Peres personified bold, skillful statesmanship

“His skill secured Israel’s strategic position. His boldness sent Israeli commandos to Entebbe, and rescued Jews from Ethiopia. His statesmanship built an unbreakable bond with the United States of America and so many other countries.”

Those stirring remarks, uttered by U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday in his eloquent eulogy for former Israeli President Shimon Peres, summarize the essence of the last surviving founding father of the Jewish state. Above all else, Peres stood tall in the international arena as skillful, bold and statesmanlike.

Throughout his nearly 70 years of public service, Peres, who died in Jerusalem on Wednesday at 93 after suffering a stroke, personified Israeli’s proud march toward statehood, its valiant rise to a vibrant democracy and its often rocky route toward reaching a still- elusive lasting peace with its neighbors.

Peres, the ninth president of Israel who served from 2007 to 2014, was born in Poland in 1923 and witnessed first-hand the atrocities toward his family during the anti-Jewish genocide of the Holocaust. For many people, such horrors would kindle hatred and a yearning for aggressive retribution. For Peres, it sparked a passion for peace.

Decades later, he would say, “While my heart is breaking at the memory of my atrocious past, my eyes envision a common future for a world that is young, a world free of hatred, a world in which the words ‘war’ and ‘anti-Semitism’ will be dead words.”

Ultimately, Peres did not live to see that vision fully realized. But even on his deathbed this week, one could not accuse him of never having stopped trying.

His long and distinguished tenure as a leader, did, however, result in considerable positive change for his nation and its relations with its neighbors.

The affinity of the Isreali people toward Peres’ skill and temperament are evidenced in the rich experience he gleaned in his seven-decade-long public-service career. In addition to serving as president, Peres held office twice as prime minister of Israel, twice as interim prime minister, 12 terms as a Cabinet member and 48 years as a member of the Knesset, Israel’s national legislature.

World figure

His experience and skill shined brilliantly in his interactions with world leaders, including 10 U.S. presidents. They stretch back to his cordial negotiations with former President John F. Kennedy, with whom he successfully negotiated the first sale of defensive U.S. military equipment to Israel in 1963.

But it was Peres’ bold commitment to peace with the Arab community that perhaps best defines his legacy. The pinnacle of that commitment took form in his successful finalization of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty in the early 1990s. Then in 1994, in concert with then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization President Yasser Arafat, he played a major role in the historic Oslo Accords that resulted in several critical steps toward rapprochement between Israel and the newly formed Palestinian Authority. That landmark achievement earned him a deserved share of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Many attribute Peres’ success to his statesmanlike desire to place peace and security above politics and hawkish retribution. The leader believed deeply that his nation’s lasting security rested on a foundation of more tolerant relations with Palestinians and the larger Arab world.

To be sure, those statesmanlike qualities place Peres in the company of a handful of international luminaries. Obama, also in his eulogy yesterday, recognized as much:

“In many ways, he reminded me of some other giants of the 20th century that I’ve had the honor to meet – men like Nelson Mandela; women like Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth – leaders who have seen so much, whose lives span such momentous epochs, that they find no need to posture or traffic in what’s popular in the moment. … He knew, better than the cynic, that if you look out over the arc of history, human beings should be filled not with fear but with hope.”

It is that undying aspiration for hope for a better world that will define the life and times of Shimon Peres. It is that aspiration, too, that current Arab, Israeli and international leaders should continue to embrace as an enduring tribute to the skillful and bold Israeli statesman.