-Gurion, the year before it, tried to penetrate until Sharm el Sheikh, in
order to open the Straits of Tiran. But they didnt get a majority in the government. But
they knew that our army was already prepared to do it.
So one day, he calls me up and he says, Shimon, can you come in? I went to his place,
and there was the general staff of the French army. And Bourgs said, Look. The English
and we want to reopen the Suez. How much time did you estimate it will take to go through
Sinai and reach the Suez? I told them I dont remember the exact time, but two or three
weeks. He says, What? The English say two to three months. And you say two to three
weeks?
I told him, I am not a child, I am telling you what we estimated at the time. And he says,
Look, its a major difference between us, because we want it right now. Because then in
France, every Sunday and Monday they changed the government. And the British want it
after the winter because they wanted to go by sea. So they had a clash about the timing.
I was sure Ben-Gurion would refuse to participate because he didnt trust the English, but I
didnt tell them that. With me was my representative, and we went out. He says, Shimon,
you are my friend, but the government should hang you. Because you give the impression
that you are ready to participate without having authority. So I told him, Yes, OK, theyll
hang us, but we should open the Suez.
[Laughs.]
Anyway, I sent the cable to Ben-Gurion. And he usually wouldnt answer about theoretic
situations. But I got the short cable that says, Tell them that we prefer the French date.
No one imagined that Eisenhower was falling in love with Nasser?
No. But the French were afraid that if Eisenhower will find out, it could be a problem, and
they were worried about [British Prime Minister Anthony] Eden, too. Who was such a
beautiful guy, gut my God, what a politician. He wanted to have a war where nobody will
kill or be killed.
[Laughs.]
Eden thought he could do it alone with the French, and they didnt want us. We didnt want
them. But Bourgs was strong.
But the other gentleman was Guy Mollet, the head of the French Socialist Party. Our
leadership was Anglo-Saxon. The respect of France was down. Ben-Gurion thought that de
Gaulle is not a serious man, ever since Charles said, Heavy is the cross that we have to
carry.
[Laughs.]
They said, Are you crazy? Youll go with the French, they lost the war.
Ben-Gurion was a straightforward man. He caused me a great deal of trouble. Every time I
would bring a friend from France to Ben-Gurion, before he said hello, he would ask them,
Why did you lose the war? And then my guest would be insulted.
But I had told Ben-Gurion, Look, nothing came out from the Americans. Nothing came
out from the British, the British are against Israel. America was still connected with the
Saudis and the oil. They wont give us an ounce. So I had suggested France. He says,
What? I said, Look. I dont know a word of French. I dont know anybody in France.
Let me try. I was 25 or 26 years old. But he trusted me completely. So he says, Go and
try.
The next part of the connection was Guy Mollet. It was a few months before the elections.
And in the embassy, they told me, Look, you want to see all the leaders, but there is one
that you dont have to see. I said, Who? He says, Guy Mollet. The Socialist Party, had
at that time, 11 percent. Theres no chance that he will become prime minister.
So contrary to the advice of our foreign ministry, I went to see Guy Mollet because we
were both members of the Socialist International. Another advantage was that he spoke
English. So I went, and I started to talk, and they interrupted me, and what did he say? I
want to say something: You have heard that I am an anti-Semite? I didnt know how to
answer him.
Of course, sir!
Right. So I said, I know there are rumors, but I didnt want to commit myself. He says,
Nonsense. He explained that there was a competition for who would replace Leon Blum
as head of the Socialist Party. My contender was Daniel, a Jewish guy. I won, he lost. But
I am a friend of the Jews. I am a friend of Israel.
I said, Well, thank you very much, but I am not so satisfied. He says, Why? I said,
Because we are both Socialists. That means that before the election, we are great friends.
After the elections, we are forgotten.
He says, Give me an example. I told him, [British Labor Party statesman Ernest] Bevin
was also our friend, and a fellow Socialist. And once he came to power, he became our
greatest enemy. He says, I am not Bevin. And I shall not be a Bevin. And he promised
me everything.
What did you do for him?
Before we departed, he says, Look, I want to ask you something. The press is totally
against me. And you have many friends in Paris in the press. Try to have a word with
them. [Laughs.] I didnt know anything about France. I didnt know anybody.

