The President Who Can't Shut Up

Marty,

You have succeeded in doing what thought was impossible -- getting me to defend Shimon Peres of whom I am not too fond (to put it mildly).

Regarding Shalit, Peres did **NOT** say that Shalit is about to be released. He said that there are discussion and there has been progress and that he hopes it will lead to his release. Period. Saying that he hopes the discussion will lead to his release is standard fare here and anyone who has been following the Hebrew language news & interviews here (live interviews are a standard fare of electronic journalism here) knows that the "hope for release" statement is standard platitudinous pablum - everyone hopes he is released soon -- and has no significance.

Regarding his statement on the "settlements" once negotiations start, he said nothing new. Indeed Bibi has been saying this, more or less, for a while. No new settlements - none have been founded since the very early '90's and Bibi has said none are or will be founded. No land expropriations -- this too has been the case for a long while and Bibi has also stated this publicly. In terms of a freeze in construction, whether I like it or not whether I think this is wise or not, Bibi has already offered Obama a 10 month (up from 6 months) construction freeze within existing communities over the Green Line (exclusive of post-'67 J'lem) including inside the "settlement blocs" (like Gush Etzion) and so this too is nothing new.

Bibi & Peres met for discussions on Friday and also Saturday night or Sunday morning before Peres left for Egypt and the broad consensus is that they were fully coordinated on the statements that Peres made during and after his visit with Mubarak.

Don't get me wrong -- I feel strongly that Peres suffers from chronic oral diarrhea, terminal delusions on the nature of the Middle East and Israel's role in it, and a congenital ideological inability to admit to a mistake, but this time I think you condemned him unfairly.

Hershel Ginsburg

Efrata / Jerusalem

thanks ginzy. I have a little more affection for Peres than you do, I admire a guy who has stuck around for sooooo looong and has gone through so much.

"I admire a guy who has stuck around for sooooo looong and has gone through so much".

Like Moammar Khaddafi? Or Fidel Castro? Or Richard Nixon? Or Josef Stalin?

hg

ok, ginzy, touche, but that is a bit unfair to poor Peres to lump them with that crew (and even Nixon, who though rotten was not a psycho like the other tyrants). Peres has stuck around legitimately via the will of the people of Israel.

I think "stuck around so long" in blackie's post means "stuck around in a democratic political system for so long." Hence Nixon would be a fair comparison (although he lost and came back and then crashed and burned) but dictators aren't really appropriate for comparison as they can enforce the circumstances of their own survival, while democratic politicians can't really.

Actually Shimon Peres was never elected by the Israeli people to any position except (perhaps) to the chairmanship of the Labor Party in the late 1970's and the 1980's. In fact in Israeli political slang he is known as "The Loozerr" (Biblical Hebrew; you don't believe me?) because he always seems to lose when he was thought to be a safe bet, and would always blame others, never himself for being a loser.

He lost to Begin and the Likud in 1977, the election that ended Labor's hegemony on the Prime Ministership. His stints as P.M. during the 1980's was attained via the rotation agreement with Likud's Yitchak Shamir which underlay the National Unity Government coalition. In the early '90's he lost the leadership of the Labor Party to his arch-rival Yitzchak Rabin (who called Peres an "indefatigable [political] subversive" in his autobiography). As the #2 man in Labor, Peres succeeded Rabin after the assassination in 1995. Subsequently he lost in a squeaker what was supposed to be a shoe-in to the Prime Ministership, to a thoroughly leperized Netanyahu & Likud.

About 8-9 years ago, Peres lost a bid for the Presidency (a symbolic & ceremonial position (analogous to the Queen of England) elected by the 120 member Knesset). In 2005 he lost out to upstart Amir Peretz to be head of the Labor Party. Consequently he left Labor to join his good friend Ariel Sharon in the Kadima.

Peres finally won an election about 2 years ago when the Knesset elected him to the Presidency, and has enjoyed unprecedented (for him) popularity as President. It does help, though, when your predecessor is on trial for rape and sexual harassment.

