Home > Olives & Thorns > Archives > 2008 > May > 13 > Entry
Shimon Peres throws a birthday party … for Israel.
Shimon Peres, Israel’s elder statesman, who more than anyone alive embodies his nation’s past, decided, on the occasion of Israel’s 60th birthday, to look forward.
He assembled an impressive roster of scholars, innovators, business leaders, rabbis, authors and past and present peace negotiators to ponder Israel’s future. They include Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdoch and the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy.
Among the issues they’ll tackle: Jewish identity (unraveling or renewing?); Jewish civilization (thriving or declining?); a “moral” foreign policy; Jewish-Muslim relations; the meaning of a Jewish state; and whether Jews outside Israel should play a role in determining its future.
President Bush will address the three-day conference Wednesday night. He is scheduled to speak of “Sixty Years of Friendship” between the United States and Israel.
The event, called Facing Tomorrow, kicked off today, somewhat inauspiciously, with a collection of B-list foreign leaders — Nambaryn Enkhbayar (Mongolia) and Tommy Remengesau (Palau) aren’t household names in Israel or most places — offering thoughts on globalization, platitudes on peace in the Middle East and praise for Israel.
Blaise Compaore, president of Burkina Faso called Israelis “a peace-inspiring people.” Danilo Turk, the president of Slovenia called Israel a “place of ancient civilization and great modernity” and envisioned a cooperative community of nations in the Middle East akin to the European Union.
Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda, said: “The African Union supports a two-state solution in Palestine.” Or, Israel?
Mercilessly, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair closed the session reiterating a hope for peace, and several hundred conference attendees poured into the lobby of Jerusalem’s convention center and circulated among servers offering finger food: thinly sliced rare tuna, extremely rare sirloin on a bed of seaweed, smoked duck with sweet potatoes cut in small cubes, smoked salmon, herring, sushi rolls — all perhaps an indication of where Israel sees its future. Or where it doesn’t.
The only Middle Eastern food was grilled lamb kabobs. “I don’t know what that is,” one hungry conventioneer said to another in American-accented English. “Do you want to try it?”
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