Yet there seems to be among you a curious aversion to peace. Peacemakers are denounced as traitors or enemies. Even I have been termed a "Destroyer of Israel" because of my efforts at the beginning of my first term, to bring about peace between you and your neighbors.
I am told that in your recent election campaign, all parties studiously avoided the word "peace." That sounds incredible to me. You need peace, perhaps more than any other people on earth.
I am also told that most Israelis, while longing for peace, strongly believe that "Peace is Impossible." Peace is never impossible, if good men and women earnestly strive for it.
History is full of implacable enemies who made peace after generations of conflict. Look at the peace my country made with Germany and Japan after the deadly struggle not so long ago. Look at the peace between France and Germany after many generations of war. Indeed, Israel herself has made peace and now lives in friendship with Germany, so soon after the Shoah.
Granted that the conflict between you and the Palestinian people is more complex than most, I tell you: peace between you is not only necessary. It is also possible.
PEACE STARTS with seeing your enemy as a human being. With looking him in the eye.
That should be easy for Jews. Do not the Holy Scriptures, our common heritage, tell us that God created all human beings in his image? Did not your great spiritual teacher, Hillel, tell you that the basis of all moral behavior is not to do unto the Other that which is hateful to you?
I am told that lately, there has become evident a rising tide of racism among you, that there have even been incidents of lynching, that many young boys and girls are proud to announce that they are racists.
I find this incredible. Jews? Racists? After centuries as the victims of racist persecution? Barely more than half a century after the Holocaust?
I am a dark-skinned person. Luckily, my forebears never experienced the ultimate evil of slavery. Unlike millions of Africans, my father's family was not kidnapped from their ancestral village in Kenya. But the evils of slavery are deeply imprinted on my mind. The awful sight of the lynchings is still vivid before my eyes.
So are the freedom marches, in which determined black people braved racist mobs, guns and attack dogs. We shall ever be grateful to the white young men and women who joined these marches, so many of whom were Jews. I just cannot understand: how can any Jew in Israel be a racist, and be proud of it? What on earth do you learn in your schools?
I DID not come here to try and impose a peace plan on you.
Peace should not be imposed. It must flow from the heart. It must be approved by the mind.
Let me share with you, however, a few things that seem to me self-evident:
Peace must be based on what is commonly called the "two-state solution". Two states for two peoples, for the Israelis and for the Palestinians.
It is not only the best solution -- it is the only solution.
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