Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Shimon Peres, who passed away on 28 September in Tel Aviv, was one of Israel's best known and most loved public figures. Peres's public life spanned six decades, including time as Israel's President, Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and as a member of the Knesset for an extraordinary 47 years.

I must remark that today, 9 November, is the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, because Peres often spoke about Kristallnacht. The tragedy of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when SA Brownshirts and mobs of Nazi supporters murdered nearly 100 Jews and torched and vandalised Jewish synagogues, homes, schools, businesses and cemeteries, was a turning point in the nature of persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. When Peres spoke about Kristallnacht, it was as he spoke about the Holocaust, not with a view to revenge but as lessons in history that must be learned so that they are never repeated.

Peres was a giant of Israeli politics. A prodigious optimist, he worked tirelessly to achieve peace, no matter how many hurdles arose. He was a deep thinker and an inspired speaker, whose ability to negotiate when negotiation seemed lost was legendary.

Shimon Peres was a deep soul, a man of literature and poetry. His place in the history of Israel is almost mythical in its greatness, but all of his achievements were reached through hard work, negotiation and incredible resolve. Shimon Peres was an icon, not only of Israel but of peace itself: a man whose early life was engulfed in the rabid anti-Semitism of the 1930s and 1940s but who emerged from this senseless hatred determined to bring peace to his people and to his region. It is well documented that Peres's grandfather was one of millions of Jews who perished in the horror of the Holocaust, but this personal tragedy, though scarring, did not embitter Peres, who spent his life fighting to ensure that the tragedy that is war was not unnecessarily repeated. I was fortunate enough to meet Shimon Peres several times and was always impressed by his optimism, humanity and appreciation of the strong bonds between Israel and Australia.

Peres was a man deeply intertwined with the history of Israel. He was there at the beginning, when the modern state of Israel was founded. He was the man who helped achieve one of the biggest steps toward peace in the Middle East, through the Oslo peace accord, for which he was later deservedly awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. He was there in Israel's most recent history, as a guiding, passionate and beloved President from 2007 to 2014. Shimon Peres is an inspiration to millions of people, Jews and non-Jews alike, for his irrepressible passion for peace and his unmatched resolve to achieve it. I quote from Shimon Peres's courageous speech at the German Bundestag on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January 2010:

We want to learn from the Europeans, who unshackled Europe from a thousand years of war and bitterness, and enabled Europe's youth to substitute the hostility of their forefathers with brotherhood.

It would be wise to learn from their experience, to dream about a Middle East in which its countries will depart from the conflicts of their parents on behalf of peace for their children. Establish a modern regional economy that would fight new and common challenges: hunger, desertification, sickness and terror. Promote scientific cooperation to improve the standard of living and secure quality of life.

The common God of all is the God of peace, not the God of war.

Shimon Peres's legacy is the example that peace can be achieved throughout the Middle East and that all of us can live side by side. It is telling that Peres, this champion of democracy and reconciliation in the Middle East, received his Nobel Prize for peace alongside Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, demonstrating what can be achieved when world leaders can work together for a common good. Israel has lost one of its finest leaders and the world one of its finest, fiercest and most compelling advocates for peace. Shimon Peres was truly an icon for Israelis and for peace. He will be sorely missed by the people he led as Prime Minister and President.

Olev-hasholem. May he rest in peace.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to associate myself with the remarks of the member for Isaacs, as I am sure I will with the remarks of all the other people who speak on this motion about Shimon Peres. I will not repeat much of the information that was provided to the House by the member for Isaacs; suffice to say that Shimon Peres was one of the greats of Israel's existence, from 1948, and one of the greats in the world in my lifetime. I had the great honour of meeting him many times over the course of my now seven trips to Israel—probably the member for Melbourne Ports is the only person in the House who has been to Israel more times than I have. In the very early time after I came into the parliament, in January 1994, I met Shimon Peres when he was the foreign minister, and then I met him again over several times that I visited Israel. He was in different guises, as either a foreign minister, a leader or, more recently, President of Israel.

Shimon Peres's contribution to Israel and to the world should never be underestimated. We use great hyperbole in this House to describe many things. It certainly is not hyperbole to describe Shimon Peres as one of the shapers of the world and obviously the state of Israel in the last 60 or 70 years—besides the fact that he served in the Knesset for 47 years.

