President Shimon Peres has the new distinction of being the first person to be featured on Amazon’s Kindle Single interview series that will feature world leaders.

Thursday’s debut is featured under the title “The Optimist,” a fitting description for a man who has preached peace agreements, such as the Oslo Accord, even if they cause war.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, sharing it with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and with arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, who exploited world Anti-Zionism to wear the mantle of peace by keeping a pistol by his hip.

Peres is 89 years old although most of the world considers him  to be 90 because of pre-birthday celebrations that began two months before his Gregorian calendar birthday on August 2. He will be 90 on the Hebrew calendar this coming Shabbat.

The interview that is available on Kindle Singles was carried out by David Samuels, in association with the online  Tablet Magazine. Samuels is a contributing editor at Harper’s and a longtime contributor to The New Yorker and The Atlantic.

“In September of 1962, novelist Alex Haley’s conversation with Miles Davis launched the Playboy Interview, and pioneered the idea of a long-form, extended dialogue with the great personalities of our time,” said David Blum, editor of Kindle Singles. “We hope to carry forward that tradition, and use the unlimited digital space to engage great artists and thinkers in conversation with skilled writers and interviewers.”

Kindle Singles was launched in 2011, and the interviews with world leaders is a new platform for the company.

President Peres sent a special message of congratulations on Tuesday in honor of the birth of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge’s new baby.

He also sent a special gift of a baby suit with an embroidered message on it – “From Israel with Love”

“From Jerusalem, Israel, I want to express our happiness and prayers for the young prince,” President Peres wrote. “Never in my life did I see the people of the world so united in happiness. It was a demonstration of where royalty helps democracy and where the people have shown what a true democracy is. The streets were full and smiles were on everybody’s face.

“I am happy to see the whole world so happy with the birth of this young boy. I am 90 years old, so I saw his father when he was a young boy and now I hope we shall see this newly born prince, doing his job in the most democratic and royal manner. The world became richer with this event.

God bless the Queen, From Jerusalem, Mazal Tov!”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has turned his schedule upside down to keep his three-ring circus from collapsing under his “peace tent” that he has weighted down with his fake smile and iron fist to save himself from looking like a diplomatic clown.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas are not so stupid as to let themselves be blamed for any failure to resume a charade of the resumption of the peace process after a hiatus of more than two years. That leaves Kerry doing cartwheels to get the monkey off his back.

Israel has insisted that there be no pre-conditions, which in today’s diplomatic acrobats would mean acceding whatever Abbas demands, such as a building freeze or accepting a future PA state on the “basis” of the old borders of Israel.

Abbas has insisted that the only thing to talk about is when Israel is ready to accept what he considers a de facto state based on all of his political and territorial demands that the United Nations General Assembly, which is in his pocket, has confirmed through a resolution that is non-binding but which gave the PA a free pass to sit on key U.N. committees such as UNESCO. Next in line is the International Court.

Kerry has brought in Jordan’s King Abdullah into the picture. He is on his knees before Washington because of the spillover of the Syrian civil war into Jordan and the kingdom’s own precarious state in the face of louder tremors from the Bedouin and non-Jordan Arabs (read: Arabs who fled from Israel.) Add to that the up and coming Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan and you come up with n explosive mixture that makes the king all the more dependent on the United States for help.

King Abdullah will do anything Kerry tells him to do, and it is in his own best interests to show himself as peacemaker by bringing the three-ring circus into his own court.

Netanyahu has two Israelis who are weighing him down. President Shimon Peres and “Minister of Peace Process” Tzipi Livni, like Kerry, have made as career out of “good will” concessions to the Palestinian Authority.

It is anyone’s guess what will come out of all this, but after wading through all of the trial balloons and media manipulation by the actors, Kerry clearly will be a lot less effective in other parts of the world if he is seen as a failure in the Middle East and cannot pin the blame on Abbas or Netanyahu for failing to resume direct talks.

The worst-case scenario for Kerry, if he cannot pull off a four-way stage show now, probably will be an agreement to continue talk about continuing to agree to talk about an agreement.

The circus must go on.

“It turns out that Moses wasn’t such a bad navigator after all, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the Israeli Presidential Conference birthday party for President Shimon Peres Thursday evening.

Negating the old joke that Moses could have turned towards Saudi Arabia and lead the People of Israel from Egypt to a land of oil instead of one of “milk and honey” and sand, the Prime Minister said, “We’re lucky enough not to have discovered gas in our first 65 years, or 60 years, because we could rely on our wits, on our ingenuity.

