President Shimon Peres has come a long way from being a denigrated politician, an "inveterate schemer" as the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin called him, and a "loser" as he was dubbed by his own partisan members — until emerging into a popular and beloved Israeli icon.
For more than a decade, Peres has been the poster boy of the “beautiful and sane Israel” around the world, mainly during times of ostracizing and boycott. Even the "die-hard Likudniks" [Likud party members], who in the 1980s threw tomatoes at him during his election campaign when visiting the markets, have made an about-face to become his staunch admirers.