By Dr. Mike Evans
Published: July 22, 2007

Mike Evans: Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister. It is an honor to see you again. You, sir, are the only man alive in this nation through whose eyes we can see from the very beginning with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. You are the living history of this nation.

I have been a great student of yours for many years, and have always been intrigued by your first meeting with Attorney General Robert Kenned when you broke the U.S./Israel arms embargo.

Mr. Peres: I first met with President John Kennedy, and then he sent me to Robert. After I spoke with the President, he said, “Why wouldn’t you cross the Potomac and see my brother?” I said, “All the bridges are closed.” President Kennedy said, “Young men in my country swim.”

Robert Kennedy helped me to break the arms embargo against Israel. That’s when I crossed the Potomac and learned to swim.

Mike Evans: We went to visit the memorial. Thank God you’re alive, because they wanted to kill you also. I was at the state funeral of Yitzhak Rabin and so moved by that funeral, especially the granddaughter, such a moving funeral.

I know you’re an optimist, and I know that you know I’ve heard you say many times, “You can’t defeat crime. You can’t defeat crime.”

And you can’t, of course, defeat terror…I want to ask you a question concerning the ideology of terror. In our country, we would never be allowed to say, “You don’t have the right to exist.” If one person tells another they don’t have a right to exist, they’re finished. They’re out of the country. They’re out of business. It is not a politically correct thing to say.

But it seems to be that it’s comfortable in the Middle East to debate the right of the people to exist. Why is this attitude so prevalent in the midst of so much reason and rationale?

Mr. Peres: In America, you are free. Your people are righteous, self-righteous. So when you are free it means you let other people be free as well. But when you are right or righteous, all the others are wrong and you have to get rid of them.

When thinking about terror, the reason for terror is that the Muslim or part of the Muslim world – not all of them – believe that modernity may endanger the Muslim tradition. So they want to get rid of everything which is modern and anybody who is modern, without any exception.

But what they don’t understand is that the Stone Age is over, not because there are no more stones. There is no more age.

And they have to change their tradition without giving up being Muslim. I mean you have Iran, and you have an Iran which is self-righteous; and then you have Turkey which knows that can be strong, you can be modern and Muslim at the same time. You don’t have to kill one of the two.

Now they will be forced to give up, because what is tradition? What do they want to defend? Do they want the land? You can’t make a living off the land anymore. Because agriculture went down from 50 percent to 1 or 2 percent, which means unless you’ll adopt modern economy you can’t compete and nobody will pay for your mistakes.

It will take a little bit of time; but the idea to be rich in arms and poor in bread won’t hold true. You cannot feed your children with enriched uranium.

That’s one thing. So it will take a little bit of time, but it’ll have to change or disappear, not because we are endangering them, because they endanger themselves.

The second point is: I think the greatest achievement of the 20th Century was the liberation of women. Actually when we say to liberate women, we mean to liberate children. Why? Because in the old tradition, if you force a young girl to get married at the age of 13 or 14, then she produces 10 or 12 children. By the age 25-26, she’s an exhausted woman. She cannot manage the 12 children she produced. She’s not prepared for it because she wasn’t educated and she didn’t have the time, and she’s growing old people for the future. So they have a larger family. They use more water, so they have less water to irrigate their lands or to produce the end result.

In modern society, families and women are compelled to invest more in fewer children, than to invest less in more children. So in modern society where a woman is marrying later on and she is being educated, her children are becoming agents of a new future.

We [Israel] just appointed an Arab minister. He told me, “Look, I come from a family of 14 children. The family was poor that only two of us were educated. The other 12 remain ignorant . My family has four children and all of them will be educated.” So you see, they are discriminating against themselves.

If you make women equal and you make the children more educated, by definition you’ve changed because of your lifestyle. For that reason, too, they cannot read and then the world is running ahead. There is also communication, you see. There are also silent changes. I wouldn’t go for sweeping declarations.

I can see already a difference between the Muslim temperament in Asia and the Muslim temperament in the Middle East. Those are two different flames.

On Point 4, our Arab citizens: Ostensibly, they are extreme. It’s not the case, because among them there are already 50,000 permanent additions, 19,000 young people, boys and girls, registering every year at the madrassas. The majority of them are women. Now where are they? Where are the 50,000 additions?

Many of them are teachers, so they remain in close circles. But many of them are doctors. You come into the Israeli hospital, you’ll find 20 or 30 percent of the doctors and the nurses who are Arabs, and we foolish Israelis, who [outside] are careful of them. But when it comes to the hospital, we let them handle our hearts and our brains –

It’s unbelievable. We would have a normal life when we are in the hospitals, we would have peace.

