Shimon Peres: Bigger than life

“Don’t worry,” Shimon Peres would jokingly rebuke whoever dared to mention anything about his advanced age or tease him for his refusal to retire, “I won’t forget to die.” And as he promised, he didn't forget, and Israel lost one of its greatest politicians and statesmen, one of the temperamental and exciting public symbols we have known since the state’s establishment.

Peres was not just another public figure or politician. He was the eternal survivor, the phoenix who doesn’t know when to stay on the ground and insists on rising from the ashes and flying against all odds—and always to new heights.

Peres had the amazing ability to get angry at his critics and disregard them at the very same time. “Ignore them,” he would tell whoever wondered how he should treat the different critics and those clicking their tongues. “Who are they anyway? What have they done? Just carry on, and in a few years’ time no one will know who they were.”

• There was no end to Peres’s anger when he didn’t like what he heard, but he also managed to convince himself and those around him that he couldn’t care less what people were saying about him. This rare combination was possibly what left him on the political and public wheel for so many decades.

He didn’t always have direct influence, and he wasn’t always at the center of activity, but he was almost always relevant to the public discourse in the country, even if he raised half the Israeli public’s blood pressure, while yearning for the love of that exact public. And in between, he pursued and obtained the admiration of the entire world, where he would walk around like a king among kings, like a prince among princes, like a giant among giants.

It’s hard to say goodbye to Shimon Peres because of the illusive feeling he created and nurtured with his own words and actions, that he was here to stay. Alongside his often controversial initiatives and ideas, which led him more than once to the margins of consensus, Peres fervently nurtured a bigger-than-life legendary figure—his own. And Peres was indeed bigger than life, definitely bigger than the characters in the murky public life that has developed here in recent years. For that reason, he evoked astonishment and envy, admiration and contempt, love and hate.

He knew how to navigate between the different worlds in which he sailed with so much talent, once floating in the space of nanotechnology and brain research, and an hour later wrestling in the muddy politics of the Labor Party and its dusty institutions. And just like he never gave up on some good flattery, he refused to avoid a decent fight either.

It was only during his years at the President’s Residence that he moderated his natural tendency to get caught in public brawls, and instead adopted a pretty restrained national personality, which managed to publicly respect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite Peres’s strong objection to his policy in the international arena.

There was only one time when Peres decided to act differently as president, and that was during the sensitive period of whispers about an Israeli strike in Iran, when Peres embarked on a determined journey to thwart what he saw as a military adventure planned by Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Without hesitating, Peres summoned a series of influential public figures and media personalities to share his concerns and fear of what he saw as something that could hold disastrous consequences for Israel for generations to come. He only calmed down once he realized that the military option was off the table.

On the other hand, when he was asked why he wasn’t voicing his opinions about the situation of peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Peres reiterated the nationality mantra he had imposed on himself. And for the first time in his life, it worked—big time. While living almost completely alone in the President’s Residence, as his wife Sonya remained in Tel Aviv, Peres managed to gain the Israeli public’s love, the public he fervently courted throughout most of his public life. And Peres loved the love, and loved the status, and even fell in love with this love and had a never-ending affair with it after leaving office. Because he had had enough of the exclamations of contempt he had received throughout the years.

It’s hard to say goodbye to Shimon Peres also because of his confusing image, a giant image full of contradictions, am intriguing image due to his ability to equally hold a conversation with US President Barack Obama and a conversation with Hanna from the Kibbutz Movement.

Peres had the ability to dream big and crash big—but also to move on in a big way. And he always wanted to innovate and advance, push and lead moves which sometimes appeared delusional—as long as he didn’t have to rest for a minute. And when he was asked why he wasn’t taking a vacation, he would say that his best vacations were at work, and would drag his staff on “vacations” in the south and in the north, where they were forced to hug goats with him and talk about David Ben-Gurion and settling the Negev.

It’s hard to say goodbye to Shimon Peres because he was a great Zionist and a great patriot. There may still be people similar to him, but there will never be anyone like him. May his memory be a blessing.

This article was first publisheb on ynet.co.il and ynetnews.com