Shimon Peres Appeals for Facebook Friends

Israeli President Shimon Peres jokes about Jews being not only the people of the Book but also the people of the Facebook, as an electropop video on his social network page goes viral in the blogosphere.

In the jump-cut video Be my Friend, for Peace, which is accompanied by a hypnotic beat, Peres appears at a stand asking online surfers to be his Facebook "friend", while archive footage shows him at various stages of his political career.

"You have to speak the language of young people," he told journalist Campbell Brown at an event with over 100 Jewish community organisations in Los Angeles.

"I am truly excited to write the first post on my wall. I hope to find this page to be a place where peace dreamers and believers speak up and share their stories and experiences with me," he wrote on his Facebook page.

The 88-year-old Nobel Peace Prize-winner travelled to California after accompanying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington, where they met with US President Barack Obama.

Peres launched his Facebook account at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park. The former Israeli premier and foreign minister is well known for his innovative technology policies and visited Silicon Valley to promote Israel's tech industry.

When he became prime minister after Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in 1995, Peres pushed the use of the internet in Israel and was the first Israeli prime minister to have a website.