This year Israel turns sixty and it has embarked upon a campaign to celebrate its birthday.  Along with technology writers for Slate, PC Magazine, USA Today, BusinessWeek, Aviation Weekly, Wikinews was invited by the America-Israel Friendship League and the Israeli Foreign Ministry to review Israel’s technology sector.  It's part of an effort to 're-brand the country' to show America that there is more to Israel than the Palestinian conflict.  On this trip we saw the people who gave us the Pentium processor and Instant Messaging. The schedule was hectic:  12-14 hours a day were spent doing everything from trips to the Weizmann Institute to dinner with Yossi Vardi. 
On Thursday, the fifth day of the junket, David Saranga of the foreign ministry was able to arrange an exclusive interview for David Shankbone   with the President of Israel, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shimon Peres.  For over an hour they spoke about Iranian politics, whether Israel is in danger of being side-lined in Middle Eastern importance because of Arab oil wealth, and his thoughts against those who say Israeli culture is in a state of decay.  
—Peres on the ebb and flow of his popularity.Shimon Peres spent his early days on kibbutz, a bygone socialist era of Israel. In 1953, at the age of 29, Peres became the youngest ever Director General of the Ministry of Defense.  Forty years later it was Peres who secretly gave the green light for dialogue with Yassir Arafat, of the verboten Palestine Liberation Organization.  It was still official Israeli policy to not speak with the PLO.  Peres shares a Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzak Rabin and Arafat for orchestrating what eventually became the Oslo Accords.  The "roadmap" that came out of Oslo remains the official Israeli (and American) policy for peace in the Palestinian conflict.  Although the majority of Israeli people supported the plans, land for peace was met with a small but fiery resistance in Israel.  For negotiating with Arafat, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shouted at Peres,  "You are worse than Chamberlain!" a reference to Hitler's British appeaser.  It was during this time of heated exchanges in the 1990s that Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a Jew who thought it against Halakhic law to give up land given by God (Hashem).
Peres is the elder statesman of Israeli politics, but he remembers that he has not always been as popular as he is today.  "Popularity is like perfume: nice to smell, dangerous to drink," said Peres.  "You don’t drink it."  The search for popularity, he goes on to say, will kill a person who has an idea against the status quo.  
Below is David Shankbone's interview with Shimon Peres, the President of Israel.
David Shankbone: One of your big initiatives in technology has been nanotechnology.  
DS: What made you focus on nanotechnology as a sector for Israeli investment?
DS: The bomb?
DS: To miniaturize?
DS: That’s amazing.
DS: Are you satisfied with the progress in the nanotechnology sector here in Israel?
DS: Mr. President, as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and as one of the fathers of the modern peace process in Israel, do you still think that there is a future to the peace process?
DS: How do you approach the difficult challenge of talking to the Palestinians when, in the end, they don’t want Israel to exist.  How do you come to an understanding to make peace possible?
DS: How do you feel about that?
DS: Isn’t the answer to that question that wise decisions are made with a basis from memory?  Although a computer can have…
DS: What about the adage, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it”?
—Peres, on whether the Arab states' oil wealth will eclipse Israel's prominence in the region.DS: Don’t you think Darfur is repetition?
DS: Like Dubai?
DS: A criticism of the Arab states is that back in the 1990s they had squandered the wealth that they were making on the high oil price because they had not invested it wisely.  It seems that that has changed, that the Arabs are creating these new wealth funds and that much of the money that is generated in the Middle East is now coming from Arab states.  Are you worried that Israel will become increasingly marginalized in the Middle East?  Right now it’s very Iraq War focused or Iran-focused or the Emirates around the Gulf with their money.
DS: As you know, I’m part of a group from a technology mission over here of journalists.  We went to Meytav, your largest technology incubator, and spoke with their Vice President Norman Sandberg.  One of the things that he raised as an issue is that Israeli society is becoming dichotomized between Tel Aviv and the rest of the country.  How do you develop the brainpower without Israel becoming a city-state with Tel Aviv?  Mr. Sandberg told us nobody wants to go to the North.  They want to stay in Tel Aviv.  They don’t want to actually spread out and work on developing the rest of the country and invest outside of there.  Is that a problem that you foresee that this bubble is forming around Tel Aviv in terms of brainpower?
DS: When you speak of language, Hebrew is very unique.  At a time when languages are disappearing, Hebrew is the only example that I know of a language revived successfully.  Although I don’t speak Hebrew, I understand that the quality of Hebrew spoken by the younger generations has decreased.
DS: You used to not want to see the legs. [Laughs]
DS: What informs the question I asked about Hebrew is that it seems to build such a cohesive society here in Israel.  It’s one of the binding forces...
DS: One value used to be military service.  20 years ago it was anathema to not serve in the military and that was another binding cohesive force in Israeli society and now it’s quite common....
DS: Do you think Israel’s security is at a point where it can move from being concerned with military service to being unconcerned and moving more towards competition in sports or the creative elements?
DS: With Iran, do you think that Israel would ever need to act unilaterally again, to make a strike, in response to their nuclear capabilities?  The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, which is quite controversial, said that they’ve stopped their nuclear weapons program, yet there are many centrifuges in Natanz that are still producing material.
DS: Are you saying the Iranian people will be the agents of change?
DS: But there was so much hope for Mohammad Khatami and yet his administration ended up a disappointment--
DS: But the Iranian people seem to be rallying around their nuclear program.
—On the possibility of an Israeli strike against Iran.DS: As part of a coalition?
DS: And you feel it would be a mistake for Israel to act unilaterally, or not?
DS: You don’t feel America plays that role with Israel?
DS: Although they face it quite often in Iraq and Afghanistan.
DS: How did the Lebanese War help Israel’s security?
DS: Do you think it’s hurt the peace process, the Lebanese War?
DS: Do you think there is still a strong peace movement in Israel?
DS: How have you seen America’s role in the peace process change between Clinton to Bush?
DS: You earlier spoke about modernity and the importance of science and how a lot of the terrorists are very scared of modernity and how it will affect their traditions yet one of Israel’s greatest supporters are the evangelicals in America, who are often seen in America as fighters of science and modernity.
DS: Mitt Romney
DS: What do you hope to achieve with your presidency?
DS: Do you hope to have another term as president?
DS: [Laughs] I think you are already seen as both of those things.
DS: It is unique that when you look at your standing 20 years ago versus now, it’s so different--
DS: [Laughs] Well...
DS: What do you look at as your greatest legacy in your career?
DS: What pops into your head right away when I asked that? [Laughs]
DS: You don’t speak to your children about the things you’ve done in you life or your grandchildren?
DS: They probably know Wikipedia.
DS: You’re very unique in your generation but also in Israel as someone who’s saying “Listen to the younger people.” Wikipedia is something that was basically built by people under 30 and it’s become perhaps the most influential media in the—
DS: Mr. President, I think that that is advice that many of our presidential candidates could heed as much as any young person.  Thank you for your time.

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Shimon Peres discusses the future of Israel