He was a parliamentarian and a minister in many different guises—finance, immigration, foreign affairs. He served as Prime Minister twice. He was the leader of the Labor Party. He was the President of Israel. And he changed over that period of time from a leader of the resistance—if you like—to rule by others, to one of the main builders of the early state of Israel under David Ben-Gurion. He was a builder of the defence industry, particularly in Israel. Much of what Israel boasts today in terms of technology—its aerospace industry, its naval industry, its defence industry in general—can be put down to the early roots that were started by Shimon Peres.

And then, later in life, he was a great advocate for peace. Shimon Peres always used to say that when you are strong you do not feel the need to negotiate, and when you are weak you do not feel you can afford to negotiate, but in fact it is when you are strong that you have to negotiate. And he did that and lived it as the foreign minister, having been disappointingly let down earlier in his career over a peace agreement with Jordan. When he returned in 1992 to be the foreign minister in Israel, his two great achievements over that period were, firstly, the Oslo accords with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, for which of course, as the member for Isaacs has said, he won the Nobel Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat; and secondly, very well-known in the Middle East but perhaps less well known in the world, the peace agreement with the Kingdom of Jordan—two very significant achievements, and at a time when Israel was very strong. It is still strong, but, at a time when Israel was stronger than it had perhaps been for decades, he chose that time to make peace with Israel's enemies.

At that time in 1994 when I visited—and he was quite surprised to discover that I was a member of parliament, because I was only 25 years old; he found that very hard to believe; in fact, most people did at the time—there was a sense of great optimism in Israel about the Oslo peace accords and the opportunity that they presented for the Palestinians and the Jewish Israelis to live peacefully together and to expand together. I think it is a disappointment, 30 years later, that those great opportunities have not been realised. Perhaps lesser politicians than Shimon Peres have been the hurdle for that ongoing Oslo peace accord process to reach its full potential.

It is a pity, a great pity, that Shimon Peres's great dreams for Israel were not entirely realised in his lifetime. But he can certainly pass on into a better place knowing that he left Israel a much stronger and better country than he found it and left the world a better place than he found it. For those of us who serve in public life and seek a career in public life, if you can say that and it can be a genuine claim, it is a great success. I also know his son, and I pass on my condolences to him and the rest of the Peres family. As the member for Isaacs said, may he rest in peace.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist.' That was the byword, the life choice, of Shimon Peres, zichrono livracha, who died at 93. His lifelong work is summarised by something else that he said:

Find a cause that's larger than yourself and then give your life to it.

He certainly did that. His political career saw him hold all major offices of state and rebound from remarkable defeats. He was a protege, as was just said, of Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion, and was first elected to parliament in 1949. He held every major cabinet post—defence, finance and foreign affairs. Remarkably, despite having no military experience, he was made Minister of Defense in his 20s. During the second of his three terms as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Peres shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for their work on the Oslo accords. A year later Peres, in one of the great tragedies of history, had to take over from Prime Minister Rabin after Rabin was assassinated.

However, in domestic political life in Israel he was not always successful. He suffered a number of electoral defeats. When competing for election as Prime Minister he lost four and tied one. In 2007, however—and this is what I really want to focus on—he was chosen for the ceremonial position of president. He was, in fact, the world's oldest head of state when he retired in July 2014 at the age of 90.

He was an early advocate of a Palestinian state parallel to Israel. That has always been Australia's policy—a two-state solution, which is what we voted for in 1948. He could not solve the problem of where such a state would be located or Palestinian leaderships' inability to accept so many of the offers that had been made to them. He said in a rare bit of pessimism—maybe realism:

If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact—not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.

He also had a profound sense of his own people's place in history. Shimon Peres said:

Look, we have existed for 4,000 years—2,000 years in diaspora, in exile. Nobody in the Middle East speaks their original language but Israel. When we started 64 years ago, we were 650,000 people. So, you know, we are maybe swimming a little bit against the stream, but we continue to swim.

I return to his trademark optimism and his profound and incredible futuristic imagination—that was my experience of meeting him, as the members for Isaacs and Sturt have said. His profound knowledge of technological advances was almost guru like coming from a man who was in his 80s or 90s. He said once:

In Israel, a land lacking in natural resources, we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation, we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology.

He had an incredible interview once with McKinsey. Just a few years ago, when he was in his 90s, he said:

The last two decades we have witnessed the greatest revolution since Genesis. States have lost their importance and strength. The old theories—from Adam Smith to Karl Marx—have lost their value because they are based on things like land, labour, and wealth. All of that has been replaced by science. Ideas are now more important than materials. And ideas are unpredictable. Science knows no customs, no borders. It’s immeasurable, unpredictable, unprecedented. It doesn’t depend on distances or stop at a given point.

