Two days ago, in the discussion under my entry about Obama’s NowRuz message to Iran, I noted that Israel’s President Shimon Peres had issued his own NowRuz message to Iran and suggested that it appeared calculated to “sabotage” Obama’s intentions. In the extension, I transcribe an Israeli press release (dated March 22nd) that provides translated text of both Peres’s NowRuz message, as well as excerpts from a separate interview, also broadcast to Iran.
Readers can consider it themselves.
The tonal contrast between the Obama and Peres NowRuz messages could not be sharper. Peres morphs George Bush. Unlike Obama, Peres is not speaking to the Islamic Republic, waxes nostalgic about the Shah, predicts that Iran’s people will “bring down” these “religious fanatics,” and characterizes the Islamic Republic’s disposition towards Israel as driven by “blind hatred” rather than anything Israel does.
As M.J. Rosenberg asked, it hardly seemed coincidental that Peres, long an Israeli superhawk on Iran,
suddenly sends “greetings” to the Iran people urging them to rise up against their government at the same moment that Obama respectfully addressed the “Islamic Republic of Iran” with the most conciliatory US message in decades…. [Was Peres responding] “with a hasty and insulting message in order to kill the effect of President Obama’s? If so, it was a serious breach. If the shoe was on the other foot, Jerusalem would go ballistic.”
As one friend and close observer of Iran/Israel matters puts it,here at tpmcafe, “there is little doubt that Shimon Peres’ subversion of Obama’s Nowruz message was as deliberate as it was destructive.”
Not surprisingly, some Israeli sources have claimed that the Peres message and comments were “coordinated” with Obama’s, and “similar.”
“Similar” as oil and water, night and day, maybe.
Ironically, the same Israeli and neoconservative voices who fret loudest over whether Iran will seriously talk to the US seem determined to undermine and prevent the US from seriously talking to Iran.
In a column in The International Herald Tribune, Roger Cohen reviews the Khamenei, Obama, and Peres messages, and adds this sober assessment of what may be required for a US-Iran dialogue to bear fruit:
“Obama’s new policies of Middle Eastern diplomacy and engagement will involve reining in Israeli bellicosity and a probable cooling of U.S.-Israeli relations. It’s about time. America’s Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy has been disastrous, not least for Israel’s long-term security.”
(Israeli press release in continuation)
Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring
March 22, 2009 Sunday
Israel communiqué gives context, publishes text of Peres’s message to Iranians
Text of report in English by Israeli Government Press Office on 22 March
[Press release: “President Peres’s Message to the Iranian People”]
President Peres has sent a special message to the Iranian people on
the occasion of the Holiday of Nowruz – the Persian New Year:
“On the Occasion of the New Year, I turn to the noble Iranian people
in the name of the ancient Jewish people, and I wish that they will
return to reclaim their rightful place amongst the enlightened nations
of the world”
Political figures recently suggested to President Shimon Peres that he
consider the possibility of passing a special message to the Iranian
people marking the holiday of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year. President
Peres acceded to the request, and has turned to the Iranian people
with a special message emphasizing the respect that he has for them
despite their being subjugated at the hands of radical leadership.
Accordingly, in the past week the President has recorded an interview
and holiday greeting, part of which was in Farsi, for Voice of
Israel-Farsi radio, which was broadcasted in Iran and which reached a
broad audience.
At the beginning of the interview, President Peres told of his visit
as an official guest in Iran during the period of the Shah, when
Israel and Iran enjoyed very close relations. He also spoke about the
current situation in Iran: “The situation in Iran is difficult. There
is a great deal of unemployment, great corruption, many drugs, and
general dissatisfaction. It is impossible to feed your children
enriched uranium for breakfast, they need a real breakfast; you can
not invest your money in enriched uranium and tell the children to
remain a bit hungry, a bit ignorant. I suggest that they not listen to
Ahmadinezhad. You cannot rule an entire people with incitement and
hatred; the people will tire of it. I see the suffering of the
children and I ask myself: why? It is such a rich country with such a
rich culture; why let a few religious fanatics walk on the worst path
in both the eyes of God and the eyes of man? So I see Iran on one hand
with admiration for its history, and on the other hand with sadness
over what is happening to it, and the hope that it will return to its
roots.”
