Shimon Peres Quotes
And this would normalize the existence of the Israeli and the Jew: a majority of Jews in the Land of Israel and a majority of Israelis among the Jewish People.
Peres, Shimon. The New Middle East. Henry Holt and Co., 1993.
Since the foundation of the State of Israel in 1949, there has been compulsory military service for all except the ultra-orthodox. Initially, this was only a small handful of religious scholars, but the number had swelled to almost 70,000 man of draft age who were very vocal and active about how the nation should be run and its foreign policy but never had to risk their own lives of that of their children in fighting Israel’s wars. Finally, majority sentiment became overwhelming and the exemption was removed. The Degel HaTorah party was an ultra-orthodox Jewish minor religious party whose view of a Jewish State was very similar to the ultra-orthodox Muslims who believed that holy books of their religion are the only valid laws and must supersede everything else like man-made Constitutions or laws. For them there was NO separation between church and state. For Gafni, therefore, if a court ruling or law conflicted with the Torah (the first 5 books of the Old Testament – The Law of Moses-- it contravened the notion of a Jewish State. The vast majority of Israeli Jews believed that the civil law must trump anyone’s particular interpretation of the Law of Moses as interpreted by the ultra-orthodox or anyone else. See {636124} for another instance where Gafni complained that Israel was no longer a Jewish State.
Prior to 1948 and the establishment of the state of Israel, there were large number of Jewish refugees who were stateless and, regardless of whatever moral rights they may have had, there was no politi.cal mechanism to enforce or claim these rights. For example, in 1956 Nassar expelled most of the Egyptian Jewish population. It was only the existence of Israel that gave these people the right to come to Israel and not depend on the good will of the world to help them as refugees. The difficulty for most refugees is that there is no state to demand, support, and enforce their rights.
Olmert was speaking for a significant minority of Israelis who believe that God consecrated the land of Palestine to the Jewish People and all other peoples who controlled it did so by conquest. So their logic is for those who do not believe in the Bible and give no modern credence to God’s will, the Jews have no taken back the land by conquest which is the way the Palestinians and all of the many peoples had controlled that land. For believers, the Jews have the highest right; for non-believers, their right of conquest is no weaker than any of the others.
The advocacy of the Jewish Return to the Holy Land was not first suggested or stated by European Jewish Zionists. Brightman was not only the first Christian to urge the return of the Jews, but the secon person of any faith to suggest it. He was only preceded by a Jewish refugee from the Spanish Inquisition--Joseph Nasi in 1561.
Shimon Peres was an Israeli politician who served both as ninth President of Israel, (2007–2014) and Prime Minister of Israel, as well as Interim Prime Minister. He was a member of twelve cabinets in a political career spanning nearly 70 years. Peres was elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and, except for a three-month-long hiatus in early 2006, was in office continuously until 2007, when he became President, being in that role for another seven years. At the time of his retirement in 2014, he was the world's oldest head of state. He was considered the last link to Israel's founding generation.