Mike Evans: In the United States, our president is under huge pressure because of Iraq. We will be [in Iraq] tomorrow. We’re being hosted by President Barzani. We’re looking at a revolution. We’re looking at an Iranian revolution sweeping across Iraq like a virus, and it’s being completely ignored by the American people.

Is this a serious threat, this “Twelver” concept, the belief system, the fanatical religious belief system that seems to be spreading into Iraq?

Mr. Peres: They are dangerous in the short run, but they will disappear in the long run. So the problem is how to shorten the period of their existence, and how to reduce the casualties and the dangers that they are causing. Because under modern circumstances, you have modern weapons. You don’t need masses to introduce terror.

We shall have to pay a price unfortunately for it, but they don’t have a future. They will disappear like the stones from the Stone Age.

Mike Evans: Is there anything we can do in the meantime to mitigate the amount of damage they create?

Mr. Peres: Oh, yes; oh, yes. There is a lot. Occasionally America has to use her strengths, and occasionally America has to use her advantage. The American strength is the military police, the political [system]. You see, the global age created also an individual age. What do I mean by it?

A single person can create an economic state without having anybody. Compare Henry Ford to Bill Gates. Henry Ford was fighting and exploiting everyone. What can I say against Bill Gates? He didn’t do harm to anybody. There are 20,000 people that he employs, also millionaires are buying his stock and creating unions. Take these three young boys that created the Google.

Now they call it private enterprise. It’s not private. It’s non-governmental. Because the minute they go worldwide globally, they are non-governmental, but not private. Governments have rules, police, and armies. They don’t have it. They have money. Government has not just their money.

So where governments are basing themselves on the power of the law, the institutions, they are based on good will. So where are they going? We have to pay attention to the local situation, to the sensitivities, to the environment. So it’s not an imbalance for them also becoming even philanthropists. They want to show to the people that they don’t put this [money] in their pockets.

So now, whereas when you come in with your army or your administration, you create resentment. But when global companies want to come in, immediately they are being welcomed a lot of places. Instead of conducting an ideological debate about the democracy and non-democracy, they come in and create a social change, because the new age is changing the society. We have to open the skies. We have to allow the borders. We have to communicate. We have to show transparency, capability.

Look how China is being changed, not by debates, but by economy, modern economy. For that reason, I think the great strengths of America is not their military power, but their economic capacity.

Mike Evans: To spread capitalism?

Mr. Peres: It’s no longer capitalism in the old sense. Modern economy, scientific advances, we call it economy. It’s not economy; it’s science and technology. Until now, we used to live in a low-key country. Now we are making a living on our attempts to discover. So the past is out. It’s only the future.

Mike Evans: There’s a movement to divest in companies that have terror involvements. There’s a bank, Pariba, that did a $1.8 billion offering for Iran; some people think we ought to divest from Bank of the West in the United States. How do you feel about that idea of divesting companies that do business with terror states?

Mr. Peres: I think they are mistaken. I think they shouldn’t do business with governments. Let the private people deal with private people. Keep governments out. Governments are becoming less and less relevant to our life. They were important when the world was divided in states and borders and armies to defend them.

Today, can an army conquer wisdom? Can it stop the march of science? Nonsense. You see, the world is producing something like $50 or $55 trillion a year. Every morning that we live, the laws are changing hands. Is there any government that has the slightest influence of the flying and landing of money? Nothing whatsoever. Companies are doing it.

So let the companies do it. They will understand it themselves.

Mike Evans: How do you see expanding the women’s rights effort?

Mr. Peres: Education, to offer education at universities. Look, it’s an all-embracing effort.

Mike Evans: In Iran, there were 30 women jailed because they had like 15 demands, and one of them is still in jail. It’s going to take a long time to educate a whole generation that has been taught [to hate.]

Mr. Peres: They don’t have to. The strength of Iran is the weakness of the West, because Iran is a poor country and a poor economy. Inflation is high. Unemployment is high. Standard of living is low. Corruption is high. The Persians are not more than 50 percent of economic genius.

Now if you would organize a pressure on Iran, an economic one, you would win. The women would win. America was successful on four occasions fighting nuclear introductions. One was in Ukraine; they convinced the Ukrainians to give up their nuclear warheads, a $10 million investment, which is not a high price. The second was with Kadafi after they bombed his installation of chemical weapons. They negotiated with him. He received some pressure, some sanctions, and he gave it up.

