 Hello, welcome to NewsClick. We're discussing today the life and politics of Shimon Peres, who died in Israel a few days back. And he's a man who's being celebrated in the international news media as a person who stood for peace in the troubled land. We have with us Marin Mantavani, international activist, who's worked extensively for the cause of Palestine. She was involved with the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions movement against Israel. She was involved with the original drafting of the charter of this movement back in 2005. So Marin, nice to have you here. And the international news media has been saturated with coverage of Shimon Peres. And most of it has been extremely, in terms of his legacy, extremely positive. How would you truly assess his legacy in terms of contribution to Israel and the longer term prospects for peace in Palestine? Well, I guess talking about Shimon Peres, it's interesting to look at two aspects. A, the reality of what his legacy is. And B, the meaning of peace within the framework of an official discourse on Palestine. Evidently, for everybody that knows a bit of history, and especially for the Palestinian people, it is evident that Shimon Peres' legacy is a legacy of war, of war crimes, from the very beginning of the establishment of the state of Israel, where he was involved in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. That has led to the destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 75% of the Palestinian population from the lands that then became Israel. To the building up of the Israeli military industry, the building up of the nuclear program of Israel. The selling done of that nuclear program to, at that time, apartheid, South Africa. Various massacres, the most famous one is the Kana massacre, the massacre. They did, the Israeli military did in Lebanon against a UN compound. And that then officially as well has been recognized as having been an intentional attack on a UN compound. So we could continue stories about his legacy and his involvement in Israeli war crimes. But I think more interesting is how it comes that such a person has become a symbol of peace. And I think it's very interesting, and it was Peres himself that has worked hard to transform himself into a symbol of peace. And it was him to build the Peres Peace Center that then globally has been working over the last decades to promote an Israeli vision of peace. And Peres has then worked to promote the vision of peace where Israel continues to colonize Palestinian land, ethnically cleanse Palestinian land, continues to attack the Palestinian and the Arab people around the world, around the area in Palestine and in Lebanon and in Syria and other places. And at the same time develops a vision of saying this is peace as long as the Palestinians don't resist. So he was one of the members of the Haganah, the first Jewish militia which fought to create the state of Israel and partly through attacks on the occupying power which was Britain at that time and also through evacuation of Palestinian villages by force. Is there anything specific known about his life and times in the Haganah? I mean one interesting thing about Shimon Peres is that already at that time he was directly involved in the entire military and weapons transfers to the Haganah. I mean it's very interesting that since that very moment he has been the one to actually build up the military capacities of Israel. And then have been fundamental since that time to engage in war crimes. So this person then becomes a person of peace is quite symbolic. He was Director General of the Defense Ministry and then later the Deputy Defense Minister. I think during the 1967 war he was the Deputy Defense Minister when Yitzhak Rabin was Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army. And the two became the prominent faces of the Israeli Labor Party which came to be portrayed as a party of peace in the 1990s. Now how is that plan because I remember there was a lot of pressure on the US to bring that peace process into existence because of the whole alliance that built with the Gulf States to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. And then there was a briefly lived initiative which was public, starting with the Madrid Peace Conference which broke up in acrimony and lack of agreement. And then it went underground and was conducted in secret and then was announced in 1993 as the Oslo framework. It was evidently for Israel a very important point in rebuilding a broken economy at the beginning of the 90s. Because what it really brought is for Palestinians de facto more colonization, more settlements. And we forgot to mention before that Pérez was as well one of the founding fathers of the entire settlement project. That is another thing I mean where we should remember him for. And at the same time for Israel what it brought on an economic level was normalization. It was the moment when India for example normalized with Israel parts of the Arab world normalized relations with Israel. Many Muslim countries normalized their relations with Israel and that China as well. And that has built the basis for Israel to continue to expand markets and to diversify markets as well. And to come to a point where today Israel economy is not as dependent on U.S. and European markets anymore than they were before, but on the contrary always more interested and more dependent on Asian markets, China and India, the two biggest partners in the region, Latin America. And this really has made that for Israel the Oslo Accords were really an economic positive adventure. For the Palestinian people it has really not brought much. The only thing it did bring is that Israel and the Oslo process imported a few Palestinian capitalists during the Oslo process working together with Israel and international capital have built up quite some money and influence. But that really is only a negative impact on the cohesion of the Palestinian society and the Palestinian struggle as such. The Gaza Jericho was at the moment when the world should have called the bluff. I mean to put it differently because still then they had got some mileage in terms of pursuit of peace. But Gaza Jericho kind of made it evident. Definitely. I mean that was a key moment and one of the moments where one should have said this is a process that is not bringing peace that is just building the basis of what today is the Bantustanization, the ghettos that Israel is building now for the Palestinian people. I guess at that point it was really as well that the Palestinian national authority wasn't ready yet to call it a bluff and to say we're going back to where we were before 1991. So Perez's last act as prime minister, he took over the Labour Party leadership after Rabin's assassination and led the party in the 96 general elections. Prior to that he launched the assault on Lebanon which of course as you mentioned included that infamous massacre in a UN refugee compound in Ghana, the Ghana massacre in which 100 people were reportedly killed. So that was his last real act of destruction as Palestinian prime minister. What has been his contribution since then? Because after that even more destructive elements like Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon became leaders. And of course Benjamin Netanyahu immediately succeeded Perez as prime minister and then you had Barak, Sharon, Olmert and now back to Netanyahu. I mean I guess it was really especially when you have people like Netanyahu, Lieberman and Sharon at the forefront of the Israeli government. Having somebody like Perez even until his last days as a president, he was an exceptionally important player for Israel to whitewash its crimes. To sell the Israeli will for peace while all the others were continuing the massacres. So in this sense in order for this brand Israel ideological whitewash he was a crucial person in building up that one and the whole idea of economic peace, i.e. how can neoliberal policies destroy where Israeli weapons don't reach. Right, thank you so much Marin Mantovani, that's been a very interesting discussion and best wishes for your continuing struggle for justice for Palestine.