Science creates a world where individuals can play the role of the collective. Two boys create Google. One boy creates Facebook. Another individual creates Apple. These gentlemen changed the world without political parties or armies or fortunes. No one anticipated this. And they themselves did not know what would happen as a result of their thoughts. So we are all surprised.

It is a new world. You may have the strongest army—but it cannot conquer ideas, it cannot conquer knowledge. Now when you try to anticipate what is possible, you must go to books or laboratories, not simply to the stock exchange. You must exercise your brain. And you can keep your brain fresh if you use it.

I believe profoundly that that was a message for Australia about how we ought to approach our economic future and our technological future. I believe Australia's engagement with Israel is actually prompted by many of the people here having encounters, including with Peres. Peres astonished many of the Australian politicians I have met. You would turn up at the President's house and you would get this futuristic look at the world by someone in their 80s and 90s who outlined to you what could be and not what is.

I would like to conclude my tribute to him and his family and the incredible role he played in the maintenance of the Jewish state with a personal life lesson that I think is very important for all people who are in public life to remember. Shimon Peres said:

The most important thing in life is to dare. The most complicated thing in life is to be afraid. The smartest thing in the world is to try to be a moral person.

May his memory be a blessing.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise here in the House to pass some comments on the passing of Shimon Peres, a great global statesman and someone instrumental in the foundation and the survival of Israel. Shimon is one of Israel's longest serving politicians and, by all means, one of its most distinguished—the first person, I believe, to have served as both Prime Minister and, indeed, President of the Jewish state in the Holy Land. Born in 1923 in Wieniawa, Poland, which is now in Belarus, he immigrated to what is Israel with his family at age 11. Yet is it more Shimon Peres's roles in the four great fights—and, indeed, in the Entebbe raid—that so defined Israel and so ensured its state and its survival as a nation and its growth now as one of the great nations of the world. Indeed, Shimon Peres and, probably, Moshe Dayan are two of the most responsible statesmen and war fighters who helped guide Israel to the place it was and is today.

It was David Ben-Gurion in 1947 who conscripted Shimon Peres to the Haganah, the defence force which would become the foundation of the Israeli Defense Forces we know today. Of course, Moshe Dayan had been with the Haganah since he was 11. He had fought against the British and with the British, was jailed by the British and went back into the special forces with the British. Moshe Dayan would continue alongside Shimon Peres, sometimes as friends—sometimes, perhaps, less so. Shimon was assigned responsibility for manpower and arms in '47, an activity he continued during the early part of the war of independence in 1948. In '48, he was appointed head of Israel's navy and at war's end he assumed the position of the director of the defence ministry delegation in the United States. Shimon Peres was there when the modern state of Israel was found on the traditional Jewish Holy Land. In 1953, at the age of 29, he was appointed by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion as a director general of the defence ministry—we would probably call that the secretary of Defence; Israel's Dennis Richardson, heaven forbid—a position that he held for the next six years up until 1959.

Israel's second fight occurred in 1956 in the Sinai—a fight that would be led ostensibly by Moshe Dayan, albeit planned in many ways by Shimon Peres; an extraordinary fight where the Sinai was captured by the Israeli forces. During this period from '53 to '59, Shimon Peres would shape that relationship between Israel and France which became so important in the early days and established Israel's aircraft industries as well as its fledgling nuclear program. In '59, Peres would be elected to the Knesset and he would remain in the parliament until elected President in June 2007, an extraordinary 48 years in one of the most democratic parliaments in the world—some would argue far too democratic—and certainly the only democratic parliament in the Middle East.

From '59 to '65, he served as deputy defence minister and prepared the Israeli defence ministry and the IDF for what became the 1967 six-day fight. The fight saw the parachute regiment—hail the paras!—retake Jerusalem for the first time. The first man to worship at the Wailing Wall was a parachutist, a young digger, who fought his way through to the Wailing Wall. For the first time in 2,000 years, a Jewish man met there at the Wailing Wall, parachute beret in hand and Uzi slung over his shoulder. It is interesting that the paras had a disproportionate amount of influence in that '67 fight during that six-day war—the paras were something like three per cent of the Israeli Defence Force but 20 per cent of the casualties. They played quite an extraordinary role. Shimon Peres prepared the IDF in the early days for that fight—a fight so ably led, again, by Moshe Dayan.

