Shimon Peres Suffering From Portnoy's Complaint?
Guilt-Edged Insecurity
by FRANKLIN LAMB
Beirut
Being subjected to the Zionist lobby can get tedious--particularly its chronic parading of an often disoriented and fast-deteriorating fellow, who should surely be tending a vegetable or flower garden somewhere in Occupied Palestine, where he lives on stolen land. International lawyers, even some at Hebrew University, have come to recognize the half century of crimes against humanity meted out by Shimon Peres upon hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, and thus one could be forgiven for rolling eyes at the Israeli president's concerns over demons said to be haunting his sleeping and waking moments, as he complains that perhaps, just maybe, he was wrong in his calculations 70 years ago.
Those demons are Palestinians, and it is perhaps the supreme irony of ironies that Peres now finds himself lamenting over what became of the ideals of Judaism--the very same ideals he spent half a century of his life destroying in the name of fascist Zionism. "I could not face my parents were I ever to see them again," the Israeli president, an avowed agnostic, told a member of Congress a few months back.
"Peres' Complaint' has been increasingly heard over the past couple of years, confided to some of his US and EU Zionist lobby hosts during fundraising and legacy-reinforcing appearances. It often manifests itself as a continuous monologue, much as if narrated at his psychoanalytic group therapy session, and often about the same subjects he claims have haunted him for decades. One of these reportedly is the whole concept of an eretz Israel land grab as a divinely-ordained destiny for a "chosen" Jewish people.
At a cocktail party last year, Peres was overheard telling Vice President Biden, "Who knows if there is a god or not? But if so, I doubt he deals in real estate!" Biden appeared shocked, quickly summoning a waiter for replacement glasses of scotch, hoping to cheer the president of Israel up a bit. "He needs to be more philosophical," Biden said, reporting on his "psychoanalytic session" with Peres, later explaining, "Sure the hand writing is on the wall regarding a future for Israel is clear for all to see, but it could be worse!"
Peres' Complaint, like Portnoy's in Philip Roth's 1969 novel, revolves around the dilemma of, as Roth penned, "his sense of himself, his past, and that his ridiculous destiny is so fixed".
Portnoy's Complaint is a disorder in which claimed ethical impulses are perpetually warring, almost Hamlet-like, with extreme longings, often of a perverse nature, reminding some of a sort of sexual dysfunction.
Peres's Complaint is similar in many ways, but takes a varied form. In an interview published by the Brazilian newspaper the Folha de Sao Paulo, Peres was asked what he would say to Iran's President Rouhani if the two were to pick up the telephone and speak directly.
"I would tell him nobody in the world is threatening Iran. So why does Iran threaten other countries? Tell me. I don't understand why Iran threatens Israel. Why?" he replied.
Peres knows that Iran has not threatened other countries, but rather that it is Israel which has threatened the whole region, and which did so within minutes of his Zionist-Labor terrorist-backed associates declaring themselves a "country."
Peres ended his short interview with Folha de Sao Paulo with this bit of sage erudition:
"In politics, and in life, you can only judge things based on facts. There has been no change on Iran--the facts contradict the speeches."
The words were spoken as if the speaker were satisfactorily contemplating the last remaining 19th century European colonial enterprise"along with his own role in setting up and governing it.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
