Israelis awoke Wednesday to news that Shimon Peres, one of the founders of the state of Israel, had died of a massive stroke. Immediately — on TV panels and coffee shops here — they began to debate his complex legacy as an outpouring of tributes poured in from aboard.
The 93-year-old former prime minister, Israeli president and Nobel Peace Prize winner died at a Tel Aviv hospital surrounded by his family before dawn on Wednesday.
At the Sheba Medical Center, his son Chemi Peres thanked those around the world who offered support and prayers since Peres suffered a massive stroke earlier this month. Until Tuesday, doctors had expressed cautious optimism that Peres might recover, but his condition deteriorated quickly in the last 24 hours.
"The loss we feel today belongs to all of Israel, we all share this pain,” Chemi Peres said.
Rafi Valden, Peres's personal physician and son-in-law, said Peres was in good health until earlier this month. He said that President Obama called the family and spoke with Peres’s daughter to express his condolences.
Former Israeli President Shimon Peres, 93, shown here in 2013, has died after suffering a stroke two weeks ago. (Michel Porro/Getty Images)
The family said that Peres wanted his corneas donated.
Israel officials were scrambling to finalize funeral arrangements. A former top aide to Peres said it was likely his body will lie in state at the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem on Thursday, when the public will be allowed to pay their respects. Then on Friday his remains will be moved by procession to nearby Mt. Herzl for burial.
Israeli media was reporting on Wednesday that an array of world leaders, including President Barack Obama, Pope Francis and Britain’s Prince Charles among many others, have confirmed that they will attend Peres’ funeral planned for Friday.
Israel’s education minister, Naftali Bennett, directed that all of Israel's school children dedicate a portion of the day on Thursday to the study of the life and achievements of Peres.
Social media sites were filled with Peres quotes on Wednesday morning.
“Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently," Peres said in 2005.
"My greatest mistake is that my dreams were too small," Peres lamented during a TED talk in Tel Aviv in 2015.
Abroad, Peres is best known as Israel’s elder statesman, a leader hailed for his optimism, vigor and pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, who themselves seek an end to the almost 50-year military occupation and a sovereign state.
At home, Peres was beloved in his later years, especially during his term as Israeli president, a largely ceremonial post. But his legacy is complex in Israel. Though he served as prime minister, he was also rejected by voters.
Many Israelis have turned away from Peres’s signal achievement, the hammering out of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the beginning of what has become a faltering peace process with the Palestinians.
Peres shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat for the peace accord.
Peres’s tenure in power lasted through 10 U.S. presidents. He served in top government posts, including two terms as prime minister. He was also foreign minister, information minister, finance minister and defense minister.
In an unusually personal statement, President Obama said that no Israeli did more over so many years as Peres to build the alliance with United States.
Obama said, “I will always be grateful that I was able to call Shimon my friend.”
He praised the Israeli leader’s “unshakeable moral foundation and unflagging optimism.”
“Perhaps because he had seen Israel surmount overwhelming odds, Shimon never gave up on the possibility of peace between Israelis, Palestinians and Israel’s neighbors — not even after the heartbreak of the night in Tel Aviv that took Yitzhak Rabin,” Obama said.
Rabin, then prime minister, was assassinated by a Jewish extremist in 1995 as he worked to build a lasting peace with the Palestinians. Peres succeeded Rabin as prime minister, one of three times he held the post.
“I’ll never forget how happy he was 23 years ago when he signed the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn, heralding a more hopeful era in Israeli-Palestinian relations,” former president Bill Clinton said in a statement.
“His critics called him a dreamer. That he was — a lucid, eloquent dreamer until the very end,” Clinton said.
Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, called Peres “someone I loved deeply.”
“His intellect, his way with words that was eloquent beyond description, his command of the world and how it was changing were extraordinary,” Blair said.
Yoram Dori, a close friend and former strategic advisor to Peres, said that what drove the Israeli leader, even after numerous setbacks, was the fact that he saw the country and its people as his family.
“He more than once told me, especially in times of frustration, that the State of Israel, the citizens of the State of Israel and the Jewish people were his family. He would say to me: Yoram, do you ever quit your family? Your concern until your last breath is your family and you will do everything you can to help your family, my family is the State of Israel,” said Dori.
Dori, who began working with Peres in the 1990s, said that lately the two had been working on a book about the leader’s most significant decisions. He said that Peres was sure that his building of Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona was his greatest achievement — one that at the time most of the government and scientists opposed. It was his success with Dimona that led to his rapid rise in the establishment and eventually the Oslo accords.
Dori also recalled the time Peres met with Obama while he was still a senator.
“Peres told him: The future is not for young people. They have to deal with day-to-day life. But for me, as an elder statement I have the time to deal with the future.”
Praise for Peres flowed from Jewish leaders in the United States, who hailed him as a visionary, a soldier for Israel during its fight for independence and a voice for peace in his later years.
Peres also remained a controversial figure for his role in fostering Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and his leadership during a deadly attack on a United Nations base in southern Lebanon in 1996.
On social media, Palestinian supporters warned that glowing obituaries were a whitewash. They called Peres “a war criminal” and an Israeli “with blood on his hands.”
Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former spokesperson for the PLO, tweeted, “For Peres, ‘peace’ meant bombing civilians, stealing land, ethnic cleansing and building settlements.”
Credit: Washington post