From 1970 to '74, Shimon Peres served as the minister of transport and communications, again preparing that vital architecture for the surprise attack on the Yom Kippur War in 1973–again, a war we saw Moshe Dayan in as minister for defence. Shimon Peres replaced him and, then from 1974, he was minister for defence until 1977. Again, as minister for defence, he was intimately involved in the Entebbe raid, which was an extraordinarily daring raid to recover citizens of a plane in Entebbe in Uganda. I have been to Uganda many times as a former director of the world's largest orphan care program, Watoto, and have been to the old airport at Entebbe many times. The new airport is built but the old one still bears the battle scars and the bullet wounds from what was a daring, lightning and audacious raid by the Israelis.

Shimon Peres was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, for the Declaration of Principles with the PLO in September '93 with Rabin and Arafat. And, in October 1994, he was there when the treaty of peace with Jordan was signed. This was a man who had been intimately involved not just in the four great fights that have ensured Israel's survival of that nation on their land, the holy land in the Middle East, but in an age of peace. He spent his later years working towards peace and the opportunity for peace in the Middle East.

It is right and proper that this parliament should give an opportunity for its members to make some statements regarding such a fine statesman like Shimon Peres. I thank those who have spoken before me for their words. They have, I think, brought Shimon Peres's legacy to life. I certainly share their sentiments on both sides of the House. I pass my respects onto Shimon Peres's relatives and family, and I am thankful for the role of this man in the creation of modern Israel, in the defence of modern Israel and all that he has done to ensure peace.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with my colleagues on emphasising the privilege that it is to speak on this motion in relation to someone who was a truly great statesman, an international statesman. I think we often use that term 'great man' casually and loosely, but in this case we are truly acknowledging the benchmark of what a great man, a great statesman, truly was and is. Looking at Shimon Peres's life, I think none of us in the politics of Australia would understand just how existential it was. The life's work of Shimon Peres in terms of the preservation of not only his very state on so many occasions but the very survival of his people as a whole. It is poignant to note that, whereas he and his immediate family left Poland in 1932 to go to Israel, all of his remaining extended family in the Polish town of Vishneve were annihilated in the Holocaust. All of those members of his family, in the same incident, where the Jewish population of the town of Vishneve were rounded up and taken to the local synagogue and burnt alive in the town synagogue. Those times presented not only a challenge for the very survival of his people, but, then following on that, the survival of the nation through the period of 1948, the existential battles '67 and '73 and onwards.

As has been mentioned by previous speakers, he is owed a great deal for his role in creating the sinews by which Israel was able to defend itself and stay alive during that time. In particular, this was a great man of the Israeli Labor movement—a product of the kibbutz movement. I was privileged to have spent time on a kibbutz in Ein Herod Meuchad, up in Emek Yizra'el and the valley of the Galilee. This is a movement that has produced so many great people in the history of that nation, invested in the state and invested in the collective principle that has helped keep that state alive. Through his life, he demonstrated the values of the kibbutz movement.

His role has been mentioned not only in developing the political frameworks, the international relationships and the defence industries et cetera that helped keep the state alive but also in the Entebbe mission. My colleague from Canning will probably have more to say as he has probably studied this mission in depth in his career. Shimon Peres's role in that mission was absolutely instrumental. As the defence minister at the time he formed the crisis committee to look into the options for the rescue of a number of Israeli hostages taken captive by terrorists in Entebbe, in Uganda. He was involved in working through the detail of that mission with the nominal commander of the mission, Yonatan Netanyahu, and then took the detail of that mission to Prime Minister Rabin and convinced Rabin to back the mission. Rabin was very uncertain about using a military option in this case, but Peres was across the detail and had worked through the detail and was convinced of the viability of the mission and the audacity of it, which was borne out in the success of that operation, which has become quite a hallmark in the conduct of those kinds of special operations and hostage rescue missions.

Apart from that, through all that period of war and grief, he learnt many lessons that fuelled his impetus and his motivation in the cause of peace, once the existence and survival of the state of Israel were secured. There is no man ever in the history of the Middle East's difficult relationships and histories who has put more effort into the cause of peace. He brought to the peace process the same boldness that he brought to the design and execution of the Entebbe mission. It has been mentioned that through Oslo and the peace agreement with Jordan he was able to be awarded and afforded the honour of the Nobel Prize.

But one of the honours he greatly esteemed beyond that was being made an honorary sheikh by the Hura Bedouin of the Negev. He adored the Negev and put a lot of effort into looking after the Bedouin community in the Negev. He was very much a fan of his relationship with the Bedouin and was honoured for that relationship.

