Shimon Peres
Shimon Peres
Shimon Peres; Hebrew: שמעון פרס; born Szymon Perski; 2 August 1923) is a Polish-born Israeli statesman. He was the ninth President of Israel from 2007 to 2014. Peres served twice as the Prime Minister of Israel and twice as Interim Prime Minister, and he was a member of 12 cabinets in a political career spanning over 66 years. Peres was elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and, except for a three-month-long hiatus in early 2006, served continuously until 2007,...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth2 August 1923
CountryIsrael
In every war, there are always elements of blindness.
The minute you try to threaten and use boycotts I think it is outside the democratic perception.
Our problem is not to submit to the differences but to overcome them.
Until the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, until then Israel didn't have a chance but to fight for her life. We were attacked five times, outgunned, outnumbered, on a small piece of land, and our main challenge was to remain alive.
Why cross and ocean when you can cross a river? Why should we sail to Washington when we can meet right away 10 miles from here?
The uprising in Egypt was initiated by the young generation. The uprising achieved two things. One is it made the lives of dictators impossible. Today, if you are looking for a safe job, don't become a dictator.
Today, Israel is stronger than ever. Israel has defensive tools of its own - those developed in the past and those developed today and those that will be developed tomorrow.
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.
Polls are like perfume-nice to smell, dangerous to swallow
[Hamas] thought that if you go to elections you become a democrat for the rest of your life. They think that democracy is limited to one day in four years.
The president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map.
And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment. They abstained in the 1947 UN partition resolution... They maintained an arms embargo against us in the 1950s... They always worked against us. They think the Arabs are the underdogs.
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.
Democracy wants to win by reason, not by arms or by any other material damage, because, look, I don't have to remind you that I am totally for peace. It is my greatest dream. It was and will remain so.