Shimon Peres Reflects on Working Toward Peace
The
world into which I was born no longer exists, but I have
been fortunate enough to be present at the birth of a new
world-sometimes as an onlooker, sometimes as an active participant
in the act of creation.
But even now I am not inclined to give up dreaming. Two
dreams in particular take up much of my waking thoughts.
One concerns the future of the Jewish people, the other
the future of the Middle East.
In the new era the world has now entered upon, the wealth
and power of nations depend more on the development of intellectual
resources than on the possession of natural resources. Quality
is the key criterion rather than quantity, universalism
is superseding nationalism. All this poses new problems
that nations and their leaders have not had to grapple with
before. In the past, a nation's identity was molded from
its people's special characteristics, the geography of its
land, the unique properties of its language and culture.
Today, science has no national identity, technology no homeland,
information no passport. A country's intellectual standard
is more significant than its size. The productivity of its
arable land counts for more than its acreage.
Modern man speaks two languages: the language of verbal
communication and the language of computers. National cultures
and heritages must compete for man's attention with the
mind-absorbing advances of universal science.
The Jewish people's challenge in today's world is to defend
its unique heritage. This is no less demanding a task than
was the previous national challenge-the physical defense
of the homeland. Preserving the Hebrew language in the world
of today and tomorrow is as much a strategic undertaking
as guarding the borders has been until now. The test is
how to ensure that our children remain Jewish-Jewish not
merely by their ethnic origins but by their self-identity
and sense of mission.
In history, Judaism has been far more successful than
the Jews themselves. Jews were frequently persecuted, exiled,
plundered, and murdered. The Jewish people remained small
and weak, but the Jewish spirit went on from strength to
strength. The Bible is to be found in hundreds of millions
of homes throughout the monotheistic world.
The moral majesty of the Book of Books has been undefeated
by the vicissitudes of history. On the contrary, time and
again history has succumbed to the Bible's immortal ideas.
The message that the one, invisible God created Man in his
image, and that there are therefore no higher and lower
order of man, has fused with the realization that morality
is the highest form of wisdom-and perhaps of beauty and
courage, too. It is that which distinguishes man from beast.
Slings and arrows and gas chambers can annihilate men, but
they cannot destroy human values, dignity, and freedom.
Jewish history presents an encouraging lesson for humankind.
For nearly four thousand years, a small nation carried a
great message. For part of this period, the nation dwelt
on its own land; later, it wandered in exile. This small
nation swam against the tides and was repeatedly beaten,
banished, and downtrodden. There is no example in all of
history-neither among the great empires nor among their
colonies and dependencies-of a nation, after so long a saga
of tragedy and misfortune, rising up again, shaking itself
free, gathering together its dispersed remnants, and setting
out anew on its national adventure, defeating doubters within
and enemies without, reviving its land and its language,
rebuilding its identity, and reaching toward new heights
of distinction and excellence. The message of the Jewish
people to mankind is that faith can triumph over all adversity.
The Jews are traditionally the People of the Book, but
in today's world the book must fight to hold its own against
the screen. The depth of the book must compete against the
speed of the screen. Man's natural image, as portrayed in
print, must vie with his made-up face as it appears on camera.
The screen, of course, has clear advantages in this struggle:
it is accessible, ubiquitous, absorbed without effort. It
amuses and entertains us. But the screen, ultimately, distorts
our image.
The conflicts [of the future] will be over the content
of civilizations, not over the territory they occupy. Over
many centuries, Jewish culture has lived on alien soil.
Now, it has taken root again in its own soil. For the first
time in history, some five million people speak Hebrew as
their native language. That is both a lot and a little:
a lot because there have never been so many Hebrew speakers
before; but a little because a culture based on five million
people can hardly withstand the pervasive, corrosive effects
of the global television culture.
In the five decades of Israel's existence, our efforts
have been focused on reestablishing our territorial center.
In the future, we shall have to devote our main effort to
reestablishing our spiritual center. The Jewish people is
neither a nation nor a religion in the accepted sense of
those terms. Its essence is a message rather than a political
structure, a faith rather than an ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The Jewish people and the Jewish religion are one and the
same. Judaism-or Jewishness-is a fusion of belief, history,
land, and language. Being Jewish means belonging to a people
that is both a chosen people and a universal people. My
greatest dream is that our children, like our forefathers,
do not make do with the transient and the sham but continue
to plow the historic Jewish furrow in the field of the human
spirit. My hope is that Israel will become the center and
source of our heritage, not merely a homeland for our people;
that the Jewish people will not need to depend on others
but will give of itself to others.
As for our region, the Middle East, Israel's role is to
contribute to the region's great and sustained revival.
It will be a Middle East without wars, without fronts, without
enemies, without ballistic missiles, and without nuclear
warheads. A Middle East in which people, goods, and services
can move freely from place to place without the need for
customs clearance and police licenses. A Middle East in
which every believer will be free to pray in his own language,
Arabic or Hebrew or Latin or whatever language he chooses,
and in which his prayers will reach their destination without
censorship, without interference, and without offending
anyone. A Middle East in which nations strive for economic
equality, but encourage cultural pluralism. A Middle East
in which every young man and woman can attain a university
education. A Middle East in which living standards are in
no way inferior to those in the most advanced countries
of the world. A Middle East in which waters flow to slake
thirst, to make crops grow and deserts bloom, in which no
hostile borders bring death, hunger, or despair on the peoples
of the region. A Middle East of competition, not of domination.
A Middle East in which men and women are their neighbors'
allies, not their hostages. A Middle East that is not a
killing field but a field of creativity and growth. A Middle
East that honors its past history deeply in that it strives
to add new, noble chapters to that history.
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