RUSH: Oh, I see where Shimon Peres has passed away. I met Shimon Peres on my trip to Israel in 1993. I was there for five days, well, actually six days, and it was the equivalent of a college semester in terms of what I learned. But that guy, it was weird. It was weird. Well, we show up. I had an entourage. I didn’t figure out until afterward that he had been told the left-wing version of who I am. ‘Cause it didn’t make any sense.

He started ragging on Reagan. He started taunting me, taunting me about Reagan, and he was making comments about people destroying trees, which was an early allusion to climate change, and he kept undoing his belt. We’re sitting there, the meeting started out with 20 people in the room and then about 15 left, it was five of us and him. He kept undoing his belt and reattaching his belt, while seated. I didn’t look around. I noticed it. Didn’t comment on it.

I think the whole visit was a tease based on who he had been told I was. They probably told him I was Netanyahu’s illegitimate son or something. It was strange. When we were meeting with him in his office, while we were just getting up to leave his office, a car alarm — and this is a very secure set of offices where the prime minister was. Rabin was the prime minister at the time. Yitzhak Rabin, pronounced “robin” there, and a car alarm starts, and they hustled us away until they got that straightened out, then we left.

Later in the day our group is over at the Knesset and we’re leaving the Knesset — oh, I’m leaving something out. We were told when we were leaving that it was Shimon Peres’s car that the alarm had gone off. Okay, big deal. When we were leaving the Knesset later the same day, five o’clock in the afternoon, Shimon Peres walks in. And one guy traveling with me walked up to him, “Hey, buddy, did you get your car alarm fixed?” And I said, “Oh, my God, don’t do this to me.”

And Peres looked at him and just said, “Apparently, you are more informed than I. I have no idea what you’re referring to, buddy.” I said, “Oh, my God, oh, gee.” And we hightailed it. It’s now one of the funny talking points of the trip. And ragging on the trees, provoking Reagan and undoing belt buckle. And there was serious discussion at the same time. I mean, the whole meeting wasn’t that.

There was actually serious discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. In fact, ’93 when I was there, Rabin was the prime minister, and it was the first inkling that they in Israel were willing to sit down and actually talk with Arafat. And I asked them all, “Why do you think you can make peace with these guys?” I asked ’em pointedly, “Is it generational? You guys have been fighting this war your whole life. You’re now grandfathers. You don’t want your kids to grow up and have to live the way you did?”

“Oh, no, no. No, no, no. This is the right time.” I came later to understand the reason that they were all talking was because the Clinton administration was demanding that more accommodations with Arafat be made. In fact, it got so bad that Bill Clinton offered Yasser — long after 1993, but Clinton offered Arafat everything he was demanding, and Arafat backed out. And that’s when we knew that they don’t want to end it. Arafat didn’t, anyway, the Fatah party and the PLO.