Fields of dreams
Shimon Peres was a fierce advocate for Israel’s solar energy sector
David Ben-Gurion, in 1969, met with an idealistic Young Judaea yearcourse group on the lawn of Kibbutz Sde Boker, outside his modest hut, and urged them to build a new kibbutz in the desert. Thirty-eight years later, his protégé, the newly minted president of the State of Israel, Shimon Peres, arrived in the Arava on a picturesque sunny day at that Young Judaea kibbutz, Ketura, and urged members to fulfill Ben-Gurion’s unrealized dream for the desert: to provide green energy for Israel and the world.
“The largest and most impressive source of energy in our world and the source of life for every plant and animal, yet a source so little used by mankind today, is the sun .... Solar energy will continue to flow toward us almost indefinitely,” Ben-Gurion, who was instrumental in making sure that hot water solar heaters were on nearly every Israeli rooftop, observed as far back as 1955.
The quest for solar energy in Israel is intrinsically linked to Peres’s sense of carrying Ben-Gurion’s torch and is captured in three very different scenes, as in a movie, from the decade of struggle the industry has endured. Each scene is captured in a picture and has its charms: the fascination with technology and its potential peace dividend; Peres’s love of female celebrity and bringing people together; and the sweet triumph of idealism over cynicism, especially in the desert.
The presidential motorcade pulls up to the curb outside of Keren Kolot, the Ketura guest house. It was 2007. Jucha, the mustached senior aide to Peres and his unofficial prolific photographer, comes around and opens the reinforced black door. About 60 people burst into peace songs to welcome the president, including some 40 Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian and American students studying at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, also based on Ketura.
It is classic Peres, at his very best: deep voice, poetic words, inspiration as bright as the sun that day. Jucha, in setting up the visit, knew the idealism of the people of the Arava would give Peres energy. And Peres, on his tour of the experimental solar park at the Arava Institute, returned the favor to all around him. He implores us to fight the bureaucracy until we win the solar battle. He offers his assistance. He invokes Ben-Gurion’s vision. He says only from Ketura and the Arava could this revolution be launched. He left us no choice.
Ketura member Yuval Ramos snaps a picture of the president inspecting one of the first thin-film new panels to arrive in Israel that was being tested. Suleiman H., a Jordanian who became quietly instrumental in the founding of the solar industries in Israel and Jordan, who now lives on Ketura and is studying for a doctorate in solar desalination, explains to Peres that the thin film is better suited for the heat of the desert, and this author, wearing a T-shirt of Ben-Gurion with a revolutionary beret, explains the rollout plan. Ramos gets the shot.
We take on the State of Israel, with the blessing of its president. What Peres didn’t say that memorable day was how difficult the journey was going to be.
It is hard to speak about Peres’s presidency without name-dropping. He was, quite frankly, a babe magnet. Rita. Madonna. Natalie Portman. Naomi Campbell.
I had the fun of seeing that firsthand, when he invited Shakira and my sister-inlaw Sarah Silverman to headline his President’s Conference in 2011.
“When I think of the Jews and the Palestinians, the only real solution is the classic buddy movie formula,” Silverman said to a packed Jerusalem International Convention Center. “You take two enemies and they are forced together to work on some common goal and in the end realize that they are not that different. How about solar power? How about powering the world with this beautiful sun they share? Or else a common enemy, like a monster from outer space.”
I was sitting with Shakira in the front row and Silverman zapped me from the stage for allegedly flirting with the singer; I maintain that we were speaking about putting solar power on the orphanages she sponsors in Colombia. Really.
After the event, Silverman’s handlers asked if it would be okay to wait for her meeting with Peres. I signaled to her that we needed to speak to him now. Within 15 minutes, with a spring in his steps, he gushed in to greet her like a giddy teenager.
“You’re dangerous,” beamed the president, as he embraced her. “That’s why you have security, Mr. President,” Silverman cutely responded. “I need a whole army with you,” he said, not missing a beat and smiling broadly.
Silverman paused and then broke the president’s star-struck gaze. “My brother-inlaw would like to speak with you about solar power,” she said, deadpan.
He wanted to continue the love affair, but I put my hand on his shoulder to shift his attention. Silverman’s manager, Amy Zvi, snapped the shot.
While the president has no policy role in the government, let’s just say he knows people, and we needed to make sure the Finance Ministry’s solar proposal would not be added the next day to the official cabinet agenda, which would then be meeting the following Sunday. The proposal was a death blow to the young industry he had encouraged four years earlier that day at Ketura.
