News

Shimon Peres, Former Leader of Israel, Dies

Peres served as the country's prime minister and president, and worked in many other aspects of government during his seven decades in politics.

Published Sept. 27, 2016

 (Israel government press office/Haaretz)
Image Via Israel government press office/Haaretz

Shimon Peres, who was one of the last politicians alive who was present when the state of Israel was created, has died after suffering a stroke.  He was 93.

Peres was born in Wiszniew, Poland (now Belarus) in 1923, and moved with his family to what was then known as British Mandate Palestine when he was 11 years old. He was first elected to the Knesset, or the Israeli parliament, in 1959, and occupied many roles in the country's government.  Peres won a joint Nobel Prize in 1994, while he was serving as Israel's foreign minister:

His defining achievement was as one of the key architects of the Oslo peace accords, for which he was jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize with the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Peres' son Chemi confirmed his death on 28 September 2016:

Our father's legacy has always been to look to tomorrow. We were privileged to be part of his private family, but today we sense that the entire nation of Israel and the global community share this great loss. We share this pain together.

Peres, once a hawkish figure, gradually grew more centrist in the 1980s, and eventually became an outspoken advocate for peace.  In 2013, a year before he retired as president, he said:

There is no alternative to peace. There is no sense to go to war.

Brooke Binkowski is a former editor for Snopes.

Article Tags