From: Joseph Maizlish Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2005 11:33 AM Subject: More on Peretz
Amir Peretz at the Rabin Memorial Rally: The way of Olso is alive "I will continue on your path, Yitzchak!" Yesterday, on the podium at Rabin Square, he laid aside his speeches as a workers' leader and strike organizer. Yesterday, in front of two hundred thousand people and at the side of President Clinton, Amir Peretz tried to show that he deserves to be considered a statesman. Addressing the late PM he said: "If we had gone out of the Territories we would have overcome internal violence". By Meir Swisa and Menachem Rahat Ma'ariv, November 13 - translation from Hebrew by TOI Hebrew original in printed edition only It was not the official announcement of the primary elections results, nor even the belated, grudging conceding phone call from the outgoing Labour Party leader Shimon Peres, which made Amir Peretz truly the new party leader. Rather, it was the speech delivered yesterday night to a crowd estimated at 200,000, with former US president Bill Clinton at his side, which set the seal on the new political reality. The newly-elected Peretz had not been originally scheduled to speak at the rally, the original two keynote speakers being Clinton and Peres. His name was added to the speakers' list on the last moment at the personal request of Yitzchak Rabin's daughter Dalia, after publication of the Labour primaries results. A large part of Peretz's speech was delivered as a direct address to the assassinated Rabin: "Ten years ago your voice reverberated across this square, setting new goals for the state of Israel. You have aroused hopes, you made the young start dreaming of a changed country. Yes, your voice echoed and reverberated - until the assassin's bullets silenced it. Ten years ago, on that fateful night, you have said that violence undermines the foundations of democracy - not knowing that a violent death awaited you just around the corner. Ten years on, and the violence is still very much with us, Yitzchak. The country is full of violence. We have not succeeded in isolating it. It has spread beyond the areas of confrontation with the Palestinians, it has become rooted among us. (...) If we had left the Territories, stopped the violence which issues from there at its source, we would have also overcome the violence in our midst". Peretz defined his basic ideology as The Moral Roadmap: "Continued Rule in the Territories is a recipe for sinking into a morass, a loss of values and morality in Israel. We need a Moral Roadmap, whose guiding star is respect for human dignity. A Moral Roadmap is ending the occupation and signing a permanent agreement. A Moral Roadmap is defending the value of each and every person in Israel - their dignity, their families, their livelihood." "The passage of ten years has in no way lessened the sharpness of longing for you, Yitzchak. You were not a man to boast and make arrogant and fanciful promises, but to take hard decisions, stick to them and implement them. You are not with us today, but your way is vibrantly alive. Some try to deny it, other decry it in a multitude of ways, but it will not avail them: the way of Oslo is alive, it continues the life which was denied you, cut off. It is alive in every corner, everybody knows that it offers our only hope". Peretz concluded on a personal note: "I am the child who came to Israel fifty years ago, at the age of four. I am the child who grew up in the time of the Fedayun [cross-border inflitratrors of the 1950's] and nowadays lives with his family under the shadow of the Qasam rockets. The children of my hometown Sderot have their sleep troubled by the fear of the Qasams, while their contemporaries in Gaza wake up with the sonic booms and the anti-terrorist preventive acts. I have a dream, Yitzchak. I dream that one day the no-man's-land between Sderot and Beit Hanun will flourish. I dream of factories going up there, and recreation areas, and playgrounds where our children and the Palestinian children will play together and build a common future. When this dream comes true I could go to your grave, face you and say: Rest in peace, Yitzchak. You have earned your final, undisturbed rest. You were murdered, yet you won!". for a general report of the Rabin rally: http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/644457.html *** Hi. I almost called this 'the two Bobs.' Two of the best reporters and political analysts writing today headline events at the same time, tomorrow. Fortunately Robert Fisk is speaking tonight at UCLA so folks can enjoy that rare privelege and then fight for Bob Scheer's words to be read by the broadest audience, tomorrow. Those of us who intended to hear Fisk at USC - at the same time - have to choose. Sigh. -Ed For Immediate Release: November 14, 2005 Contact: Marcy Winograd 310. 795-2322 Karen Pomer 310.463.7025 MEDIA ADVISORY: LA Times Readers/Subscribers to Picket Outside Times Building To Protest the Recent Controversial Firing of Popular Longtime Columnist Robert Scheer "I've been a punching bag for Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh for years and I think the paper finally collapsed" -- Robert Scheer, Friday, Nov. 11th WHAT: Readers to Picket LA Times to Protest the Firing of Columnist Robert Scheer and Limited Coverage of Local Anti-War Movement WHO: LA Times Readers and Grassroots Peace Activists from Across Los Angeles WHEN: Tuesday, Nov. 15 at Noon WHERE: Outside, LA Times Building First Street Entrance 202 W. 1st St. (at Spring St.) Los Angeles, CA 90012 LOS ANGELES -- After a week of Internet rumors, it was officially announced on Friday, November 11, that LA Times publisher Jeff Johnson fired Robert Scheer, who had worked at Times for 30 years, the last 12 years as a weekly columnist on the paper's op-ed page. Scheer had a substantial following and very often his columns would be on the top of paper's list of most e-mailed stories. An announcement of the protest went out this weekend to lists of grassroots activists read in part: ''Robert Scheer's anti-war voice is critical. Los Angeles Times readers will not tolerate the Paper's op-ed page tilting further to the right with the firing of Scheer and the inclusion of far-right columnists Max Boot and Jonah Goldberg with no one holding Scheer?s spot as a passionate and contrarian national progressive voice.'' A delegation of protesters will request a meeting with publisher Jeff Johnson, who reportedly has privately told people that he hated every word that Scheer wrote. ''We want to read a full-spectrum of voices on the LA Times op-ed page and know that our daily newspaper will cover the anti-war movement in Los Angeles,'' said Marcy Winograd, one of the organizers of the protest. "For many of us who have been loyal subscribers to the Times for decades, this is a sad and ominous moment." As soon as word got out that Scheer was fired, readers launched a e-mail campaign of letters of protest to LA Times editor Dean Baquet and publisher Jeff Johnson. Many subscribers, perhaps hundreds, have canceled their subscriptions in protest of the firing. Outside the Times Building on Tuesday, protesters will distribute slices of Wonderbread to signify the blanding of the paper, while one of the activists will perform guerilla theater as Jeff Johnson's billionaire spokesman on the issue of parent company Tribune's efforts to make the paper hew to a stricter pro-corporate agenda. Signs will have such slogans as: LA Times Publisher: Did you hate every word Scheer wrote exposing lies that led us into the War in Iraq? LA Times Publisher: Did you hate every word Scheer wrote exposing the lies about Wen Ho Lee? LA Times Publisher: Did you hate every word Scheer wrote exposing the lies of the NY Times' Judith Miller? Robert Scheer is scheduled to appear on the national radio and TV news show Democracy Now! on Monday Nov. 14. KPFK 90.7 FM at 6AM and 9AM, DirecTV: Link TV, Channel 375, DISH Network: Link TV channel 9410 and Free Speech TV, channel 9415. Robert Scheer's Nov. 11 statement:: "On Friday, I was fired as a columnist by the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, where I have worked for thirty years. The publisher Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq. Fortunately sixty percent of Americans now get the point but only after tens of thousand of Americans and Iraqis have been killed and maimed as the carnage spirals out of control. My only regret is that my pen was not sharper and my words tougher." LA Times article on the changes to op-ed pages: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lat11nov11,0,808176.story?coll=la-tot-promo&track=morenews ### ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. 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