Zitat des Tages von Shimon Peres:
There was one occasion when I was very young - eight years or seven years old - that Jewish businessmen went through the forest, and they were assassinated. And that was for the first time I saw in our paper where there were assassinations in our place.
He was the editor of our paper. He created the publishing house in Hebrew. He was - I wouldn't say the 'guru' - but really he was our teacher and a most respected man. I wrote for the paper of the youth movement.
A solution of two national states - a Jewish state, Israel; an Arab state, Palestine. The Palestinians are our closest neighbors. I believe they may become our closest friends.
Let all of us turn from bullets to ballots, from guns to shovels.
I joined the army as a private. I was offered a rank at that time, but I refused. I preferred to remain a private. First of all, I wasn't taken by ranks, and before I knew it, they put me in the most sensitive positions anyway.
Look, I worked with American Republican presidents and Democratic presidents, all of them, and each of them has shown a deep and profound friendship to Israel, you know? I can't remember anybody who was in that sense negative as far as Israel is concerned.
We have to stand together against terror and the reasons for terrorism, which are poverty and ignorance.
I think I was a good student, because I jumped over a school. My main interest was basically history and literature. Sports were basically basketball and swimming at a pool. I was so happy.
We asked the workers to give up 25 percent of their salaries. Imagine! We asked the industrialists to freeze all costs, no matter what the inflation is.
Now, I learned soon enough, that among the three, two don't trust the third one - the third one is the government. Both industry and unions feel the government is a talking organization and a spending organization.
Science doesn't have flags. Science doesn't have borders.
We proved that the aggressors do not necessarily emerge as the victors, but we learned that the victors do not necessarily win peace.
I felt that if I could make the world better for the young, that would be the greatest thing we can do.
My family's dream, and my own, was to live in Israel, and our eventual voyage to the port of Jaffa was like making a dream come true. Had it not been for this dream and this voyage, I would probably have perished in the flames, as did so many of my people, among them most of my own family.
We are living in a world where image-making is important, so we ignore the facts.
Today, the people are governing the governments. And when they begin to talk to each other, they are surprised, they can be friends. Why should we hate each other?
Israel has its attractions. It's the most dramatic country in the world. Everybody's engaged. Everybody argues. When I leave Israel, I get a little bit bored, you know?
That was my first lesson from Ben-Gurion. Then I saw him making peace, and I saw him making war. He mobilized me before the war. The man was a very rare combination between a real intellectual and a born leader. There is a contradiction between the two.
He taught me literature, and he actually taught me how to read. He was my personal mentor.
The Middle East is ailing. The malady stems from pervasive violence, shortages of food, water and educational opportunities, discrimination against women and - the most virulent cause of all - the absence of freedom.
Early in the morning, I fell in love with the girl that later on became my wife. At that time, we were so naive. I wanted to charm her, so I read her Capital by Marx. I thought somehow she would be convinced by the strength of his criticism about capital.
If I tax them, in fact, I'm not taxing the capitalists, I am taxing the people who have saved, trusted. It was very controversial, those sorts of things. But finally, it worked out.
Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.
It is not rifles but people who triumph, and the conclusion from all the wars is that we need better people, not better rifles - to win wars, and mainly to avoid them.
There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary.
I dreamed of a future as a muscular, tanned, kibbutznik, who plowed the fertile fields of the Jezreel Valley in the day, sang religiously in the dining hall in the evening, and fiercely guarded the farmland at night, riding a noble horse.
Israel was born under the British mandate. We learned from the British what democracy means, and how it behaves in a time of danger, war and terror. We thank Britain for introducing freedom and respect of human rights both in normal and demanding circumstances.
I didn't plan to be a politician. The founder of our country, David Ben-Gurion, called me from the kibbutz to serve in the underground. We were short of manpower, short of arms. I was 24 years old. I was supposed to serve my country for one or two years. I am 89 years old this year, and I keep going.
I have a brother younger than me. My mother was a librarian, so from her, I got the taste to read.
I was learning, as I did in the Ministry of Defense. I never knew, but I always learned.
They thought that I was a man with reasonable judgment, so I was never under pressure from my parents; I could do whatever I wanted. I never had a negative word from them, nothing whatsoever.
The older generation had greater respect for land than science. But we live in an age when science, more than soil, has become the provider of growth and abundance. Living just on the land creates loneliness in an age of globality.
Look, Israel doesn't intend to introduce nuclear weapons, but if people are afraid that we have them, why not? It's a deterrent.
What should be the future of Israel? Is the land the most important choice, and for that reason to keep the whole of the land at any cost, or to have a partition and build the Jewish state on part of the land? And the other part?
You know who is against democracy in the Middle East? The husbands. They got used to their way of life. Now, the traditional way of life must change. Everybody must change. If you don't give equal rights to women, you can't progress.
Bulgaria is a true friend of Israel, that stood up to save the Jewish people 70 years ago in Europe, and who stood by throughout the terror attack that took place in Burgas last July.
