Resources for Teachers and Students on Shimon Peres
Prepare: Shimon Peres won the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1994, sharing the award with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak
Rabin. Peres' biography
and the text of his Nobel
lecture can be found on the Nobel website.
Read:
Shimon Peres' Architects
of Peace essay is excerpted from his memoir, Battling
for Peace. In it he explores not only the challenges faced
by the Jewish people to defend their cultural heritage,
but also a vision for the peaceful development of the entire
Middle East.
Explore: Shimon Peres founded the Peres
Center for Peace in 1996 to pursue his vision of
"a New Middle East" in which socio-economic cooperation
would lead to regional cooperation rather than conflict.
The center's website is viewable in English, Hebrew and
Arabic. In addition to resources and information regarding
the center's projects and activities, the website contains
an extensive international listing of Peace Studies programs
at the university level.
Write: In his Architects of Peace essay, Shimon
Peres theorizes that the conflicts of the future will be
over the content of civilization rather than over the territory
nations occupy. Write a three-to-five page paper exploring
what Peres means by "the content of civilization,"
investigating how such concerns could become more important
than territorial concerns. Is Peres' assessment of the future
of peace correct? Why or why not?
Extend: The
Seeds of Peace program, geared toward empowering
leaders of the next generation, has been endorsed by Shimon
Peres, Kofi Annan, Mahmoud Abbas, Bill Clinton, George W.
Bush, George Mitchell, Colin Powell, and Queen Noor of Jordan.
The organization runs international camps, leadership training
programs, and a Center for Coexistence.
Additional Resource: The
Harry S. Truman Center for the Advancement of World Peace,
located on the Mt. Scopus campus of Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, supports major studies on history, politics and
social development of the non-western world, with a particular
focus on the Middle East. In addition to its large library
and document center, the Center maintains an exhaustive
website with resources and links particular to its work.
The main page can be accessed in English at http://truman.huji.ac.il/.
Biography of Shimon
Peres