- Shimon Peres dies at 93, Elliott Abrams pays tribute
The death of Shimon Peres prompted an outpouring of emotional tributes from around the world even as Israel woke up Wednesday morning to discover that a figure integral to the history of the state was gone. – New York Times
Elliott Abrams writes: The last American founding father, James Madison, died in 1836, 60 years after independence had been declared. Today, in the 68th year of its independence, Israel experienced the loss of its own last founding father. Shimon Peres was the last statesman who had been a force in Israeli life from independence in 1948 through all of its wars and all of its peace treaties, and served as Israel’s president until 2014. – CFR’s Pressure Points
Yossi Beilin writes: Most politicians come to office simply in order to be there. When asked why, they say vague things about making their country better. But Peres was in politics for a reason: to ensure that his Israel was safe, both by creating the best means of deterrence and by promoting peaceful relations with our neighbors. – Washington Post
Shimon Peres Israel's Last Founding Father.pdf |
World leaders made plans to converge on Israel to pay tribute to Shimon Peres, the Nobel Prize-winning former prime minister who died on Wednesday, focusing renewed attention on his quest for peace in a fractured land that fell well short of his dreams. – New York Times
The world awoke on Wednesday to an actuality it had never known before: a modern state of Israel without Shimon Peres. But in many respects Mr. Peres’s Israel began to disappear long ago. – New York Times
While Western leaders mourned the death of Israeli statesman and Nobel laureate Shimon Peres, many in the Arab world reacted with scorn, viewing him as a key architect of destructive Israeli policies toward Palestinians. – Washington Post
They were an international odd couple with seemingly little in common, a 40-something African-American born in Hawaii and an octogenarian Zionist born in a shtetl in Poland. But somehow Barack Obama and Shimon Peres hit it off. – New York Times
A group of Republican senators introduced legislation Wednesday that would require the State Department to certify the Palestinian Authority has ended its policy of paying families of terrorists. – Washington Examiner
Thousands of Israelis filed past the flag-draped coffin of Shimon Peres outside parliament on Thursday, honoring the former president and prime minister who won worldwide praise for his efforts in peace talks with the Palestinians. - Reuters
Interview: FPI Board Member Dan Senor paid tribute to Shimon Peres on Opinion Journal – Wall Street Journal
Editorial: With the passing of Shimon Peres, who died Wednesday at age 93, Israel suffers the loss of a lion, the last of the founding generation of leaders…Through a career that spanned this tumultuous period — through years of siege, bloodshed and building a nation — Mr. Peres never abandoned hope that, with enough sweat and tears, Israel would live in peace. – Washington Post
Bret Stephens writes: His biggest dream was peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors. The end of the Cold War gave Peres what he thought was a historic opening with Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, which had lost its Soviet patron. But while Peres was eager to go from hawk to dove, Arafat could not rise from terrorist to statesman. The 1993 Oslo Accords for which the two men shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin collapsed in a wave of suicide bombings at the turn of the millennium. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)