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October 18, 2002/Cheshvan 12 5763, Vol. 55, No. 8
Peres' son provides for the blind
Helps Israelis get guide dogs
TOM TUGEND
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Dr. Yonatan Peres examines a Labrador retriever in training at the Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind.
Photo courtesy of Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind
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Dr. Yonatan "Yoni" Peres acknowledges that being the son of Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres can be a mixed blessing.
"The name helps open some doors," he says, "but sometimes it closes them."
The doors through which the younger Peres, a vet, hopes to pass lead to potential supporters of his pet project, the Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind.
With Los Angeles as his base, Peres is spending some months in the United States as the center's volunteer development director.
There are some 20,000 blind persons in Israel, among them 150 veterans, blinded through combat wounds. Some are victims of terrorist attacks.
The acceptance of guide dogs, as of animal pets in general, is not as common in Israel as in the United States, says Peres. He attributes the difference to the higher living standards of Americans, with their larger homes and backyards, as well as an Israeli mentality that associates dogs with pogroms and Nazi concentration camps.
Peres was a member of the Hebrew University's first graduating class in veterinary medicine, but he traces his love of animals back to his childhood.
"That's something you are born with, you don't acquire it," he says.
The middle of three siblings, Yoni Peres, now 50, remembers a difficult childhood as the son of a famous father.
"You were always under the microscope," he recalls.
He has found in the United States a greater appreciation of his father's talents and contributions than in Israel.
Up until a decade ago, a blind Israeli waiting to acquire a guide dog had to travel to the United States for training, a move that required money, separation from family and fluency in English.
In 1991, Noach Braun, who had worked with dogs during his Israeli army service, and subsequently trained in the United States and Britain, opened the guide dog center and three years later moved it to its present location in Beit Oved, south of Tel Aviv.
Peres, then in private practice and teaching at the Hebrew University, joined the center as a volunteer shortly after its opening and is largely responsible for the medical screening and evaluation of potential guide dogs.
For more information on the Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind, call the U.S. office at (215) 343-0373, or visit www.israelguidedog.org.
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