Shimon Peres Net Worth | Celebrity Net Worth

What is Shimon Peres’ net worth?

Shimon Peres was an Israeli politician who had a net worth of $10 million at the time of his death in 2016. Shimon Peres was Prime Minister of Israel from 1984 to 1986 and again from 1995 to 1996, and then was President of Israel from 2007 to 2014. An elder statesman, he represented five political parties over a political career that spanned 70 years and He served in 12 different cabinets.

Education and early life

Shimon Peres was born Szymon Perski on August 2, 1923 in Wiszniew, Poland, to Sara and Yitzhak. His father was a wealthy lumber merchant and his mother was a librarian. Peres was greatly influenced by his grandfather, Rabbi Zvi Meltzer. In 1934, the family moved to Tel Aviv, where Peres attended Gymnasia Balfour and Geula Gymnasium. When he was 15 years old, he moved to the youth village and agricultural boarding school of Ben Shemen and began living in the Geva kibbutz. In 1941, Peres was elected secretary of the Noar HaOved Zionist labor youth movement, of which he would later take over. Meanwhile, all of his relatives who remained in Wiszniew were killed during the Holocaust. In 1947, Peres joined the Haganah. He moved to the United States in the early 1950s, studied at the New School and New York University, and completed a four-month course in management at Harvard University.

Government positions, 1952-1984

After serving in various diplomatic and military positions during and after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Peres held his first high-level government position in 1952, as deputy director general of defense. Later, in 1953, he was promoted to director general of Defense, becoming the youngest person to hold the position. Peres remained in office until 1959. During his tenure as director general, he participated in the historic negotiations over the Sèvres Protocol in 1956. At the end of the decade, Peres was elected to the Knesset as a member of the Mapai party and served as deputy minister of defense until 1965. In that role, he held negotiations with U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963 that resulted in the historic sale of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel.

In the second half of the 1960s, Peres co-founded the Rafi party, which merged with Mapai in 1968 to form the Israeli Labor Party. A year later, Peres was appointed minister of immigrant absorption during the presidency of Golda Meir. He then became Minister of Transport and Communications, and then Minister of Information, both under the Meir government. In 1974, Peres was appointed Minister of Defense during the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a position he held until 1977, when he briefly succeeded Rabin as acting prime minister. After the Likud-led government took power in 1977, Peres assumed the unofficial role of opposition leader in the Knesset. He became vice-president of the Socialist International in 1978 and led the Labor opposition until 1984.

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Prime Minister of Israel, 1984-1986

In the 1984 elections, the Alignment and Likud coalitions agreed to an unusual grand coalition unity government involving Peres as prime minister for two years, followed by Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir for the remaining two. While one was prime minister, the other would serve as foreign minister. Under this rotation arrangement, Peres enjoyed significant popularity during his term from 1984 to 1986, particularly for his Economic Stabilization Plan.

Government positions, 1986-1995

Following his tenure as Foreign Minister from 1986 to 1988, Peres served as Finance Minister from 1988 to 1990. He then returned to the opposition, which he led in the Knesset until 1992, when he was defeated by Yitzhak Rabin in the Israeli Labor Party leadership election. Following Labor’s success in the 1992 Knesset elections, in which Rabin was again prime minister, Peres was appointed foreign minister for the second time. During his second term as foreign minister, he helped engineer the historic Oslo Accords in 1993 and the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan in 1994. For his work on the Oslo Accords, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Prime Minister of Israel, 1995-1996

In late 1995, Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli who opposed the Oslo peace process. Consequently, Peres became acting prime minister and defense minister. He was then named the new leader of the Labor Party, after which he formed a new coalition government and became Israeli prime minister for the second time. In the end, his second term as prime minister lasted only seven months.

Government positions, 1996-2007

Peres again became opposition leader when he lost to Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1996 elections. That year he founded the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation to promote peace in the Middle East. Peres ran for president of Israel in 2000, but lost to Likud candidate Moshe Katsav. He returned in 2001 when he helped bring the Labor Party into a grand coalition unity government with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud. As a result, he became foreign minister during Sharon’s government, a position he held until Labor left the unity government in 2002. The following year, Peres became interim leader of the Labor Party, which had been soundly defeated in the 2003 Knesset elections. In 2005, he was appointed Sharon’s deputy prime minister. Later that year, Peres announced that he was leaving the Labor Party to support Sharon’s new Kadima party. He then resigned from the Knesset in early 2006, only to return as a member of Kadima in that year’s elections.

President of Israel, 2007-2014

In mid-2007, Peres was elected president of Israel. He served as president until July 2014, when he was succeeded by Reuven Rivlin. During his presidency, Peres was noted for his use of social media to communicate with the public. At the end of his presidency, he was 90 years old, making him the world’s oldest head of state.

Personal life and death

In 1945, Peres married Sonya Gelman, whom he had met at the Ben Shemen youth village. The couple informally separated after Peres became president in 2007 and Gelman died in early 2011. They had three children together: Tsvia, Yoni and Nehemia. Beyond his work in the government, Peres wrote poetry and songs throughout his life.

On September 13, 2016, Peres suffered a serious stroke and was hospitalized in Ramat Gan. Although he appeared to be in stable condition after two days, it was later discovered that he had irreversible brain damage and would not be able to recover. On September 28, Peres died at the age of 93. He is buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.