STATEMENT

“Optimists and pess­im­ists die the exact same death, but they live very different lives”.  So said Shimon Peres, the last of Israel’s founding gen­er­a­tion of leaders, a giant among statesmen who has now sadly left Isreal and the Jewish world and passed from the world stage.  Shimon Peres was known as a former Israeli gov­ern­ment hawk  who became a committed dove, but at all times he remained a confirmed optimist with a positive, can-do attitude.  As a young official in the Ministry of Defence in the 1950s, Shimon Peres was instru­ment­al in estab­lish­ing close relations with France, securing massive amounts of quality arms, including Mirage jet fighters, and estab­lish­ing the Dimona nuclear reactor.  After Israel’s spec­tac­u­lar victory in the 1967 war, he became a leading advocate of Israel making peace with its neigh­bours, including the Palestini­ans, and in 1994 he won the Nobel peace prize for his efforts.  Shimon Peres per­son­i­fied the quality of lead­er­ship that is so often lacking in the con­tem­por­ary world.  He dared to dream, and to live up to his own high standards: “To find a cause that’s larger than yourself and then to give your life to it.”.  He was an inspir­a­tion to all of us and will be sorely missed.
Robert Goot                                                   Peter Wertheim
President                                                      Executive Director