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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
