´No Room for Small Dreams´

 ´In Israel, in order to be a realist, you should believe in miracles´.

No Room for Small Dreams - that I´ve had access to in audio format, read by the actor Mark Bramhall - is the book published in Peres last year of life. Half-memoir, half-inspirational book, this is just another testimony of a brave man who loved the people of Israel. A man who, together with other founding fathers like Ben Gurion, had the chutzpa to believe in their dream and set out of nothing a country. And not any country, but the country of the Jews.

A warrior, Peres also believed that peace is inevitable, and he personally worked toward it while concluding the agreement between the state of Israel and Egypt on one had, and Jordan, on the other hand. In his optimistic vein, he declares that peace is inevitable, and the current shift taking place within the Middle East is a proof that, again, he was right. 

People like Peres, or Rabin, or Ben Gurion, did have a humble dedication to the public office that unfortunatelly seems to be vanishing nowadays. Being part of the state project is a duty and they are grateful for the chance given to build The Dream. Which does not coincide with their and their family dreams of acquiring personal wealth and priviledges. Their families felt compelled to help them, from the shadows, without any expectation of public acknowledgement. They lived their religious upbringing through actions and good deeds, not by dangerously playing the card of the public piety for the sake of the cameras. Those were the days...

Peres prediction is that the future of Zionism is a two state solution, otherwise a one-state solution without Jews might happen. In an Israeli democracy, Jews and non-Jews should be equal, with the right to be different as a legacy of our own past of persecutions. Bridges would be made only through direct contact and dialogue, and this was the objective Peres had in mind when he created in 1996 Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. 

Shimon Peres had the moral courage to change from a hawk to a ´vocal dove´ ´on behalf of the Jewish people´. From the Hagana to the ´start-up nation´ and the creation of the nuclear resource facility in Dimona he had both the chutzpah and the vision. I am sure many of those reading him will see the difference and, as this writer, will be reminded that, indeed, miracles are such a reality of the Jewish life that one must work hard to achieve.