'Israel fought its own battles'

Peres, on Victory Day visit, addresses Eurasian Jewish Congress.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
peres medvedev merkel 311 (photo credit: AP)
peres medvedev merkel 311
(photo credit: AP)
President Shimon Peres, visiting Moscow, struck back at Israel’s detractors in the West, saying that unlike Europeans who called on the US to save them from the Nazi threat, Israel had never asked American mothers to send their sons into harm’s way for its sake.
“There is no other country with a history like Israel’s,” Peres told the Eurasian Jewish Congress. “No other people have had to fight seven wars in 62 years,” he said, adding Israel had stood alone, fought, won and remains a strong, resolute, peace-seeking democracy.
Peres, in Russia for the 65th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, spoke before a conference of 1,000 Jews from Russia and former Soviet republics, many of them WWII veterans, held as part of Victory Day celebrations.
Myriam Peretz, the mother of Uriel and Eliraz who both fell in battle in the Golani brigade, accompanied the president to this Congress.
“Israel does not fear Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” Peres went on to say “for he represents neither his people’s tradition, nor their future, bringing shame on his country. His legacy is one of murder and terror, he hangs men while protests against him rage in the streets.”