That was emblematic of his ability to forge relationships and bridges across the divides of the region—across internal and other state relationship divides. As my good friend the member for Melbourne Ports mentioned, he took that through to his involvement in the creation of the Start-Up Nation dynamic, which we have all learnt to admire and study in detail for the benefits and lessons it has for Australia. His real interest in being involved in the Start-Up Nation process was to ensure that the benefits of that economic development and the opportunities that the new economy offered were spread across all of the citizens of Israel, and hopefully the region—the Israeli-Arabs, the Palestinians and all the neighbours of the region. He felt that this opportunity was there to be exploited to help build those bridges and relationships. He took that forward, too, in the situation of developing the sharing of water resources and other issues that are central to creating a viable relationship amongst the nations of that area.

He tried hard to make the peace process with the Palestinians work after Oslo. That included energetically pursuing investment on behalf of the Palestinians, right around the world, and understanding the key role of the peace dividend and economic prosperity in the role of ensuring and bedding down peace in the area.

All of this was in the face of the massive wave of terror and bombings by the terrorists who attempted to derail that Oslo peace process, but he never lost his focus, his perseverance, his optimism and his determination to pursue that process. He also had to deal with the debilitation and the disappointment of watching some of that investment disappear into the extremely corrupt circumstances that existed amongst some of the players in the Palestinian Authority at the time. A lot of that money and investment would end up in Swiss bank accounts. And then, of course, there was the really disappointing situation of the Hamas takeover of Gaza after 2006 and the systematic dismantling of all the democratic institutions that we had all been working hard to build in the developing Palestinian Authority, which would have been the secret to them achieving an effective and viable statehood, and which I had been very pleased to be involved in. As a member of a strategy group, I convinced the Howard government to deploy an Australian lieutenant colonel to become a part of General Ward's security sector reform that was doing great work over there at the time, all of which was brought undone and abandoned because of the Hamas takeover of the Gaza strip.

But Shimon Peres was a great friend of Australia. He, along with all Israelis, remembered fondly and very well the Australian troop presence in Palestine during the Second World War and the First World War. In fact, both my grandfathers were beneficiaries of the welfare arrangements that the Schulte Jewish community provided to our thousands of Australian troops. I was very grateful for that. My grandfathers had very difficult circumstances to endure in the campaigns in Syria and Lebanon and the Western Desert, and very much appreciated the support of the Jewish community. But they also really appreciated the friendliness and engagement with the Australians at the time.

It was a very special privilege to have met President Peres, too, as part of a parliamentary group in 2010. He was very generous to us with his time, and it fell to me to thank him for that. I did highlight at the time the difference in attitudes to politics in Israel and Australia, noting that the old saying there was that you get two Israelis together and they form three political parties; I said, 'In Australia you get two Australians together and they have a party!' I also highlighted that his was a precious voice of reason in a world full of increasingly strident and irrational voices. It is extremely sad that we have lost that precious voice of reason. It is incumbent on all of us to work hard to help make up for that loss.

His greatest virtue was that he was not a prisoner of the past. He understood learning the lessons of the past. Not becoming a prisoner of the past is no mean feat in the Middle East. He always looked forward and was never swayed from his path to peace, no matter how hopeless this has looked. His is a life-affirming example of dreaming large, but in his case it was matched with the practical skills to realise those dreams. With his passing, we are obliged to pick up the torch he has passed to us and pursue peace with all the relentless optimism he exhibited all his life.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a privilege to rise today alongside my colleagues, the members for Fadden, Melbourne Ports and Eden-Monaro, and also share my thoughts on this great man. Shimon Peres might best be known as a tireless advocate for a broad Middle East peace that would benefit all peoples of that tortured region, but to focus on this aspect of his life alone would be to miss the man. Peres understood that peace, whilst the highest ideal, had to be first secured by force of arms. He was a leader of Israel through many of its darkest hours and helped guide it to become a prosperous, flourishing democracy. In the spirit of King David, Peres understood that both the shepherd's crook and the warrior's sword are necessary to the task of nation-building. Historian Timothy Snyder has described the cataclysm that engulfed the Jews of Eastern Europe during the Second World War in his magisterial and aptly named history entitled Bloodlands. The 'bloodlands' directly touched the soul of Shimon Peres with terrible effect.

On 30 June 1942 the entire Jewish community of Vishnev—his hometown in Poland—were frogmarched to the courtyard of the local synagogue and burnt alive by the Nazis. Every member of Shimon Peres' extended family—including his grandfather—perished. That abomination gave him a hard-nosed understanding that, at certain times and in certain circumstances, armed force is the only moral option. So in 1947 it was Shimon Peres who was dispatched to Europe with the mission of acquiring arms for the nascent Jewish state. It was these weapons that allowed the Jews of Israel to beat back attacks by not only the Palestinian Arab irregulars, but also the invading armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Indeed, after the establishment of Israel in 1948, Peres would play a fundamental role in developing Israel's defence capabilities. Under his supervision the IDF would become a dominant regional power, gain nuclear capability, and establish its outstanding international reputation.

