Sir, – Israel's former president Shimon Peres was anything but a "symbol of hope and reconciliation in the Middle East" (Editorial, September 29).
Deeply involved in the Zionist settler colonial enterprise in Palestine from its inception, Peres was charged with establishing the Israeli military and air industries (not its “defence industry” as some commentators call it), as well as Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona.
Peres was responsible for persuading France and Britain to attack Egypt in 1956, an imperialist war, not an Israeli response to an existential threat as argued at the time.
He was instrumental in instigating the 1967 war, and, as a member of the ruling (socialist) Mapai party, was one of the architects of the settlement project.
More specifically, Peres ordered the kidnapping of the whistle-blowing nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu and gave the order to massacre the Palestinians sheltering in the UN camp in Qana, Lebanon. Peres later claimed he didn’t know that people were hiding in the UN camp, but eyewitnesses said this was a lie and that Israel, which had occupied Qana in the Lebanon invasion of 1982, had a video of the camp and knew exactly what it was doing.
As an Israeli citizen I take no pride in Shimon Peres, a war criminal who should have been prosecuted rather than awarded the by now meaningless Nobel Peace Prize. – Yours, etc,
RONIT LENTIN,
Dublin 8.