Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise here in the House to pass some comments on the passing of Shimon Peres, a great global statesman and someone instrumental in the foundation and the survival of Israel. Shimon is one of Israel's longest serving politicians and, by all means, one of its most distinguished—the first person, I believe, to have served as both Prime Minister and, indeed, President of the Jewish state in the Holy Land. Born in 1923 in Wieniawa, Poland, which is now in Belarus, he immigrated to what is Israel with his family at age 11. Yet is it more Shimon Peres's roles in the four great fights—and, indeed, in the Entebbe raid—that so defined Israel and so ensured its state and its survival as a nation and its growth now as one of the great nations of the world. Indeed, Shimon Peres and, probably, Moshe Dayan are two of the most responsible statesmen and war fighters who helped guide Israel to the place it was and is today.

It was David Ben-Gurion in 1947 who conscripted Shimon Peres to the Haganah, the defence force which would become the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces we know today. Of course, Moshe Dayan had been with the Haganah since he was 11. He had fought against the British and with the British, was jailed by the British and went back into the special forces with the British. Moshe Dayan would continue alongside Shimon Peres, sometimes as friends—sometimes, perhaps, less so. Shimon was assigned responsibility for manpower and arms in '47, an activity he continued during the early part of the war of independence in 1948. In '48, he was appointed head of Israel's navy and at war's end he assumed the position of the director of the defence ministry delegation in the United States. Shimon Peres was there when the modern state of Israel was found on the traditional Jewish Holy Land. In 1953, at the age of 29, he was appointed by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion as a director general of the defence ministry—we would probably call that the secretary of Defence; Israel's Dennis Richardson, heaven forbid—a position that he held for the next six years up until 1959.

Israel's second fight occurred in 1956 in the Sinai—a fight that would be led ostensibly by Moshe Dayan, albeit planned in many ways by Shimon Peres; an extraordinary fight where the Sinai was captured by the Israeli forces. During this period from '53 to '59, Shimon Peres would shape that relationship between Israel and France which became so important in the early days and established Israel's aircraft industries as well as its fledgling nuclear program. In '59, Peres would be elected to the Knesset and he would remain in the parliament until elected President in June 2007, an extraordinary 48 years in one of the most democratic parliaments in the world—some would argue far too democratic—and certainly the only democratic parliament in the Middle East.

From '59 to '65, he served as deputy defence minister and prepared the Israeli defence ministry and the IDF for what became the 1967 six-day fight. The fight saw the parachute regiment—hail the paras!—retake Jerusalem for the first time. The first man to worship at the Wailing Wall was a parachutist, a young digger, who fought his way through to the Wailing Wall. For the first time in 2,000 years, a Jewish man met there at the Wailing Wall, parachute beret in hand and Uzi slung over his shoulder. It is interesting that the paras had a disproportionate amount of influence in that '67 fight during that six-day war—the paras were something like three per cent of the Israeli Defence Force but 20 per cent of the casualties. They played quite an extraordinary role. Shimon Peres prepared the IDF in the early days for that fight—a fight so ably led, again, by Moshe Dayan.

From 1970 to '74, Shimon Peres served as the minister of transport and communications, again preparing that vital architecture for the surprise attack on the Yom Kippur War in 1973–again, a war we saw Moshe Dayan in as minister for defence. Shimon Peres replaced him and, then from 1974, he was minister for defence until 1977. Again, as minister for defence, he was intimately involved in the Entebbe raid, which was an extraordinarily daring raid to recover citizens of a plane in Entebbe in Uganda. I have been to Uganda many times as a former director of the world's largest orphan care program, Watoto, and have been to the old airport at Entebbe many times. The new airport is built but the old one still bears the battle scars and the bullet wounds from what was a daring, lightning and audacious raid by the Israelis.

Shimon Peres was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, for the Declaration of Principles with the PLO in September '93 with Rabin and Arafat. And, in October 1994, he was there when the treaty of peace with Jordan was signed. This was a man who had been intimately involved not just in the four great fights that have ensured Israel's survival of that nation on their land, the holy land in the Middle East, but in an age of peace. He spent his later years working towards peace and the opportunity for peace in the Middle East.

It is right and proper that this parliament should give an opportunity for its members to make some statements regarding such a fine statesman like Shimon Peres. I thank those who have spoken before me for their words. They have, I think, brought Shimon Peres's legacy to life. I certainly share their sentiments on both sides of the House. I pass my respects onto Shimon Peres's relatives and family, and I am thankful for the role of this man in the creation of modern Israel, in the defence of modern Israel and all that he has done to ensure peace.

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