Your Majesty,

Dear Chairman and Members of the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee,

Dear Prime Minister of Norway,

Laureates Speaker, Chairman Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres,

Distinguished guests,

Because I don’t think there is any precedent for one person to win twice the Nobel Prize, Please allow me to take this opportunity to express my personal feelings about the importance attached to this honor.

Most teenagers at this age are trying to unlock the secrets of math and the mysteries of the Bible; first love blooms at an older age; at the tender of under 16, I turned in the gun so I could defend myself .

This is not my dream. I want to be a water engineer. I studied in an agricultural school and I felt that as a water supply project it was an important industry in the hot Middle East. I still think that today. However, I had to resort to a gun.

I served in the military for decades. It is my charge that young men and women who want to live, want to love, go to their deaths are not. Shells fall to defend our lives.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In my current position, I have ample opportunity to fly over the State of Israel, and other recent parts, as well as the Middle East. The view from the plane is stunning, of deep blue oceans and lakes, dark green fields, dune-colored deserts, stone-gray mountains, and peppered whitewashed, red-roofed houses throughout the countryside.

And the cemetery. Graves As far as the eye can see.

Hundreds of cemeteries are in our part of the world, in the Middle East - in our home in Israel, but also in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. From an airplane window, from thousands of feet above, their countless tombstones are silent. But their protests have been going on for decades from the Middle East and around the world.

Standing here today, I want to pay tribute to our loved ones - and our past enemies. My wish goes out to all the people - all the nations that have fallen in all the wars; and their family members who bear the enduring burden of bereavement; the disabled whose scars will never heal. Tonight, I want to thank everyone for whom this important award is theirs.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am a young man who is now fully grown years old. In Hebrew, we say, 'Na'ar hayiti, vit e, zakanti' [I am a young man, who grew up to full years]. And of all the memories I have stored in my seventy-two years, what I should remember most of all, my last day, was the silence: the moments of heavy silence after, and the moments of terrible silence before.

As a soldier, as a commander, and as Secretary of Defense, I have ordered many military operations. And with the joy of victory and the sadness of bereavement, I will always remember the moments after taking such a decision: the booing of a senior official or cabinet minister slowly rising to their seats; seeing them retreat in support; the sound of the voices turning off door, and then in silence I remain alone.

This is the moment you grasp that, as a result of the decisions just made, people can go to their deaths. People from my country, people from other countries. They still don't know it.

In moments like this, they still laugh and cry; still weave plans and dream of love; still meditate about planting a garden or building a house - little do they know that these are their last hours on earth. Which of them are destined to die? Whose picture will appear on the black screen in tomorrow's newspaper? whose mother will soon be in mourning? Will the world crumble under the weight of loss?

As a former soldier, I will always remember the moment of silence: when the clock in my hand seems to be spinning, when time is running out, in an hour, in a minute, it will break out of hell.

In that moment of great tension before the finger pulled the trigger, just before the fuse began to burn; in that terrifying quiet moment, there was still time to wonder, to be alone: ??did action really have to be taken, whether there was any Other options? No other way?

'The Kindergarten of God's Mercy,' wrote the poet Yehudah Ami Hai, who is here with us this evening - and I quote from him:

'The Kindergarten of God's Mercy,'

So for primary and secondary school students,

No longer pity their elders,

Leave their own,

Sometimes they will grab all four,

Through the burning sand,

To reach the casualty station, bleed.

For decades, God has not taken pity on kindergarteners in the Middle East, or their students, or their elders. There has been no mercy for the Middle East for generations.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am a young man who is now fully grown years old. And all the memories I have stored in my seventy-two years I still remember in hope.

Our people choose the life we ??give them. As scary as it is to say, their lives are in our hands. Tonight, their eyes are on us and their hearts are asking: How empowered are these men and women to be using what will they decide? What kind of morning do we rise tomorrow? A day of peace? war? laughter? Tears?

A child is born in a completely democratic way. He couldn't choose his father and mother. He cannot choose his gender or color, his religion, nationality or homeland. Whether he was born into an estate or a manager, whether he lived under a tyrannical or democratic regime was not his choice. From the moment he comes, stingy, into the world, his fate is - to a large extent - determined by the leader of his country. It is they who will decide whether he lives in comfort or in despair, in safety or in fear. His destiny is for us to resolve - to governments, democratic or otherwise.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Just as no two fingerprints are the same, so no two people are the same, every country has its own laws and culture, traditions and leaders. But there is a universal message that can embrace the entire world, and the same concept can lead to disparate systems that have no resemblance to each other and are culturally incompatible with each other.

This is a message carried by the Jewish people for thousands of years, found in the mail in books of books: 'Ve'nishmartem me'od l'nafshoteichem' - 'So take good care of yourselves' -, or in contemporary times perspective, information about the sacredness of life.

National leaders must provide their people with conditions - in infrastructure, if you will - that enable them to enjoy life: freedom of speech and movement; food and shelter; and most importantly: life itself. A man cannot enjoy his rights if he is not alive. So every country must protect and preserve the key element in its national spirit: the lives of its citizens.

Only to defend these lives we can appeal and enlist our citizens in the military. And to defend the lives of our citizens serving in the military, we invest in huge aircraft and tanks, among other means. Yet despite all this, we cannot protect our living citizens and soldiers. Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testament to the failure of national leaders to recognize human life.

There is only one radical means of sanctifying human life. A fundamental solution is a true peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Professionals contain certain contradictions. We take the best and bravest young men into the army. We offer these devices at the expense of a virtual fortune. We train them rigorously so that one day they have to do their part - and we expect them to do well.