The third is in South Africa, the use of economic pressure on South Africa and the change of Nelson Mandela. He went out. Now we are doing it with North Korea. We are offering money so they will give up their nuclear capacity, $25 million. I believe you can afford it, or something like that; you [the U.S.] don’t need any help to meet their request.

The same should be done with the Iranians. Why start with armies when you can do it in a non-military way? The situation is ripe.

Mike Evans: Does Ahmadinejad have a different motivation because of the religious fervor of the apocalypse?

Mr. Peres: We ought to be thankful to him, because the lack of leadership is uniting the West against him.

Mike Evans: Osama Bin Laden told al-Zarqawi that 50 percent of the terror war was a media war.

Mr. Peres: Even more. Ninety percent is psychology.

Mike Evans: Okay, if it’s 90 percent – I was here producing a special during your last war. I noticed something about the media. The perception of the media was not reality. The media perception was that Israel lost – I only saw one war lost, the media war. I saw Israel completely lose the media war, but win the other war, and yet the deduction was that they lost both wars.

Mr. Peres: They have to sell copies of the papers. Well look, there are problems. Since the media became so powerful and television, it produced two basic things. It made dictatorship almost impossible and it made democracy almost unparalleled.

And you have to live with it. You cannot have great leaders anymore. Why? Because you can’t introduce the mystique of a leader when you see the leader 24 hours a day. He says, “My goat is like me. So I can be like him.”

They cannot really outlaw any part of his life If he smiles incorrectly, if he scratches his hair, I don’t know….and they became human. The public says, “My God, who is this guy?”

Mike Evans: It’s like Franklin Roosevelt. They never let people see that he was in a wheelchair.

Mr. Peres: Oh, yes. All of them should understand that good leadership is the mystification of the personality. It would be better if they wouldn’t give interviews every day. Have an annual meeting, well-prepared, use your charm, keep the press down and that’s it. You see, he [Mr. Roosevelt] was very intelligent.

Now what’s happening in the interim is the leaders are becoming like everybody else. But everybody else is beginning to lead, which is not bad. You have a crisis of leaders and the greatness of people. You see, when you take economy today, it’s not economic leaders that create a great economy. It’s Bill Gates, it’s the Googles, it’s people like you, and the thousands and thousands of them.

They don’t feel they need to do that. They don’t feel like orphans. Also, what has changed so much, you see, leadership also stems from the prestige of the past. Past is totally unimportant anymore. What do they need it for? Why is it important to remember how many wars we’ve won or lost? It’s irrelevant. If you want to remember, buy yourself a computer.

A computer will remember instead of you. But the computer cannot dream like you and cannot envision things like you, so that the computer remembers everything if you get the right edition. You know what? Who says that we need great leaders? We need great people.

Mike Evans: In terms of your idea to change education, how do you do that with the madrassas, and how do you penetrate so they stop teaching hatred?

Mr. Peres: Education today is being done by television more than by schools. Every child attends today two schools: the physical school and the television. The children feel like they are being forced to go to school. They enjoy watching television now.

Look, in 1944, after the terrible war, if somebody would tell you that in two or three years you’ll see a different Europe, that the French and English will smile to each other; nobody would believe it. So how is that accomplished in a short while? Not by going through the primary school and the secondary school. It can happen. For that reason, we have to have, as I say, greater communication.

Mike Evans I’m not familiar with what gets into Saudi Arabia, but don’t they limit a lot of the education that’s there that we could introduce?

Mr. Peres: I’ll tell you something; there is one thing that prevents democracy, and that is oil. Oil is a great spoiler. So it can give money if you close your eyes and close your mouth and so on and so forth. If that is the case, maybe we have to cut a little bit down the advantages of oil, not to let them be so rich for nothing.

Mike Evans: In the U.S., Nancy Pelosi has now said that Iran’s desire for nuclear power should be put back on the table. Is that something you’d embrace?

Mr. Peres: Yes, I would support it. I also support it. Yes. Look, about nuclear power, first of all, it’s expensive. It’s expensive because it created in the beginning a great deal of fear, so the security sites became exaggerated. To protect the reactor cost an unbelievable amount of money that would never be put into another energy-producing story. That’s No. 1.

No. 2, they say there’s not enough Iranian oil. Maybe a shortage of the Iranian oil. I don’t know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Then the environmentalists started. I don’t see that the nuclear reactors are endangering the environment more than the oil or gas equipment. Then the problem is how to keep it that it won’t fall in the hands of irresponsible people that may produce nuclear weapons.