“And yesterday we decided to open up our gas fields for developing an export. We’re not going to make the mistake of those countries who said we shall not export, and the gas remained in the ground and in the sea. We’re going to develop the gas for our internal market and we’re going to fill up the coffers of the state with what we bring from exports for the benefit of all Israelis.”

Cisco’s CEO touts Arab-Jewish teamwork, meet with Peres, announces an innovation venture with   Bezeq communications system, and predicts Israel will be the world’s first totally digital country.

Cisco CEO John Chambers, speaking about his company’s involvement in Israel Electric Corporation’s fiber optic venture, predicted on Wednesday, “Israel is about to become the first fully digital country in the world.”

“This is something that most countries do a little at a time; you are going to do everything at once,” he added.

Cisco also announced it is opening a new innovation center with Israel’s Bezeq communications system and its mobile cell division Pelephone and will test on Pelephone’s live production network the world’s first self-optimizing heterogeneous configuration that combines small-cell, Wi-Fi and macro technologies, Globes business newspaper reported.

Last February, Cisco paid $475 million for Israel’s Intucell company.

Chambers. who attended President Shimon Peres’ pre-90th birthday celebrations Tuesday night, said after meeting with Wednesday with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that Cisco intends to make available $15 million for funds “that support integration of Israeli Arabs, and development of innovative security technologies.”

Cisco already employs approximately 200 people in Israel and intends to hire 100 more,

Once a year, President Shimon Peres hosts the President’s Conference and once again this year, I was invited to attend. It’s fun to go as a blogger – to be recognized with all the honor and privilege of a journalist. Of course, we don’t get the same pay, but we are free in a way that journalists shouldn’t be. They are supposed to report the news, though too many break that line and cross into the realm of making news.

Bloggers are free to think and express thoughts and so it is particularly nice that we are rewarded here with this. Being a blogger/journalist means walking past a line of dozens, perhaps even hundreds to the front – express check in.

The conference is called Tomorrow 2013 – and it presents a vision of what is to come – something quite ambitious for a man of 90 years of age. This year, Peres’ annual conference has become a joint birthday celebration. Barbra Streisand, Sharon Stone, and Bill Clinton have come to help him celebrate.

As with last year, the lead speaker is former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. He is a great speaker, grace, intelligence, humor. He has a vision of the Middle East that enables us to see a bright and clear world, where there is mutual respect, security for all, and truly a world focused on that which betters mankind. He says he is not naive and in many ways I agree. He correctly points out that “much of the sentiment in the west right now is to stay out of Syria, but,” he points out, “as every day shows, the cost of staying out” can (in my words here) be measured in the bodies of innocent Syrians.

Regarding the Syrians, he says “there is only one recourse – to do what is right, even if it is not popular.” He is a popular, dynamic speaker – offering words that are obvious and yet sincere – “we should stand up for truth and democracy.” And yes, he tells us here in Israel, in the only democracy in the Middle East, that “democracy is not just a way of voting, it is a way of thinking.”

My problem with Tony Blair is that when it comes to Israel…suddenly the naiveté comes through. He says we are wrong to think that the two-state solution idea can’t work; in fact, he believes we who believe in any other long-term solution live in a fantasy. He recognizes potential security issues and yet misses the most fundamental of points. This year, as last year, I am left to wonder how he can be so smart when it comes to Syria and Iran, and so blind when it comes to what is happening here.

I’m left with the simple and irrefutable truth that a speaker last year said. I can’t wait to hear her again this year – from her mouth, I expect the truth – the truth as it applies to Israel and the truth as it applies to others in the Middle East. “Even if you give them Jerusalem,” she said last year, “even if you give them Jerusalem, there won’t be peace.” That is the great truth that so many at this conference refuse to see. It goes against all the Tony Blair and Bill Clinton and even Shimon Peres want to believe. And yet, a truth it is.

Visit A Soldier’s Mother.

American actor Robert  De Niro landed in Israel with his son Tuesday morning for a 24-visit, highlighted by his appearance at this evening’s birthday bash for President Shimon Peres, who turns 9o on August 2.

DeNiro, who is not Jewish, met with the president at his Jerusalem home, and among other topics, they spoke about the Iranian nuclear threat. The president also related to the actor and his 17-year-old son the modern history of the re-establishment of the State of Israel and the country’s relations in the Middle East.

The prize-winning actor said he brought is 17-year-old son with to learn about Israel.

“Thank you for coming, President Peres told DeNiro, “We are very happy to see you in our country. Although you received an Oscar prize for your work, you also receive a great amount of love from the People of Israel.”

DeNiro thanked him for his words and noted this is his fifth visit to Israel.