EXPERTS ADVISORY

University of Michigan experts can discuss the legacy of Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister, president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, who died at age 93.

Shachar Pinsker, associate professor of Hebrew literature and culture, is an authority on Israel and Hebrew literature written in Palestine/Israel, Europe and America.

“Peres was a complex man with a complicated legacy, a shrewd politician and visionary, an outsider at the center of Israeli history,” he said. “He was not a military person, but most of his achievements, or failures, are in the realm of national security.

“He was responsible for Israel’s nuclear program, and instrumental to the settlements project in the Occupied Territories. He was a Socialist-Zionist who brought neo-liberalism to Israel, and was an architect of the failed Oslo accord. He was a contentious figure most of his life, but in the last decade, he was a popular, ceremonial President of Israel, and became a national symbol.”

Contact: 734-764-8103, spinsker@umich.edu

Ruth Tsoffar is an associate professor of comparative literature and women’s studies and faculty associate at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies. Her research interests include feminism, ethnicity, nationalism, and Jewish and Palestinian literatures.

“Shimon Peres’ life is an excellent reminder that we need to appreciate leaders not only for what they have done in different moments of their life, but for what they have become in that process,” she said.

“Peres has become a true agent of peace, a hurting poet and intellectual who found the precise words with which to speak from the heart and to the hearts of his people against violence. When leadership is scarce, he is one of the few who deeply understood the tragedy of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and the urgent imperative to resolve it.”

Contact: rtsoffar@umich.edu

Juan Cole, professor of history, is an expert on the Middle East.

On his blog, Informed Comment, Cole recently wrote about Peres: “He could be paternalistic toward the Palestinians and chauvinist about Israel, and, indeed, pushed Israeli propaganda in the U.S. relentlessly. But it is hard to fault a man for being a dedicated patriot. When push came to shove, he put everything on the line to try to make peace. He was viciously attacked and lambasted as a traitor and a fool by the Israeli right wing, which has now taken complete control of the government.”

Contact: 734-764-6305, jrcole@umich.edu

Zvi Gitelman, the Preston R. Tisch Professor of Judaic studies, has research interests in Israeli politics, Jewish political thought and behavior, East European politics, and ethnicity and politics, especially in former Communist countries.

Contact: 734-763-4393, zvigitel@umich.edu