By 1976 Shimon Peres had risen to the post of defence minister, serving in the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. When a gang of Arab and German left-wing terrorists hijacked an Air France flight bearing 250 Jews, Shimon Peres was confronted by a mammoth dilemma of moral leadership. The hijackers were demanding the release of 53 terrorist murderers from prison, as well as a ransom of $5 million—a hefty sum in those days. The question was: should the short-term interest of saving 246 Jewish hostages take precedence over the longer term interest of the innocent lives these killers would surely take if allowed to go free?

This was the question that hung like a cloud over the negotiations with the hijackers. But in retrospect we know that Shimon Peres and his ministerial colleagues were really playing for time, and were using that grace period to plan and organise a rescue mission whose ambition was only matched by its audacity. Operation Thunderbolt is unlike any other special operation in modern history. Israel took a huge national and strategic risk in rescuing their people from the hands of terrorists at Entebbe. This was an act of statecraft that required vision, nerve and tremendous resolve. Consider the operational and logistical challenges the IDF had to overcome to deliver Israeli troops onto the target. They had to fly the assault force across the international flight path over the Red Sea and remain undetected by Egyptian, Sudanese and Saudi radar. The Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft flew low to the ground, sometimes as low as 100 metres, to avoid detection. These aircraft, loaded to their maximum capacity—an operational risk all of its own—had to be refuelled in Kenya before continuing to Entebbe itself.

Consider the challenge facing the ground forces. With limited intelligence and after an incredibly demanding tactical flight, where many were airsick, they had to commence the assault on the terminal almost immediately after disembarking the aircraft. They went straight into a gunfight with the terrorists, in the middle of the night, in darkness, without the aids of modern soldiering, such as body armour and night vision. Consider the task of extracting the assault force under fire and all the hostages for the flight back to Israel. This occurred in 53 minutes from landing to take-off—an incredible feat of statecraft and arms.

There was significant strategic and operational risk woven throughout the fabric of Operation Thunderbolt—risks grave enough that most political decision-makers, in this day and age, would balk at an operation of this audacity. Even the Israeli hostages, once the roar and din of gunfire had ceased in the airport terminal, were surprised beyond belief to hear the Hebrew voices of the IDF soldiers cut through the night.

Shimon Peres was not faint-hearted at this moment in Israel's history. He had strongly advocated for this operation to the Israeli Prime Minister and the cabinet. The most recent book on Operation Thunderbolt documents his words to the Prime Minister on the morning of 3 July 1976:

It is Israel that has lectured the world against giving in to terrorism. If we give in now our prestige will suffer greatly. Should we ignore the fact that the hijackers have conducted a 'selection,' separating the Jews from the others aboard the plane? If the operation succeeds, the mood of the entire country will suddenly and dramatically improve. It's true that the operation will put our finest soldiers at risk. But we have always been ready to risk our lives to save a large number of lives by using our own forces, and without recourse to outside assistance."

Operation Thunderbolt took place because men like Shimon Peres were prepared to take a stand for principle and demonstrate resolve with force of arms. The IDF Chief of the General Staff at the time, Lieutenant General Mordechai Gur, credits Peres for his advocacy and courage and singled out the one man 'whose determination made it happen—the Minister of Defense'. He went on further:

I don't know if it's possible to apportion credit among those responsible for the decision to undertake this operation, but if it is, the biggest share of the credit goes to the defense minister—

Shimon Peres. Thus the Entebbe operation constituted a victory not only of good over evil but also of unconventional brilliance over conventional banality. It was a victory for the free world, where democratic statesmen were willing to take national and strategic risk in the pursuit of justice and the preservation of innocent life.

Shimon Peres's contribution to this operation as Minister of Defense was decisive and serves as a beacon in the present for those charged with defending democracy, human rights and those who cannot fight for themselves. It reminds us that when we are confronted with evil—as we are in the Middle East today, with the scourge of Islamic State—principled action, steely resolve and visionary leadership can overcome great odds and conquer even the most determined enemies of the free world.