In his own life, many of his most unlikely dreams had in fact become reality. Shimon
Peres at Elysee Palace, Paris, France, March 2008. (Photo by Ben Gershom/GPO via Getty
Images)
So I told him Guy, believe me, I dont know anybody. He says, Dont be modest. Two
weeks later, on the front page, there was a picture of Guy Mollet, and a very friendly cover
story about him.
Right.
He called me up and he said
Thank you! You are a man of your word.
[Laughs] I said, Guy, I didnt have a hand in anything!
How important do you think it is for Jewish power, the anti-Semitic idea that Jews
secretly do control the banks, they control the media, they control foreign
governments. This idea is sometimes an asset for the State of Israel, isnt it?
Yes, it was an asset.
And believe it or not, the Socialists were elected. And Guy Mollet became prime minister
[1956-57]. A few minutes after the results of the elections became news, I got the call, from
Guy Mollet. And he told me, I won. And now you see that I shall implement everything I
told you. Can you please come to me tomorrow night, in private? So I flew from Tel Aviv,
and I had Shabbos dinner with him and his wife and his two daughters, who had previously
visited Israel upon our invitation.
Mhhm.
And I cant tell you the exact details of what followed. But they did something that was
never done before or since in history. Never. Never in history did one nation give another
nation such a chance, with something so crucial to its survival.
Ive spent a lot of time in France over the last five years, I have close friends there.
And the situation there is different now. Yes, in the 1980s there were also bombings
and there were guards outside synagogues. And Jews tend to complain a lot. But now
parents are afraid to send their children to public school. Theyre afraid to go out in
the street. You have known the French and the Jewish community there much longer
than I have. Do you look at them and say, you should stay in France because the
French Jewish community has a long history and relations with France are important,
or do you say to them, its time to leave this place because theres no future for your
families there?
The story of modern France is Dreyfus. Who stood up against the Dreyfus case first?
mile Zola.
Yes. Why did he do it? In France, there have been four Jewish prime ministers. Dont
forget that.
Do you know the difference between France and America? In America, if I get into a car
with my friend, he will tell me how many children he has, and to which psychologist they
are going. So we are friends. But it never holds water. You need to constantly maintain the
relationship. In France, the opposite is true.
Yes. Thats my experience, too.
Its very hard to become someones friend. But once you have a friend, that friend is for
life.
Is it time for the Jews of France to leave?
Look, I prefer the Jews to come here. Not because they are under pressure, because they
feel here like they are at home. And I would like to see an Israel that charms people, not
just saves people.
I have one more historical question for you. You knew Abba Kovner, right?
Yes.
Theres a story that Kovner, the great Hebrew poet and partisan fighter, had a plan to
take vengeance against the Germans after the war for the Holocaust, which is a
subject weve spoken about before. Originally the plan was to poison the water
systems of Nuremberg and four other German cities.
The poison for this plan was made by Ephraim Katzir, who was then at the Weitzman
Institute and later became the president of Israel. Kovner took this poison with him
on a ship, but a British patrol took him off the ship, and his group threw the poison in
the water. Who told them?
I dont know.
Because this plan would have been probably the greatest moral disaster in the history
of the Jewish people.
I agree. I agree. I would never do it. Never. Never.
I wondered if you knew this story.
No. I did not. If I would have known, I would have been totally against it. Totally.
Instead, Ben-Gurion sat down with the Germans.
Because the Germans owed us. And its not that we wanted to be repaid, but he thought that
the new generation of Germany, whether you like it or not, cannot be responsible for what
their fathers did. Ben-Gurion said we should not forget and not forgive. But we are not
going to accuse the young generation. Now Germany is a sworn friend of Israel. A sworn
friend.
Angela Merkel has admitted over a million Muslim refugees to Germany, many of
whom are from Syria. And in the past six months, there have been reports of large
delegations of German business leaders going to Tehran and of the arrangement of a
state visit by Rouhani to Berlin. If you put these things together, it is possible to
imagine in the future a Germany that is less of a friend.
No.
No?
Germany, no. I became friends with Franz Josef Strauss. He was the minister of defense.
And I talked with him. I said, Look, the French are helping us with arms, the Americans
are helping us with money. You should do both.
