Everyone said just about what you would expect, but Peres was in especially good form and held up his side of the argument well. Below, you can listen to the whole thing through, or pick the speaker you want to listen to.
Introduction by David Ignatius, Associate Editor and Columnist, The Washington Post and introductory remarks by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General, United Nations |
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of Turkey |
Amre Moussa, Secretary-General, League of Arab States |
Shimon Peres, President of Israel |
UPDATE: Jay Nordinger on what happened:
Friends, there is an amazing confrontation between Shimon Peres and three others: the Turkish prime minister Erdogan; the Arab League chief Amr Moussa; and the U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. Peres, as you know, is the old Israeli Labourite and dove who has held virtually every position in his country. (Peres is a member of another party now—Kadima—but it’s natural to think of him as a Labourite, which for decades he was.) This confrontation made world headlines, which you may have seen. It also sparked demonstrations in at least two places: Turkey and the Gaza Strip (as we used to know it).Technorati Tag: World Economic Forum and Shimon Peres and Hamas and Operation Cast Lead and Gaza.
I was present for this amazing confrontation. But I will not get into it much here, for this reason: I have a piece on the matter in the forthcoming National Review. The issue appears on Friday, in digital form, and will be available in paper soon thereafter.
But let me say something brief here in the journal. The subject of the panel, or Congress Center session, was Gaza. And—to put it in a small nutshell—Erdogan dumped on Israel very badly. Moussa dumped on Israel very, very badly. Even Ban dumped, though in a milder way. Moussa gave something like a full-out rant, very unusual for Davos. His remarks were more suited to the fabled “Arab street” than to a tony international conference.
You remember what Queen Victoria said about Gladstone? “He addresses me as though I were a public gathering.” Moussa addressed us as though we were a mob in the PA—or London or San Francisco—rather than the World Economic Forum. To hear him tell it, Israel went into Gaza—back into Gaza, I should say—for the simple purpose of killing people. Especially women and children. In fact, Moussa said “women and children” over and over. And over and over.
You were led to believe that the IDF skipped over the men, in pursuit of women and children to gun down or burn up.
Frankly, Moussa sounded more like a spokesman for Hamas than the secretary general of the Arab League. And—equally frankly—Erdogan was not much better. (For the essence of what he said, see the longish item on Erdogan I had earlier in this journal.)
And through it all, Peres simply sat. I sat too. I looked at him and said, “Why Peres? Why not someone with a little more . . . fiber?” Peres is Davos’s kind of Israeli, usually: the ultimate dove, the ultimate conference-goer and peace-processer. Would he rise to the occasion, would he do the necessary? There was a lot on his shoulders: the burden of answering these rants; the burden of defending Israel, and speaking for the truth of recent events. Could Peres, 85 years old and steeped in accommodation, do it?
Oh, God, could he. He was magnificent. He rose up magnificently, majestically. For close to a half-hour, he spoke with extreme passion, pouring his heart out, answering every charge, correcting every lie, saying all that needed to be said. As I say in my NR piece, this was probably the most stunning and gratifying public performance I have ever witnessed.
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