Knesset Member Yossi Peled wants to get straight to the point.
“My message is that it’s wrong to think the most important thing for Israel is to achieve peace. It’s not true,” he said during an interview with j.
“The main goal for Israel is to make do, to make sure Israel will exist forever. Peace will come. Like it has with Egypt and Jordan, it will come with other neighbors.
“We can learn from history that peace will not solve all of our problems.”
Peled, of Israel’s right-wing Likud party, was in San Francisco last week during the West Coast leg of his visit to the United States. He was one of five Knesset members traveling around the U.S. in September to talk about Israel and Israeli government policies.
In the Bay Area, Peled met with graduates of the Jewish Community Federation Institute (the S.F.-based federation’s intensive program for exceptional Russian-Jewish leaders), and with the South Bay Russian Jewish community. He also visited with the local AIPAC, the Koret Foundation and the Lisa Kampner Hebrew Academy in San Francisco.
The most frequently asked questions Peled fielded were about Iran.
“I believe every word Ahmadinejad says about his intentions to destroy Israel,” Peled said of the Iranian president. “Some people say, ‘Ah, those are just words.’
“We don’t have the option of waiting to see if they are wrong,” he continued. “I think the threat is very, very serious.”
Peled’s hope is that in time, countries around the world will take more seriously Iran’s nuclear capability and come together to impose heavy sanctions against the country.
“Unfortunately, there are still places where we have to convince people that Iran is a threat,” Peled said. “The world must together try to do everything to stop this process of Iran becoming a nuclear country.”
After Iran, the second most-asked question was: What do you think about the relationship between the U.S. and Israeli governments?
In June, Peled wrote an in-depth letter to Israeli cabinet ministers that imagined a scenario in which the U.S.-Israel relationship had soured, and outlined Israel’s options should that happen.
Israeli media outlets reported that Peled proposed Israeli sanctions on the U.S. However, Peled told j. his comments were taken out of context.
“The media, from 14 pages, took one line, without the beginning and without the end, and said, ‘Ah, Yossi Peled is going to declare war on the United States,’” he said. “No. I am not stupid enough to do that.”
He stressed the importance of a healthy, equitable relationship between the United States and Israel. But, he added, it is equally important to consider what would happen if the relationship was strained beyond repair.
“We have to prepare ourselves, while at the same time hoping it never comes,” he said. “But if it happens, and you’ve thought about it, you prepare yourself, it is much easier to overcome a time of crisis.”
Peled was born in Belgium. During World War II, he was adopted by a Christian family and lived with them until he was 8 years old. His father was killed at Auschwitz, but his mother returned after the war to take him to Israel.
He served in the Israel Defense Forces for 30 years, eventually retiring as a major general. He left the IDF in 1991, saying he wanted a more private life.
In 2006, after volunteering to help civilians in Israel’s North during the Second War in Lebanon, Peled decided to return to public service. The 68-year-old was elected to the Knesset this year.
Self-effacing and blunt, Peled joked throughout the interview and often revealed a deep cynicism through sarcastic comments.
“There’s a very strange process in Israel, I must explain to you,” he began. “A young woman and a young man meet in a settlement, say Ariel. And very strangely, I don’t how, they fall in love and decide to marry. Strange. And after they marry, another strange thing happens: They have children. And then? They have the chutzpah to demand a place for their children to go to kindergarten. Big Jewish chutzpah, yes?
“A lot is written in the media about illegal settlements, and I’m against them by definition because I want Israel to be a legal country, a democratic country,” he said. “But yes, I want to continue building. I want to give a new generation an opportunity to go to kindergarten, to go to school, to have a chance to live.”