PERES COMES TO A.U.

MER - WASHINGTON - 14 May:
This Sunday Shimon Peres will be giving the commencement address at American University in Washington. It will be all sweet reason of course;   "peace" and "reconciliation"; "justice" and "future". Shimon Peres is a master of rhetorical deception But Shimon Peres is a few other things as well; and indeed the cavern between the words he speaks and the acts for which he is
responsible is quite massive. Just a few examples:

* Shimon Peres is one of the main architects of Israel's secret nuclear weapons program; which among other things has considerably fueled the race for weapons of mass destruction in the region and beyond.

* Shimon Peres ordered the international kidnapping, secret trial, and brutal solitary confinement of Mordechai Vanunu. The crime? A true man of conscience simply told the LONDON SUNDAY TIMES in England what Israel was really up to at Dimona, Israel's nuclear arms factory, still off-limits to all international inspection thanks to Peres' chicanery.

* Shimon Peres was responsible for the terrible and unprecedented shelling of the Qana U.N. base in 1996; and then oversaw the deceitful coverup including the refusal to even allow U.N. investigators to come to Israel.

* Shimon Peres is one of the primary architects of Israel's novel Middle East apartheid approach to the Palestinians -- better known these days as "Oslo" and the "Peace Process" -- which is well along now rounding up the Palestinians on "autonomous" reservations, the Israeli army at all exits.

[Note: Considerable background information about Vanunu, Qana and the apartheid-style "Peace Process" can be found in past MER  articles available at: www.MiddleEast.Org. And for information about the weekly MERTV
program which has also focused on these subjects email to INFOMERTV@MiddleEast.Org ]

Now let's also mention while we're at it that even by contemporary standards American University is a very compromised political place these days. The name of Saudi arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi still is highlighted on a major university building. Recently the university has made a deal with one of the Arab client regimes to expand into the Arab Gulf and add some more oil and arms moneys to its coffers. And then there is Clovis Maksoud whose limo and chauffeur drop him off at A.U. to masquerade as a academic when in fact he is one of the well-known Arab-regime hacks and p.r. men around (more on Clovis to come from MER). Indeed, though he prefers to deny he did it, years ago it was Maksoud who helped legitimize Peres in Arab circles by agreeing to appear on an international telecast with him at the very height of Israeli oppression and dispossession of the Palestinians.

But even with all these handicaps, let's hope the students at A.U. aren't going to be completely mislead and bowled over by the failure of their university and "professors" to hold to principled positions and academic standards. Peres shouldn't be allowed to use rhetorical flourishes to mask his real past and real deeds.

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