President Peres added: “I think that the Iranian people will bring
down these leaders, because these leaders are not serving the people,
and in the end the people will understand this.” President Peres also
discussed the Holocaust denial that the President of Iran practices,
saying, “Since when is he an expert on the Jewish Holocaust? Was he in
Auschwitz? What does he know? He talks and talks all day, but he is
only destroying his own people. They won’t succeed in destroying us so
quickly, and we have already heard during the 4,000 years of our
existence many speeches, many anti-Semites, and many people who wanted
to wipe us out – we are still here; they are not. Iran’s leaders
should let people live, let women breathe, let the economy develop,
and stop trafficking all day in bombs and uranium – is that in the
name of God? This is what Allah wants from them?”
The following is the complete text of President Peres’s message to the
Iranian people:
Dear citizens of Iran,
IRANIAN-EH AZIZ, RUZ-EH NOV VANORUZE BASTANT BEH SHOMA KHOSH BAD
With great happiness I would like to wish you, on the occasion of your
holiday of Nowruz, a holiday of renewal that brings joy and hope for a
new day, for better days, and for a new and blessed year. What a joy
it is, this, your historical holiday that you have celebrated and kept
for generations.
The people of Israel have lofty historical memories from the period in
which Iran thrived in a variety of fields and contributed to the
world, among other things, Cyrus’s ancient Bill of Rights, and to the
Jewish people, our right to return to our land from the Babylonian
Exile in order to establish the Temple in Jerusalem. Iran and its
people therefore have a special place in our heritage.
Our relations with the Iranian people have also known good times in
the modern period. We shared our experience in agriculture, industry,
and scientific and medical development, and we cultivated the best
possible relations.
To our great sadness, relations between our countries are at their
lowest point. This derives from the leaders of your country, who are
driven to act in every way possible against the State of Israel and
its people, and even to threaten us with their intention to destroy
us. I ask myself how a noble people like you can be caught up in a
blind hatred like this, how you chose a leader who scorns the people
who were murdered by the Nazis, and who wants to destroy and kill
another country. You believe in God, and we believe in God, but in a
God of life and respect, not a God of death and hate. I am sure that
the day is not far when we will return to good neighbourly relations,
and effective cooperation will blossom once again, in every arena, for
the benefit of our people and our shared futures.
At this time, when the current regime in Iran is calling for the
destruction of Israel, we call for Iran to prosper. We remember Cyrus
the Great, who is noted in the Bible as the liberating king, and we
remember that our people lived in Iran for many generations, sharing
in the building of the land and contributing to its welfare and
culture. We are certain and hopeful that the darkness and the evil
will disappear from the world for the good of all of humanity.
On the occasion of the new year, I turn to the noble Iranian people in
the name of the ancient Jewish people, and I wish that they will
return to reclaim their rightful place amongst the enlightened nations
of the world. They will be respected and not hated, and just as they
have in the past, I am certain that they will make great cultural
contributions in the future.
I will conclude with the traditional blessing:
NORUZETAN PIRUZ HAR RUZETAN NORUZ BAD
Source: Government Press Office, Jerusalem, in English 22 Mar 09
Peres externalizes to the same maximalist degree as the Neocons: whatever evil lurks inside him he is willing to ascribe to whomever he doesn’t like. I suggest equality should win out: that the Israeli people “bring down” the Zionist “religious fanatics” in leadership that are driven by “blind hatred” for anyone other than themselves, and rejoin the world as a constructive partner, rather than a destructive opponent. The Israel that will never quit fighting–that will prefer conflict to peace– has become an ugly caricature of itself.