Sorry to bust yer bubble.

Hershel Ginsburg

Jerusalem / Efrata

"Sorry to bust yer bubble."

Not at all. Blackton, with IronyRoad's qualification, I think, has articulated what many Israelis feel towards Peres, even when they are in total disagreement with him. Israelis, Ginzy, are a grateful nation who recognize when a leader has been in service of the Israeli cause for so long as Peres has. I feel very indignant that you lumped him together with dictators. How can you even begin to justify such animus?

Peres has been doing a very good job as the president. And from what I can gather, he did not reveal any damaging information when he said:

"There is no doubt that real progress has been made on the issue of Gilad Shalit, but the details must be kept behind the scene," Peres was quoted as saying upon his return from an official visit to Egypt, where the government has been trying to broker a prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hamas. "

Whenever Shalit's issue comes up in the news discussed by Israeli leaders, , the formulation is the same: progress, caution, and secrecy. So why pillory Peres in particular?

As for the settlements issue, Peres is not saying anything contradictory to anything Netanyahu is saying, repeatedly, to those who want to hear.

Noga,

If you'd (re)read my original posting you will see that I defended Peres to what I thought was MP's unjustified criticism, and specifically about what SP said regarding Shalit & building over the Green Line.

I wasn't comparing Peres to the dictators nor was I lumping him together with him. I was just trying to illustrate a flaw in Blackton's thinking, to show how his stated criteria has presumably unintended consequences. Hence it was not a criticism of Peres (not that I have any problems with criticizing him) but more of a friendly "gotacha" aimed at Blackton.

I stand by my last Peres post as everything stated there is factual. Regarding Peres' popularity, he has enjoyed that only as President.

Even then, many Israelis feel he should apologize for dragging Israel into the Oslo debacle or at least have the intellectual honesty to say that (a) he (and others) were hoodwinked by Arafat, and that (b) with the benefit of hindsight, Oslo was a mistake.

hg

"I wasn't comparing Peres to the dictators nor was I lumping him together with [them]."

Yes you were, ginzy. Even if it was an "unintended consequence" of an unthought-out post.

There's something a little disconcerting about an exchange that rolls out something like this:

Poster A makes a point.
Poster B responds to the point, referencing X
Poster A responds in turn, taking up B's mention of X
Poster B then responds, accusing A of obsession with and/or failure to see irrelevance of X.
Poster A scratches head, somewhat baffled.

So, ginzy -- to sum up: you were the one who brought up dictators (and Nixon). Not blackton, not Noga, and not me.

Irony,

I was pointing out the flaw in Blackton's thinking. Period. I don't buy this deconstruction of what I wrote.

I guess we will have to chalk this up to agreeing to disagree.

hg

What flaw in his thinking? He clearly meant democratic politics (Israel was a democracy, last time I looked). Being in politics doesn't mean winning all the time -- in fact there are people in many countries who have been active in political life for decades who haven't always been electoral winners but nonetheless have achieved a certain profile, influence etc.

irony, i appreciate your backing me up, but basically I just took it as ginzy giving me a touche moment and as such doesn't really need to be overanalysed. I don't believe that ginzy himself believes that Peres is like those tyrants.

I don't have any bubble about Peres, as PM I agree he was ineffectual, but as I said for my entire adult life his is a name that has been pretty constant, and I won't apologize for feeling affection towards him for just going on and on like some kind of energizer bunny.

OK by me.

Mind you, I did have a chuckle at ginzy's "I don't buy your deconstruction of what I wrote," that sounds so like "I won't concede even a silly and obvious error" wearing a jacket and tie for the occasion.

Ginzy: I plain forgot about your first post! My bad, as they would say around here.

It would have been easier to accept your point about Blackton's "flawed" endorsement if, once you were challenged on the flawed logic of your correction you would not have dug in deeper. Thus your gotcha moment turned into something much more serious than apparently intended.

