What brought US President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande to the funeral of a former president of a tiny state in the Middle East? Why did former US President Bill Clinton, Britain’s Prince Charles, prime ministers and ministers from around the world and the region trouble themselves to Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl cemetery? What was the reason late President Shimon Peres, who passed away Sept. 28 at the age of 93, drew such an outpouring of respect and adulation? And this begs a more important question: What of all this remained once Air Force One took off from Ben Gurion Airport?
They didn’t come to Jerusalem to eulogize the ninth president of the State of Israel and one of its shortest-serving prime ministers. It appears that no foreign dignitaries attended the funerals of the fifth president, Yitzhak Navon, and of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. (Late Prime Minister Menachem Begin wanted a private ceremony.) The world’s busiest leaders do not cross oceans to bid a final farewell to “friend” Peres, nor to “friend” Yitzhak Rabin, as Clinton fondly called (using the Hebrew word “haver’’) the assassinated leader at his funeral in 1995.
