Bomb Iran? Why 5 top Israeli figures don't want to do it.

President Shimon Peres

Thanassis Stavrakis/AP
Israeli President Shimon Peres reviews the honor guard during a ceremony at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Athens, Aug. 7.

President Peres served in Israel’s military during the country's war of independence and went on to become minister of defense and prime minister (twice). In addition, as Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the 1993 Oslo Accords that established a framework for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. 

He has maintained a relatively low profile as president, largely a ceremonial office in Israel, but in August spoke out against an Israeli strike on Iran as counterproductive.  

"It's clear to us that we can't do it alone," said Peres, who has reportedly opposed the idea for years. "We can only delay [Iran's progress]. Thus it's clear to us that we need to go together with America. There are questions of cooperation and of timetables, but as severe as the danger is, at least this time we're not alone."

After he spoke out, Netanyahu aides chastised Peres for forgetting his place as president and said it was a good thing that former Prime Minister Menachem Begin hadn’t heeded Peres’s opposition to Israel’s 1981 strike on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq.

4 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.