Yet we fervently pray that this day will never come - that the planes will never take off, the tanks will never move forward, and the soldiers will never mount an attack for which they have been trained so well.

We pray that it never happens because of the sanctity of life.

History as a whole, and modern history in particular, has gone through tragic times when national leaders turned their citizens into cannon fodder in the name of evil theories: the evil of fascism, of Nazism horrible. Pictures of children, marches to slaughter, pictures of horrified women at Gates Crematorium must loom before the eyes of our generation of leaders and future generations. They must serve as a warning to all who are in power.

Almost all institutions do not have the sanctity of life at the core of their worldview, and all of these institutions have collapsed and no more. You can tell you guys are on our own time.

However, this is not the full picture. To preserve the sanctity of life, we must sometimes take risks. Sometimes there is no other way to protect our citizens than to fight against their lives, their safety and their freedoms. This is the belief of every democratic country.

In the State of Israel, and where I am today in the Israel Defense Forces, where I have had the privilege to serve, we have always believed in the sanctity of life as the highest value. We never experience war unless it is forced upon us.

The history of the State of Israel, the history of the Israel Defense Forces, is packed with thousands of stories of soldiers who sacrificed themselves - who died to save wounded comrades, who gave themselves Save your life and avoid harming innocent people on their enemy's side.

In the coming days, a special committee of the Israel Defense Forces will finalize the drafting of a code of conduct for our soldiers. The enactment concerning human life will be as follows, and I quote:

'Recognizing its supreme importance, the soldier will protect human life in all possible ways and from endangering himself or others, to the extent deemed necessary to achieve this mission. 'The sanctity of life, in the perspective of these soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, will be reflected in all their actions.

For many years to come - even after the war is over and peace is our land - these words will remain a pillar of fire in our camps and a guiding light for our people. Reasons for us to be proud.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We are building peace. This enterprise of architects and engineers is engaged in the work that continues even as we gather here today to build peace, layer by layer, brick by brick. The work is difficult, complex, and trying. Mistakes can topple entire structures and bring disaster upon us.

So we are determined to do a good job - despite the numbers of murderous terrorism, despite the fanaticism and cruelty of the enemies of peace.

We will continue the peace process with determination and perseverance. We won't let up. We will not give up peace. We will defeat all enemies because the choice is stark for us all. We will prevail.

We will win because we believe that building peace is a great blessing to us and to our children. We think it is a benefit to our neighbors in every way, and to our partners in this enterprise - the United States, Russia, Norway - not so many of which made it possible to sign agreements here, later in Washington, later in Cairo, That was written at the beginning of the solution to the longest and most difficult part of the Arab-Israeli conflict: the Palestinian and Israeli one. We thank others who have contributed to it as well.

We wake up every morning now because of different people. Peace is possible. We see hope in the eyes of our children. We see that in the faces of our soldiers, in the streets, in the cars, in the fields. We cannot let them down. We won't let them down.

I stand here not just today, on this little podium in Oslo.

I'm talking here in the name of the generations of Israelites and the Jewish shepherds of Israel - you know, King David was a shepherd and he started building Jerusalem about 3,000 years ago - the shepherds and dressers of the sycamore trees, and as the prophet Amos was; as the rebels were set up against, as the prophet Jeremiah was; and as the prophet Jeremiah was and men who descended into the sea, like the prophet Jonah.

I speak here in the name of poets and people who dreamed of ending wars, like the prophet Isaiah.

I come here also to speak to the names, sons of the Jewish people like Albert Einstein and Baruch Spinoza, like Maimonides, Freud and Kafka .

My Messenger of the millions who died in the Holocaust, among whom were certainly the many Einsteins and Freuds who were lost to us, and to humanity, in the crematoriums of fire.

I am here the messenger to Jerusalem, whose Gates I am in the struggle for the day of the siege; Jerusalem has been, and is to this day, the people, who pray to Jerusalem three times a day.

And I am also a messenger to children who draw their dreams of peace; and to immigrants from St. Petersburg and Addis Ababa.

I stand here primarily for future generations so that we can be seen as worthy of all the gold medals you bestow upon me and my colleagues today.

I stand here as a messenger today - if they are allowed - to our neighbors who are our enemies. I stand here as a messenger of soaring hope for a people who have experienced the worst, and history has in spite of all delivered its trademarks - not just for the Jewish people of Narnia, but for all of humanity.

I have here 5,000,000 citizens of Israel - Jews, Arabs, Druze and Circassians - five million hearts beating for peace, five million eyes looking at us with such great expectations for peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to thank, first of all, these citizens of Israel, of all generations, of all political persuasions, for their sacrifices and tireless struggle given to us Bringing peace and stability closer to our goal.

I would like to thank our partners - the Egyptians, Jordanians and Palestinians, with whom we share this Nobel Prize in Literature, chaired by Mr. Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization -Who chose the path of peace and wrote a new page in the history of the Middle East.

I would like to thank the members of the Israeli Government, but most importantly my partner in Foreign Affairs, Mr. Shimon Peres, whose energy and dedication to the cause of peace are an example to us all.

I want to thank my family for supporting me on the long road I have passed.

Of course, I would like to thank the Chairman, the members of the Nobel Prize Committee and the Norwegian people for their courage in bestowing this distinguished honor on me and my colleagues and myself.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Please allow me to close with you by sharing a traditional Jewish blessing that has been recited by my people, in good times and bad, to show how deeply they are Desire:

'God will bring strength to his people; God will bless his people - all of us - in peace.

Thank you very much.