As for IronyRoad, I am always amazed at how easy it is to extract a chuckle from him when it comes to the follies of certain critics, when no matter how gruesome or vulgar a comment is made, if the maker of it is an Obama advocate, you can't even hear the tiniest of tinkles of an ice cube in a glass from our learned friend.

Noga, what was gruesome or vulgar about ginzy's comment? I just thought it was, as you said yourself, digging himself in deeper when he could have just said, oops, sorry.

Your ostensibly learned, but otherwise baffled

IR

"Noga, what was gruesome or vulgar about ginzy's comment? "

Nothing. You misunderstood my point. Perhaps I should have punctuated better, or inserted a "but" between "certain critics" and "when".

Oh I see.

But I also don't see. How is there a parallel between ginzy's fairly harmless digging-himself-deeper-in-denial (which I chuckle at) and and a vulgar or gruesome remark from an Obama supporter (that I . . . don't chuckle at, when I should?)?

Apart from "vulgar" and "gruesome" not being exactly synonymous (a vulgar remark can also be funny and revealing, for example, but gruesome is usually just that), I'm still a little foggy about what you mean.

When you were chuckling at Ginzy's whatever, was it an affectionate, sympathetic chuckle? Or was it a somewhat complaisant chuckle, meant as a criticism of Ginzy's mullish (or mulish) response?

I wondered why you would be so responsive to Ginzy's hapless glitch while on other occasions, when a gruesome, vulgar comment is made you remain mute, silent and without speech. Would that be because you do not notice these glitches when they come from Obama's or, (to put it less bluntly and to avoid being accused of being fixated on poor Obama) , "so-called uberprogressive" advocates?

And BTW, I don't get you about "gruesome, vulgar" not being synonymous. Why would I want to use consecutive, synonymous adjectives? Would "he is so little and small" or "stupid and foolish" make much sense, except in irony?

Noga, I was making a distinction between "vulgar" and "gruesome" because something can be positive, while vulgar (e.g. a remark or analogy that, although not polite, gets to the heart of the matter), whereas gruesome seems to be more negative through and through. You do understand that, right? I was pointing out a difference that makes responding to vulgar remarks different from responding to gruesome remarks.

I'm still not sure what you're getting at, however. People do indeed make the occasional gruesome remark in a post, sometimes to me (although I can't recall a specific one right now), but is there something I was supposed to respond to in some way, and I didn't? If so, can you give me a clue as to what it was? And what does Obama have to do with it?

I sense some particular thing that's bugging you, but if you'd be a bit plainer, rather than doing finger-shadows, it might help.

"I was pointing out a difference that makes responding to vulgar remarks different from responding to gruesome remarks."

This is quite chuckle-worthy coming so soon after you sort of berated Ginzy for over-digging in deeper when he should have let go. I mean, why do you even keep talking about it? And why do you even want to make it an issue?

Never mind, IronyRoad. Sadly, learnedness clearly does not immunize its possessor from blindspoting.

In case you've forgotten, Noga, I was responding to your posts, that made some opaque and slightly confused accusation regarding vulgarity and gruesomeness that I'm still trying to pin down. But as you imply, why bother.

At this point, failing any clarification, I think I'll have to say that gruesome appears to be in the eye of the beholder.

"In case you've forgotten, Noga, I was responding to your posts, that made some opaque and slightly confused accusation regarding vulgarity and gruesomeness"

And I was only commenting on your rather gratuitous chuckles and such.

"At this point, failing any clarification, I think I'll have to say that gruesome appears to be in the eye of the beholder."

I'm glad we agree on that.

More on Peres:

"Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro has accused Israeli President Shimon Peres of threatening “the life and safety” of Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Here’s what Peres actually said:

“They [Chavez and Ahmadinejad] won’t hold, not because any of us is going to kill them; their own people are getting tired of them. So if you want good relations with them, consider that they are passing passengers. It’s a short-term relationship. So don’t waste too much on them.”

http://www.israellycool.com/2009/11/24/the-day-in-israel-wed-nov-25th-2009/