Israel has lost a lifelong servant of the Jewish people in Shimon Peres, and today we honour his memory and pass our condolences to Israel.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Canning for that heartfelt and powerful address and also acknowledge my colleagues and friends on the other side of parliament—the member for Isaacs, the member for Melbourne Ports and the member for Eden-Monaro—and of course my colleagues the member for Sturt, the member for Fadden and the member for Goldstein, who is soon to speak, and say, isn't this a wonderful thing? Members from both sides of the political divide have put aside any partisan differences to salute a career and a life that has been full of achievements and goodness, not just for the people of Israel but for the Jewish community around the world. In speaking on Shimon Peres, a man who died on 28 September this year in Israel, age 93, we remember somebody who really made a difference.

Shimon Peres was a remarkable office holder. He was first elected to the Knesset in 1959. During that time he became the longest-serving member of the Knesset in Israel's political history. He held so many positions, including Minister of Transportation, Minister of Finance, Minister of Defence and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and of course became Israel's eighth Prime Minister in 1984, then serving again in that office, and became the ninth President of the state of Israel, serving for seven years when he reached that position in 2007.

His achievements also saw him lauded across the world with many awards. The French gave him their highest honour, the Legion d'Honneur, as commander. He received from the United Kingdom an honorary knighthood—Knight Grand Cross—and the Order of St Michael and St George from Queen Elizabeth II. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, alongside Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, for his role in the Oslo Accords. And President Obama gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012—the United States's highest civilian honour—for his meritorious contributions to world peace.

But his story was a remarkable personal one. He migrated to then Palestine in 1934. All of his remaining relatives in Poland were murdered during the Holocaust. In fact, Barack Obama, in his wonderful address on Mount Herzl, at the funeral of Shimon Perez, reminded us that when he was still a teenager Peres's grandfather was burned alive by the Nazis in the town in which Shimon was born. And when he reached then Palestine he became one of Israel's founders, and now Israel has lost the last of its founders. At age 29 he became Director-General of the Ministry of Defense—the youngest person to hold this position—and did so much to help build Israel's defence capability, particularly the relationships he developed with the French government.

But it was his values and his moral clarity that stood Shimon Peres out among the rest. He once said:

The message of the Jewish people to mankind is that faith and moral vision can triumph over all adversity.

And he made a very powerful point, which needs to be recognised in the context in which Israel lives, often in a sea of hate and hostility. Peres said:

The Jewish people weren't born to rule another people. From the very first day we are against slaves and masters.

That signalled what was his life's work, which of course was to bring security and stability to Israel but, clearly, to also bring peace to his people.

Not only did he have a moral compass and a large number of achievements to his name, but also he managed to develop wonderful relationships with other world leaders to advance Israel's interest. President Obama referred to the fact that he was the 10th US President to play host to Peres over the course of Peres's life. I will refer to some of the testimonies given on his death. Theresa May called him:

… a visionary and courageous statesman, who worked relentlessly for peace and never lost hope that this would one day be achievable.

Tony Blair, on the other side of politics, described him as:

… a political giant, a statesman who will rank as one of the foremost of this era or any era, and someone I loved deeply.

Tony Blair: 'someone I loved deeply'. Ban Ki-moon said about Peres:

Even in the most difficult hours, he remained an optimist about the prospects for reconciliation and peace.

And Obama:

Shimon Peres was a soldier for Israel, for the Jewish people, for justice, for peace, and for the belief that we can be true to our best selves—to the very end of our time on Earth, and in the legacy that we leave to others.

Wonderful testimonies to a wonderful man.

But one of my favourite stories goes back to 1986 when then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher played host to Shimon Peres. She said, in welcoming Shimon Peres to No. 10 Downing Street:

I am not sure whether all our guests here tonight know that the last time you fell into our hands was in 1945.

We caught you on a camel in a restricted military area and locked you up for two weeks.

History doesn't relate what happened to the camel.

She went on to say:

Israel is small in geography but large in history.

But perhaps even more impressive than the achievements is the spirit of your people: pioneering, brave, resourceful, determined; an example of how indomitable will can overcome almost any problem.

That very fact makes it all the more urgent that you who have built a nation should also be able to build peace.

She went on to say to Shimon Peres:

… your personal reputation as a man of peace, a man dedicated to seeking that peace with Israel's neighbours, is itself grounds for greater hope.

I never met Shimon Peres, but isn't it interesting that the people who did have such wonderful things to say about him.

My friend and colleague the member for Melbourne Ports pointed out that Peres visited Australia in March 1998. During that time he was hosted by John Howard. John Howard, a giant in this country, said:

It is a special honour to be here this evening in the company of one of Israel' s most highly regarded statesmen, Shimon Peres. In various capacities over the fifty years of Israel's statehood, including three periods as prime minister, you have been an instrumental figure in setting Israel's course for the future. Your presence here tonight brings a special significance and lustre to these anniversary celebrations.

