Shimon Peres on Gaza

I just started watching George Stephanopoulos interviewing Israeli President Simon Peres on This Week.

Usually I half-watch this show until the roundtable in a lazy Sunday sort of way, but Peres is an engaging interview, and by engaging, I mean bone-chilling.

The nice thing about American press interviews with foreign leaders versus, say, American press interviews with ranking Senate Republicans is that foreign leaders do not have the same level of constant, institutional preparation for the American media, and so are less likely to be rehearsed, carefully-crafted talking points aimed at an American constituency.

It's always a little jarring at first. You can see the same thing in Roger and Me, when Michael Moore is interviewing GM managers about plant closings. These guys talk about capitalism in some pretty stark terms - their message is basically "yeah, we're costing Michigan tens of thousands of jobs, it's in our own self-interest to do that and so you can't hold it against us."

This is back in 1989, before Moore was a genre, and, from a modern perspective, these stuffed shirts don't seem cruel so much as naive. I'm sure the people making the decision about American plant closings are thinking about them in pretty much the same way now as then - but they sure aren't talking about it like that.

By modern standards, Peres gives us a pretty sharp look in to his soul.

Peres's main point on This Week is "we're not going to stop shooting at them until they stop shooting at us," which may sound reasonable until you realize that if the other guys are thinking the same way, then, logically, the shooting will never stop.

But it's not so much what he says as how he says it. Know how I said Indians and Pakistanis were basically the same people and would probably get along if they just stopped with all the posturing and brinksmanship? Not so much with Israelis and Palestinians.

That's why you can see something in Peres that no media-savvy American leader would allow himself on T.V. (unless he thought he only needed to talk to his base) - you can see hate. And that's why there won't be peace in the Middle East in His lifetime.