[Laughs.]
Give us arms and money. But he said, I need the majority in the parliament. And the
Socialists are against Germany being involved in any arms deal. Have a word with the
Socialists.
The representative Socialist in the committee for defense, his name was Erler. A very nice
gentleman. Very modest. I came to him. And he told me, Look, we are not going to get
involved in any war. I told him, You did it already. And now, it can happen to us again.
Do you have the right to allow it? Theoretically? And to my great surprise, he says, I
agree.
Mrs. Merkel gave us four or five submarines. They gave us arms without money.
Look, they came and asked me to participate in a sort of symposium about Einstein. I
thought that Einstein was not just a great scientist, but a really wise man. Because he came
to the conclusion that we exist in relativity. The opposite to relativity is actually tyranny.
I dont believe that we can achieve perfection. But I do believe that the attempt to achieve
perfection is part of perfection. Im not sure that we shall achieve it, but I am sure we have
to try.
I was born in 1967, which means that I will be 50 years old next year. Its will also be
the 50th anniversary of Israels victory in the Six Day War, and the 50th year of the
occupation. These two events, one representing, in common memory, the salvation of
Jewish people, of the Jewish State
The Six Day War?
The state could have been wiped out. Instead, a great victory was won. It was also the
beginning of Jews becoming rulers over another people. Is it right to call something
thats already half-a-century old temporary? I suppose that I am only temporary, and
so are you. But we feel it otherwise.
I am not sure that the Six Day War was a great victory. I am sure that we committed a
mistake by not converting the victory into peace. As a result, we had the Yom Kippur War.
So its not if you enter the war, but how do you conclude the war. And even if you are a
winner in the beginning, you may become a little bit drunk.
Say more.
You cannot take history in pieces. Its consequential. And clearly, I thought that I had my
own ideas about the war, which I dont want to go into.
Dont forget that at that time, the rumor was that Israel already has the thing we talked
about earlier. And in the Yom Kippur War, Sadat said they didnt want to come to Israel.
Their goal was to arrive in the middle of Zion. Why?
Whether we have it, we dont have it, is another matter. But the Arabs were sure we had it.
And that helped us in the Yom Kippur War.
Yeah. Sadat stopped on purpose; it was a public maneuver.
Yessir. And I want to tell you a few words: The occupation is a mistake. I believe that is
basic. The foundation of the Jewish existence is morality. More than power. Not morality
as a talking point, but morality in fact. And I think what is moral is reasonable. I think the
wisest thing in life is to be an honest man. And by the way, it doesnt cost money, you
know?
Sometimes it costs money.
Better to spend money on that than to spend money and sit in prison.
I thought that as a result of the Six Day War, we should have tried to make peace.
When I was young, the injustice of the occupation greatly bothered me. It made me
angry because I saw an alternative. Now I am bothered because I dont see one.
The Six Day War was not aimed to occupy another people. The Arabs tried to kill us. We
went to war because we were attacked seven times. Outgunned, outnumbered. So from the
point of Jewish justice, its not so clear. But I think we would be wise if we would try to
transform our victory into the two-state solution.
I think it would have been wise if Yitzhak Shamir had accepted the agreement
In London?
That you reached in London with King Hussein.
That was the best ever.
Yeah.
Best. To this very day. But Ill tell you something.
Peres aide: Your guest has been waiting for half an hour.
Please finish your sentence. Then you can see the guest whos been waiting for half an
hour.
I want to finish my sentence, yes. The way to peace is not war, and not negotiation. Its
innovation. To be great in science, you dont have to go to war. You can be a small country
in size and a great country in content. And even today, this option exists. And I believe in
it. Its difficult, it may take time, but everything is difficult. I have spent my entire life as a
dreamer. And as you said last time, an optimist. I choose to be an optimist.
Yes, it was that phrase that I liked. [Laughs.]
I think to deal with the past is a waste of time. You cant change it, anyway.
[Laughs.]
People say, you wont repeat the same mistakes. So youll make new ones.
[Laughs.]
The past doesnt need the future, and the future doesnt need the past.
I know you have one more of those.
Better to dream than to remember.
Shimon Peres died at age 93 on Sept. 28, 2016.