Peres reciprocated that affection from Howard when he described the relationship between the Jewish state and Australia as one of love, saying, 'Australia is a beloved country in Israel.' Those were the words of then Prime Minister Howard, and they were also the words of Tony Blair, Theresa May, President Obama and Margaret Thatcher. We have also heard from my colleagues in this place about what a wonderful contribution Shimon Peres made to Israel's security through his boldness and activities—sending Israeli commandos into Entebbe; the work he did rescuing Jews from Ethiopia; the way he embraced science and technology; and the way in which, as Obama says in his speech:

As a young man, he had fed his village by working in the fields during the day, but then defending it by carrying a rifle at night.

Few people on this earth have had a life as full and as important as Shimon Peres. He helped make Israel the country it is today. We salute him for his contribution to the state of Israel; we salute him for his defence of the values and the freedoms that we hold dear; and we salute him for the relationship that he built with Australia, among many other countries. We in this place, despite our political differences, have an obligation to ensure that his dream of peace between Israel and its neighbours one day becomes a reality.

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I start my address by echoing the sentiments and the words of so many of my parliamentary colleagues from this side and the other side of parliament. When you get the members for Isaacs, Sturt, Melbourne Ports, Fadden, Eden-Monaro, Kooyong and Canning all on the same page, it is a reflection of the unity of the substance of the issue—paying homage and respect to the life and the times and the achievements of Shimon Peres.

It is an honour to rise and speak on the condolence motion not just on behalf of myself but also on behalf of the people of Goldstein, a significant number of whom are part of Melbourne's Jewish community.

In the speeches that have been provided today there are already so many eloquent words that have encapsulated his life and his legacy, and I do not want to unnecessarily repeat them. But I do just want to acknowledge how strong some of these speeches have been in terms of recognising his achievements.

Shimon Peres's political leadership and contribution spanned so many offices held within that country. Nobody would dispute that to hold the positions of opposition leader, Prime Minister and President is an incredible achievement in its own right. But power is only worth the extent to which you use it—and to try and build the type of country that Israel could be so it can provide peace and security for so many people who live in, at that time, a relatively new state.

At the time of his retirement he was the oldest head of state around and he was the last link to Israel's founding generation, something that cannot be ignored. We all realise the very difficult circumstances that Israel has always faced in its time in its modern existence. Yes, there have always been times of conflict, but it is important to recognise somebody's legacy, particularly as their contribution to peace in the Middle East. During Peres's term as foreign minister in the second Rabin administration, he was in charge, in cooperation with Yitzhak Rabin, of the peace process with the Palestinians.

He directed the covert negotiations in Oslo. At the end of those negotiations an agreement was signed by a foreign ministry director Uri Savir, and Palestinian Authority representative Abu Ala, in the presence of Shimon Peres. This signing and the letters of mutual recognition exchanged by Rabin and Arafat led to the signing of the declaration of principles regarding interim self-governing arrangements at a festive ceremony held at the White House by Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and US President Bill Clinton.

These sorts of achievements have been discussed all throughout the morning, but they have resonated of course not just in this place in words and rhetoric but also across the world. I guess a lot of people have been asking how is it that somebody who is known for their contribution not just in terms of their sometimes necessarily hawkish behaviour can also have dove-ish views. To quote a Time article that went through the life and times of Shimon Peres, 'He has come to believe that peace with the Palestinians was in the end in Israel's national interests'. He recognised that there was an important part of having a two-state solution, to enable a situation where Israel could survive but also could work with its neighbours to achieve peace. That article also stated:

If it weren't for Israel's nuclear program, Peres argues, the historic Oslo Accords he helped negotiate with the Palestinians wouldn't have been possible.

That is the contribution not just of somebody who is able to be in a position to set the tone of their country, help build it, preserve it and secure it; also to be a pragmatist about how to build its future. That is as much what we pay honour for today as well.

In particular, I was moved by a quote by Shimon Peres in terms of the vision for his country and what can be achieved. He said: 'Optimists and pessimists die the exact same death, but they live very different lives.' That is in the end what we are honouring today. We all have our own contribution to make in this place and across the world, but often the conclusion of our work and our life lives well beyond us. So Shimon Peres' legacy is one that now rests with eternity. But it has been to make a contribution to the building of the state of Israel, to secure it and to live well beyond him.

Question agreed to, honourable members standing in their places.