At the closing plenary of the President’s Conference, Peres went on the attack: “Ben-Gurion wouldn’t have asked what the price of solar is, he would have just built.”
The Finance Ministry backed off, and we had several more weeks to improve the proposal.
At her show in Tel Aviv, Silverman announced to the hipster crowd: “Yes, I f **** d Shimon Peres.” It was actually the Finance Ministry that got the treatment, but he would have appreciated the line if he was there.
Peres was very taken with a striking American blond, sporting a South African accent and fire for Rwandan orphans in her soul. Another Young Judaean, Anne Heyman, met her husband as a volunteer at the very same Kibbutz Ketura that developed the first solar field in the Middle East.
Heyman, leveraging Israel’s long history of creating youth villages, brought that model to Rwanda and established perhaps the most hopeful place on the planet, the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village.
Through the Kibbutz Ketura connection, we were invited to build there sub-Saharan Africa’s first commercial-scale solar field, based on the model of the solar field at Ketura, which was completed in 2011.
It is one thing to dream up a cool idea, but getting all the permissions and buy-in of the Rwandan government is another. Luckily, Peres was turning 90, and there was going to be a birthday celebration at his President’s Conference in 2013. President Kagame of Rwanda, along with former president Bill Clinton and others, were the special guests.
Kagame’s participation created for Heyman and myself the opportunity to host an event for the Rwandan president at the King David Hotel and provide a progress report on our solar plans at the youth village.
The Jerusalem Post carried it on page one. A month later, the deal was signed.
“As a pioneer in its sector and region, the solar field to be established in the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village is an important stride in our mission for tikkun olam – making the world a better place,” Peres said later. “This wonderful initiative will serve as a shining beacon of hope and progress for humanity, and as an example of what Israel can contribute to the developing world. In the hope that Israeli renewable energy expertise can continue to serve developing communities around the world, I wish the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village much success on behalf of the State of Israel.”
Peres became the living bridge from Ben-Gurion’s solar vision to Israel’s first solar field at Kibbutz Ketura and into Africa, with the first solar field of its kind in that region.
Heyman died in a horse-riding accident six months later, and Peres’s condolence letter was read at her funeral in New York as the snow fell heavily outside. “Except for the rain on her wedding day and the snowstorm today, her whole life was sunshine,” said one of the eulogizers.
In 2014, I received a call from the office of Eilot Regional Council chairman Udi Gat with the message that President Peres was attending a night wedding at Timna Park and would like to see one of the solar fields in the Arava beforehand.
The sun was setting by the time the presidential motorcade pulled up to the gate at the solar field at Kibbutz Elifaz. Clearly more frail and a bit smaller than the Peres who nearly seven years earlier, at nearby Ketura, gave us the charge to create the solar industry, the president emerged from the black sedan, greeted the local dignitaries and workers and stepped into a sunny spot next to a row of solar panels with the Jordanian mountains behind him.
“Mr. President!” I began. “In 2007, you came to Ketura to urge us to bring solar power to Israel. Here we are nearly seven years later and happy to report that mission is accomplished. By 2020, 100% of the daytime power from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea will be from the sun.”
Gat stood by Peres and beamed because he had been the local driving force. Peres was slated to step down, and the Knesset soon was going to elect a new president, so I made my move.
“Mr. President, we need your help still in two ways,” I continued. “First, the government needs to approve new solar quotas for more fields, and don’t you think that the next president should be a solar pioneer?” Ballsy, right? I figured: How many people can actually say they fought for and fulfilled the storyline from Ben-Gurion’s solar vision to his protégé’s call to action to the actual gleaming facts on the ground in Israel and in Africa?
The president’s endorsement, there in the perfect end-of-day light in the Arava, at the twilight of his career, would be the perfect ending to this solar story.
Peres paused for a second, and the ever-present Jucha yelled out from the gathered crowd, “Shimon, he’s serious.”
The president smiled, and I thought I had nailed it.
“I’m not so sure an endorsement from me will be helpful,” he laughed, holding my hand, with Jucha capturing the moment for posterity.
After inspecting the solar field and posing for pictures, the president returned to the black armored car, and I stood there and literally watched him ride off into the sunset.
Yosef I. Abramowitz serves as CEO of Energiya Global Capital and is one of the founders of the solar industries in Israel, East Africa,West Africa and elsewhere. In one of his final acts, Peres nominated him for the UN climate prize. He can be followed @KaptainSunshine.