Diplomatic Immunity - January 14, 2001
		Late last week, the Palestinian Authority executed two Arabs who had been convicted in their courts of collaborating with Israel.  It seems that these two had passed information to Israel, which enabled Israeli troops to assassinate some of the leaders of the murderous squads who had been targeting innocent Jews over the past few months.  So the Palestinian Authority, that beacon of justice and morality, lined these two people up in front of firing squads and shot them to death. At the same time as this was going on, Shimon Peres was meeting in Gaza with Yasser Arafat, to discuss ways of ending the current violence, which has claimed the lives of 45 Jews in 3 months.  Given that Arafat is meeting with high-ranking Israeli cabinet ministers and diplomats, one wonders why he himself isn’t shot as a collaborator.  But I digress. Shimon Peres has made a career out of kowtowing to Palestinian demands.  When he served as Foreign Minister in Yitzchak Rabin’s government, he forced Rabin into a more concessionary posture than the late prime minister was comfortable with.  As incidents of terrorism increased, and as the death toll climbed, Rabin found it increasingly difficult to slow the pace of negotiations due to Peres’s mad desire to abandon Israel in toto. When Peres became prime minister after Rabin’s death, he initiated a policy where the government barely took notice of the increasing carnage in Israel.  When busses started exploding outside the Foreign Ministry, Peres deigned to halt a few cabinet meetings to observe moments of silence in memory of the victims, but the same evening was renewing negotiations with Arafat.  It was due in large part to this uncaring, callous attitude of Peres toward the victims of his cherished “peace” process that Peres lost a gimme election in 1996. Today, Peres again is at the forefront of the news.  Each day carries more rumours of Peres’s impending replacement of Ehud Barak as the candidate of the left in the Prime Ministerial elections.  What better way, then, for Peres to bolster his chances than for him to meet with Arafat on the very day that Arafat puts to death two people who worked to save Jewish lives.  This is the natural next step to Peres’s non-reactions to the murder of Jews when he was Prime Minister.  It is the natural extension of Peres’s complaints last month that the Israeli media was broadcasting too many details of too many funerals.  The very same funerals brought about by his policies of concession to murder and cowardice before terrorism. Shimon Peres continues to act decisively against the interests of Israel.  He initiated the Oslo Process when it was still illegal to meet with the PLO, he was responsible for arming the PLO militias that today murder Jews at every opportunity, he single-handedly rehabilitated the world’s most notorious murderer and elevated him to the level of statesman, and he even shares a misbegotten Nobel Peace Prize with the self-same terrorist. Shimon Peres can carry on his negotiations with Arafat in relative safety, though.  After all, Arafat only puts to death those he deems guilty of collaboration with Israel.  And one thing Peres’s actions over the years can not be called, is collaboration with Israel. Copyright 2001.  Yehuda Poch is a writer living in Israel.  Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission only.