An Open Letter from President Shimon Peres to President Barack Obama

Dear Mr. President, I am shocked, Mister President, truly shocked. After all the hope you have inspired for a new America, after your denunciation of American arrogance, after your pledge to solve problems with the world's terrorists through talking, here you go and order the American Navy SEALS to violate the human rights of the Somalian pirates without so much as reading them their Miranda rights! Have you lost your senses? Why could you not have learned from the lessons offered to you by Israel in its successful strategy to get Gilad Shavit released from captivity! After all, we have worked quietly and peacefully for more than three years to obtain Shavit's freedom. Why could you not have been content to do the same with Captain Phillips?What happened to your promise to deal with all forms of activism in the world being perpetrated by misunderstood militants through civilized talking? Mr. President, I have a great amount of experience in dealing successfully with terrorism and violence, and this is why I wish to explain to you why your actions were unjustified and simply unforgivable. The first thing you must realize is that one can only make peace with one's enemies. With one's friends there is no need to make peace. There is no military solution to the problems of terrorism, and this is why you should have sought a diplomatic solution to the holding of Captain Richard Phillips. "No Justice, No Peace," as they say. You must now invite the leaders of this Somalian protest organization responsible for the hijacking of the ship and the holding of Captain Phillips to the White House. You must learn to feel their pain and understand their needs. But most importantly, you must end the illegal occupation of territory that does not belong to you! First, you must withdraw from Guam and Hawaii and remove all the illegal Anglo-Saxon settlers there. But that is just a beginning. Large sections of the United States, including the Southwest, are illegally occupied territories. Some even have a Hispanic majority.The solution is to create two states for two peoples inside Illinois itself. One will be for the Americans and the other for the Somali pirates.Then there is the matter of the status of Washington, DC. It has a sizeable Somali minority, many of whom drive taxis. Your selfish insistence that the District of Columbia remain American is racist and insensitive. You must end the apartheid regime inside America and turn Washington into the shared capital of two states.Then you must pay compensation to the families of the Somali pirates mercilessly killed in cold blood by your Navy SEALS. You must grant them survivor benefits from the American social security administration and lands inside Yellowstone Park. This is not even the first time that you Americans violated the civil rights of pirates. Your crimes go all the way back to Thomas Jefferson and his imperialist attacks on the Barbary coast pirates. The aggressors were led by that racist warmonger Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, Jr., who attacked pirate ships in Tripoli for no better reason than that they had hijacked the USS Philadelphia. Did you not learn anything from that early bout of American imperialist insensitivity?You must offer the pirates Internet web services and five-star tourist hotels in exchange for their promising to abandon violence. After all, that is how we turned Yasser Arafat into a peace partner. You see, military force serves no role any more in the post-modern universe. It is passe. It is archaic. Today, consumer interests dominate the world, and the Somali activists of the earth will surely wish to make peace in exchange for some profits from participating in global trade. The attacks on the American ship by the Somali pirates came because you have been insufficiently sensitive to the needs of the Other. You should have negotiated with them even while the ship was under attack. Conditioning negotiations on an end to violence is a no-win situation. It will simply prolong the bloodshed! You must put your own house in order, eliminate inequality and injustice inside Chicago, and then the militants will no longer target you. The key is to build a New Middle Africa, one in which everyone is so busy with the important matters of developing tourism, infrastructure investments and high-technology that they will have no time to pursue violence. Begin by declaring a unilateral ceasefire! Mr. President, blessed is the peacemaker. Remember Martin Luther King! Go meet with the legitimate representatives of the Somali pirates. The entire world will support you and congratulate you if you respond to the attack on the American ship by disarming the United States and opening serious dialogue with the pirate activists. All we are saying is give peace a chance. Yitzhak Rabin would have approved. Yes, chaver, what you need is shalom, salaam, peace. You will be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in recognition. Do not allow yourself to be drawn down into the gutter of retaliation. Violence never achieves anything. History has no lessons. History is the dead past. Follow my example! Provide the Somali pirate organization with anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles so that they can battle against the true radicals and extremists. And they will do so with no ACLU or Supreme Court to restrain them! Demonstrate your humanity by paying pensions to any widows and orphans of the militants killed by the Navy SEALS. Mr. President, my own peace policies have eliminated war, bloodshed and terror from the Middle East. We now have only peace partners. If you follow in my footsteps, you can achieve the same lofty goals. Peacefully yours, Shimon Peres, Peacemaker-at- Large