Spectaguards and Penn Police don't often work alongside Israeli secret servicemen.
Then again, former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres doesn't often come to West Philadelphia.
Brought to Penn by Caravan for Democracy -- an organization sponsored by the Jewish National Fund, Media Watch International and Hamagshimim -- Peres held a brief press conference at the Annenberg Center before delivering a short speech to and conducting a question-and-answer session with around 800 participants Sunday evening.
"Hillel was thrilled at the opportunity to partner with Caravan for Democracy in bringing such a speaker to Penn's campus," Penn Hillel program director Kate Speizer said.
Peres' political career is as old as the state of Israel itself. After service with the Haganah, a pre-independence paramilitary defense force, the Belarusian immigrant rose through the ranks, peaking during the two non-consecutive terms he served as prime minister in 1984 and, following the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, for seven months in 1995.
Sharing a Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Yasser Arafat in 1994, Peres was generally supportive of U.S. policy in the Middle East throughout the day.
"America was attacked on its own soil," he said, positing that America's war on terrorism is justified, defensive action. "The United States will win because it is on the right course."
He also strongly supported the war in Iraq. Calling Saddam Hussein "one of the greatest killers of our time," Peres was confident that the Iraqi people "will taste freedom, will taste future," thanks to the United States and its allies.
A one-time minister of transportation and communications to whom the successful development of Israel's aviation and military industries is largely attributed, Peres stressed technology's importance in the peace process.
"When you realize what sparked the war, it was people who thought that modern life and high-tech would destroy their own tradition," Peres said. "It is not modernity but tradition that endangers their lives. They will discover there is not necessarily a contradiction between being [an Arab] and being modern."
Advanced technology can be a gateway for peace, Peres said, as well as a path toward alleviating poverty.
"The first thing the Soviet Union imported from Israel was cows," Peres said, drawing appreciative laughter as he explained that, since Israeli cows produced three times as much milk as their Russian counterparts, the Russians assumed the animals themselves rather than the technology around them were more sophisticated.
Although many believe the current political climate has created a conflict between being a leftist and being a Jew, as many left-wing organizations have adopted anti-Israel -- if not anti-Semitic -- positions, Peres said he was optimistic.
"We shall not lose our heart," Peres said, noting that "in my eyes, anti-Semitism is a non-Jewish sickness."
Ronald Lauder, president of the Jewish National Fund and co-founder of Caravan for Democracy, said that he was pleased to have the opportunity to dispel lies and half-truths about Israel by coordinating the program.
"When I graduated from Penn, I never thought I'd be involved in anything Jewish," he said, adding that, after his graduation in 1965 and the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars, he felt compelled to help "tell the real truth."
College sophomore Vanessa Friedman said that Peres helped to bridge the chasm of misunderstanding between zealots on both sides of the Israeli question.
"I wish more people could have heard him speak," said Friedman, a member of Penn's Pro-Israel Activism Committee. "More people need to hear a view that is not anti-American or anti-Israel."
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