Most recently, the credibility of Israel’s Knesset Parliament was shaken when a reporter discovered that a new member of Israel’s highest-elected body had falsely reported the university degrees that appear on the Israel’s Knesset Web site, provided by the government of Israel for the press and public in Hebrew, English and Arabic.

Now, The Bulletin has discovered an even more serious indiscretion that appears on that same official Israel Knesset Web site.

It was discovered that the internationally-known elder statesman of Israel’s Knesset Parliament, Shimon Peres, 83, the member of the Israeli Knesset who has served longer than any other member of the Knesset – since 1959 – has falsified his “c.v.” on the official Knesset Web site.

Now mounting a “last hurrah” campaign for the seemingly honorary position of president of the state of Israel, Shimon Peres, the current Israeli deputy prime minister and the former minister of communications, minister of defense, foreign minister and prime minister has taken an unusual step to establish a new place for himself in the history of the state of Israel, by using the official Web site of the Israeli Knesset to describe his military record as such:

“Military Service Haganah; IDF; Temporary Head of Naval Services, 1950”

Except that Peres never served in the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, and Peres was far from being the “temporary head of Naval Services” in 1950.

Indeed, Peres was ridiculed early in his career for not having served in any military capacity in the war of independence for the nascent Jewish state, despite the fact that he was the director general during the years 1952-1959 of the Ministry of Defense under Israel’s first prime minister and defense minister, David Ben Gurion, who served in both positions from 1948 until 1963. In terms of Peres’ military service, Ben Gurion’s official records in the official Prime Minister’s Diary described Peres’ role in the aftermath of the 1948 war: Helping plan operations in the Negev, the southern region of Israel where battles continued to rage in 1949, and overseeing the complex logistics involving the drafting of 17-year-old male and female recruits from the various Zionist youth movements to the new Israeli army, with Ben Gurion mentioning a specific directive to Peres to neutralize the influence of the left-wing Mapam movement.

In terms of the role played by Peres in Israel’s naval history, in the official archive of the Israel Defense Forces, entitled Israeli Naval Military Operations, published in 1964 when Peres was the deputy of Defense, Gershon Zack is identified as the head of Israel’s naval services before Israel’s declaration of independence in May 1948, and Paul Shuman is identified as the head of the Israeli navy after May 1948. Meanwhile, the official Israel Ministry of Defense Lexicon of Israeli Defense, published in 1976 when Peres was minister of Defense, identifies Peres as only holding a desk job at the new Israel Ministry of Defense, “responsible for naval matters,” appointed to that position in 1949…

The Bulletin asked Peres’ office for a response to the misrepresentation of Peres on the official site of the Israeli Knesset. Peres’ office would not respond. Peres’s official biographer, Dr. Michael Bar Zohar, however, confirmed that Peres never served in the IDF.

This article ran on the March 23rd issue of the Philadelphia Bulletin

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David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.