Peres' Global Initiative
By Nathan Jeffay
Jerusalem is buzzing with international visitors here for the second annual Israeli Presidential Conference, which began yesterday and finishes up today.
Israel’s President Shimon Peres has long been an enthusiast for the idea that Israel should be a meeting place for Jewish minds and that the Israel’s leaders should take time out of all the other challenges they face to facilitate this. The conference, his initiative, is intended as the embodiment of that principle and has drawn a crowd of 3,000 participants, many of them community leaders, politicians and academics.
Topics range from the global economic crisis to challenges in the world of art and science. The list of speakers is impressive. In addition to many of Israel’s leading public figures and thinkers it includes Quartet representative and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, China’s minister of information Chen Wang, Skype’s president Josh Silverman, and Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales. However, the conference seems to have set itself too high a bar last year, leading some, including Haaretz, to claim that this year’s guests are small fry in comparison.
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