I do not see how Peres did anything that sabotages American policy. The Iranians are not children and know perfectly well the difference between the US and Israel. And, placing out in the open that which divides the West from Iran is not a bad thing either, most especially since Peres, like Obama, offered an olive branch.
As for Mr. Cohen, he has so embarrassed himself both in the New York Times and at at least one meeting with disaffected, expatriated Iranians that he can hardly be taken seriously. Rarely, if ever, has a Times columnist had to effectively eat his words – his facts, not his opinion – presented in a column. I predict that his tenure will be short because he does not, evidently, let facts get in the way of a trendy opinion.
One ought listen to his arrogant and ill-informed answers to questions from Iranian Baha’i and Jewish expatriates. Here is a guy who drops into a country, Iran, and then has the nerve to tell well informed people who have grown up in Iran about life in Iran. It evidently never occurred to him – or, perhaps, he just did not care, his “cause” being so lofty that facts do not matter – that those he was allowed to converse with in Iran were under pressure to tow the line of the Iranian government.
Returning to our topic, Iran’s government has not exactly said nice things about Jews, much less about Israel. To expect Israelis to simply ignore that is a bit rich of you. That Israel offers an olive branch here is rather generous. And, no doubt, Obama appreciated what Peres is trying to do in support of Obama.
Helena,
I understand why you want to be enthusiastic about Obama’s overture but some people are getting overexcited. Madeleine Albright’s overture in March 2000 (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0003/17/se.01.html) went much further. She went into detail about the coup of 1953 and U.S. support for repression under the Shah. Obama didn’t make any attempt at any apology.
Israel through its president, Peres was making it abundantly clear to the Obama administration that US middle east policy is made in Jerusalem, not Washington. Peres’ outrageous timing of his diatribe should be soundly condemned by the US State Department for what it was.. Fat chance, huh?
Peres morphs George Bush. Unlike Obama, Peres is not speaking to the Islamic Republic, waxes nostalgic about the Shah, predicts that Iran’s people will “bring down” these “religious fanatics,” and characterizes the Islamic Republic’s disposition towards Israel as driven by “blind hatred” rather than anything Israel does.
When will the Israeli people bring down the religious fanatics that rule them, and when will the Israeli people stop allowing their lust for Palestinian land drive their blind hatred of Palestinians?
[Was Peres responding] “with a hasty and insulting message in order to kill the effect of President Obama’s? If so, it was a serious breach. If the shoe was on the other foot, Jerusalem would go ballistic.”
That’s the difference between the master and the slave. The master “goes ballistic” when the slave displeases him, while the slave holds his tongue in the presence of his master.
“Obama’s new policies of Middle Eastern diplomacy and engagement will involve reining in Israeli bellicosity and a probable cooling of U.S.-Israeli relations. It’s about time. America’s Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy has been disastrous, not least for Israel’s long-term security.”
I am waiting to see Obama rein in Israel’s bellicosity. Excuse me if I am a skeptic. I have seen no evidence that he is up to the job, or that he even sees that it needs doing.
If Obama isn’t willing to bite the bullet now and push back against the Israeli hard right and its supporters in the US, now while his popularity is soaring, when will he?
As a politician of any consequence, Obama must surely realise there is a massive divergence between any sustainable US ME policy and the existing foreign policy of fuzzy old “Israel”.
But of course Obama may well not be of any particular consequence, even though he is superficially different from preceding US Presidents.
Obama’s Overture to Iran:
I found Peres’ remarks to be unconstructive. Obaba’s were constructive. Peres resorted to lecture which could be taken as accusation.
I wrote to Peres via the Israeli Government website, asking him to change his tone. I told him that it was like 2 people having trouble in a relationship and one of them saying “I want to fix the problems that you created”. How is the other side going to take that?
Nevertheless, I don’t think there’s any sabotage. Obama clearly has more work to do on his own, and I think he’s on the right path,