The last Zionist

Why Shimon Peres understood Israel's national interest better than any of his successors

Shimon Peres' peace mission.
(Image credit: GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images)

Shimon Peres, the last major figure from Israel's founding generation, died earlier this week at the age of 93. He may also have been the last major Israeli political figure to truly understand Israel's national interest.

That may seem to be a funny way to describe Peres. For some, both his admirers on the left and his fierce detractors on the right, he will be remembered as one of the visionary supporters of peace: an early advocate of peace with Jordan based on territorial compromise, a strong supporter of a regional peace to be achieved through the Madrid process in the early 1990s, and a prime mover on the Israeli side behind the Oslo Accords that established the Palestinian Authority. That hardly sounds like the portrait of a hard-headed advocate of the national interest.

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Noah Millman

Noah Millman is a screenwriter and filmmaker, a political columnist and a critic. From 2012 through 2017 he was a senior editor and featured blogger at The American Conservative. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Politico, USA Today, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, Modern Age, First Things, and the Jewish Review of Books, among other publications. Noah lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.