For that, I can imagine there are different solutions. For example, to make the reactors extra-territorial sites. And certainly, don’t make them owners of it. So there are solutions and now there are three great challenges, energy, water, and modern technology which will be basically the modern technology that will revolutionize the whole technology as we know it.

We have to handle it. We have to face it. We are beginning to recognize how dangerous nano is. I remember from the books that said nuclear energy would put an end to the world. It didn’t put an end to the world. So I wouldn’t be against it, because I think pollution is more dangerous.

The world is not only short now of water and energy but also of fresh air. In a very short while, the distribution of fresh air will become the difference between the rich and the poor. As an old Chinese said, “You are speaking with us about free speech. What we need is free bread.” We don’t have enough air. It’s not a joke.

Then again, you have to triumph over fences and partitions. Air is not disciplined.

Mike Evans: The Left in the U.S. with Al Gore scenes have captured this global warming idea. How do you feel about how that should be addressed?

Mr. Peres: It should be taken very seriously; it is a real problem. It’s very important because the world population was increased three times over the last 100 years. Life expectancy was doubled. The standard of life went up. So we overloaded the globe. There’s too many spoiled people. We have to balance it.


Mike Evan: The evangelicals in America have their eyes on Israel, especially now with your 40th anniversary in Jerusalem and your 60th anniversary as a nation. It was here in Tel Aviv with you and Mr. Ben-Gurion. The question they’re always intrigued about is this magnificent man, David Ben-Gurion, who you stood by. Did he have any comprehension of the prophetic significance of what he was doing at that time?

Mr. Peres: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. You see, he thought that the specialty of British life is the moral court, and the barriers of the moral court were the prophets. British history is different from others. They had kings and priests and judges and commanders. But no other nation has had so many prophets as we did and they really directed, all of them. So we are strong in prophesy and poor in administration.

When Moses started to administrate he was mistaken for an expert. He told them how to organize the nation to a point the commanders were managers of ten and managers of a 100. But we later found we don’t have enough statesmen. We are better on prophets than on statesmen. So we were not destroyed morally, but we are destroyed physically.

You thought that we need a new balance between the two of them. Because if you are being destroyed physically, what is the sense to exist morally? You don’t exist. Even if you have an enemy with a single army of insurmountable size almost, you can put an end to his life. And the question is not the genius anymore of enemy. So he wanted to balance it. They thought the lack of statesmanship in Jewish history created the fact that the Jews were exiled from their land and they thought that exile had a terrible impact upon the character of the people.

So he [Ben-Gurion] saw in the Bible the mandate of our existence, the source of our existence, and he brought the people back to the Bible, and the Bible back to the people with a little bit of statesmanship. Ben-Gurion was a genius.

Mike Evans: You’ve lived through several wars, independence, 1956, 1967, 1973…We look at it and we see an entire Arab world attacking a tiny little state the size of New Jersey, and we see it from our eyes as almost a miracle that you are able to overcome. How do you see it?

Mr. Peres: The same. It was against all norms. What is a miracle? The abolishment of all norms. We were outgunned, outmanned. We have had a war before we have had a state, before we had an army. But the readiness of the men that sacrificed their lives was higher. So here, it was quality against quantities. Everybody fought like a lion.

Mike Evans: Do you think the younger people now in Israel are losing some of that determination?

Mr. Peres: No; I think that they now save their economy with the same devotion and patriotism and effort, the same. Every age has its own young people that instinctively know what the priority is. It’s not us, the government that mobilizes them. When you ask the government, “How come after a war and with the war with Gaza there is an unbelievable flourishing economy?” Then we’ll say, “We’re the government of people government. But the people won’t take it.” So the government has to listen to the people and say, “Maybe it’s the people.”


As a member of the government, I am proud of the people. I don’t have to be proud of my government after all. If you cannot present a good people, what’s wrong? So it’s not that I’m a good representative, but I represent a good people, which is more serious in nature.

Mike Evans: Do you think there’s any possibility in the future that the Hashemite Kingdom [of Jordan] could, in fact, play a strategic part in the solution of the Palestinian problem?

Mr. Peres: Yes, without saying so. Everything that will be put forth will create immediately objections. But there are serious people. The problem with the Palestinians is not the conflict with us, but the conflict within themselves. They are the problem. I think that Jordan can help them to overcome the internal divisions. But as far as we are concerned, we seriously would like to make peace.