Subject: Centers
   Date:  Sun, 22 Apr 2001 04:29:51 -0700 (PDT)
   From: barry chamish <[email protected]>

Shimon Peres had a busy month. Not as Foreign
Minister especially but as director of the Peres
Center For Peace. You see, there is no real
justification for this center's existence. Its stated
purpose is to promote business ties between Israelis
and Arabs and based on this worthy sounding goal, it
has raised tens of millions of dollars from private
donors and the World Bank.

However, no such projects have been initiated by
the center. Instead it hosts bi-annual meetings of
cooperative regional thugs to talk about regional
cooperation. The only project that got off the ground
was an unmitigated fiasco called the Peace Cup.

Here's how it worked. Last summer the center
hosted a soccer tournament held in Rome. Perennial
Italian champs, Juventus Rome and teams from Israel
and its Arab neighbors were to play each other for the
Peace Trophy. Though Israel sent a team, Betar
Jerusalem, none of Israel's Arab neighbors but Jordan
consented to participate.

So the three teams played three 30 minute games
one night in front of literally dozens of enthusiastic
Italian fans in a stadium holding 60,000. First
Juventus beat Jordan 11-0 in half an hour, then Betar
proceeded to slaughter the Jordanians 7-0. Finally, to
the disgust of all 57 Italian fans, Betar beat
Juventus 1-0 for the championship.

The Jordanians, beaten 18-0 in an hour felt
anything but peaceful afterward. As far as they were
concerned, they were lured into a trap designed to
illustrate the total impotence of Arab sporting
efforts.

In fact, they better illustrated the total impotence
of the Peres Center For Peace. As usual, its vision of
peace just fueled more hate and hostility.

In order for him to justify his center's existence,
it is incumbent upon Peres to get a few more fiascoes
rolling and that requires finally, funding economic
co-existence. So he has spent the past month raising
money for hi-tech ventures in the Arab sector of Israel,
ventures, of course, doomed to fail since there are,
without exaggeration, no
original hi-tech projects in the entire Arab world.
Like his Peace Cup joke, Peres's vision will result in
an 18-0 loss because it is the vision of a diseased
mind. And the result will be the same; more hatred and
hostility.

Nonetheless, Peres used his pal Benny Gaon, head
of Koor Industries to raise $10 million for the doomed
ventures, then took a trip to America with another
buddy, Rabbi Michael Melchior to persuade American
Jewish businessmen to throw their money away on Peres
Center hopeless projects in the Arab sector.

If they only knew the criminal mindset of Peres
and his center, these starstruck Americans would have
kept their wallets tightly in their front pants pocket
where they belong. Let's look at just one example of
how the Peres Center thinks. And this time, for a
change, the convincing proof of Peres's central role
in the Rabin assassination does not get even a passing
mention. Instead, let us look at the construction of
the new Peres Center headquarters in Yaffo.

A major donor, the Peres Center refuses to give
out his identity, agreed to build a sparkling new
building to house the Peres dream, designed by an
Italian architect. Yaffo municipality head Israel
Peleg, a longtime Peres crony, invited him to build
the facility in his town and offered a selection of
suitable sites. None was good enough for Peres, he
wanted a building in his name with a seaview. So he
chose a plot of land on the previous site of a
hospital and insisted it would be his.

Here's where Peres's criminal mindset comes into
play. It was illegal to build on the site but that
never stopped Peres before. Just look who runs the
Peres Center. The Chairman is Carmi Gillon, head of
the General Security Services (Shabak) at the time of
the Rabin murder and a proven conspirator in the
assassination itself. The Director is Uri Savir, a
chief negotiator of the Oslo Accords, whose deceit and
lies to the Israeli public will someday lead to
criminal charges. And sitting on the board is former
Chief Justice Meir Shamgar, who headed the
government commission of inquiry which covered
up the truth of the Rabin assassination. The rest of the board
includes a who's who of local and international greed
mongers, who may be viewing the center's money
laundering potential with unfettered lust.

The Tel Aviv City Hall had designated the Yaffo
site as a public park in its ordnance, Boardwalk
Project 2236. The land was slated to be a continuation
of the Yaffo boardwalk with a seaview for all
residents to enjoy. Any construction which blocked the
view was forbidden.

Not that this little roadblock stopped Peres. His
"experts" found another city ordnance which seemed to
nullify the first. Because the land previously housed
a hospital, another public building could legally
replace it. That's the law at Tel Aviv City Hall and
somehow Peres persuaded Tel Aviv's mayor and city
council to buy the argument and give him over an acre
of invaluable seafront property FOR FREE. Yup, you
heard it right. Peres got the land for 49 years at 2%
the real estate value of a public building or 2% of
nothing.

Only the Peres Center For Peace is not a public
institution. It is entirely private. So how did Peres
get around this nasty fact? Now watch this to better
understand the criminal mindset. Because the Peres
Center is a non-profit foundation, whose goal is to
serve the public, it is by definition a public
institution.

The business newspaper Globes summed up the
absurdity better than I could. It wrote, "By that
definition, every one of the thousands of foundations
in Israel are public institutions including The
Foundation For Orchid Growers, The Foundation For The
Promotion of Racing Horses and The Foundation For The
Expansion Of Chocolate Drinks. They are all now
eligible for the breaks that come with being
government institutions."

Such has Peres twisted the law that yes, all
foundations in Israel are now public institutions if
the Peres Center is ever used as a legal precedent.

Israeli law insists that public buildings be open
to the public. The Peres Center will be surrounded by
guards and only the invited allowed in. The Peres
Center counters, "We are building a museum of peace, a
meeting place and an auditorium. We will be inviting
the public to our functions no matter what their
political leanings."

Of course, only the most gullible of the radical
left will ever want to visit the center but the
explanation skirts the issue; public buildings by law
are open to the GENERAL public and the Peres Center
will not be. It will serve almost no one in Yaffo and
will interrupt all boardwalk traffic. The building is,
simply, breaking the law by its existence; but there
is more.

Israeli environmental law now bans the
construction of buildings closer then 100 meters from
the sea. The law is vital since so little seafront
property remains open in the country. The Peres Center
parking lot is situated much closer to the water than 100 yards.

It was okayed without submitting the plans to the
Environment Ministry as is dictated by law.

No problem for the Peres Institute. They explain
that a parking lot isn't a building and everything is
right as rain. Only, those who choose to stroll along
the beach will be blocked by the lot's fence and have
to take a detour around it.

There is nothing legal about the new Peres
Center For Peace building in Yaffo, just as there is
nothing legal about its criminal namesake.