Jews are 'people of the Facebook', Peres jokes

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Jews are the people of the Book but also the 'people of the Facebook', Israeli President Shimon Peres joked on Thursday about his flashy new page - complete with electro-pop video - on the site.

"You have to speak the language of the young people," the 88-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner laughed, when asked about the eye-popping 'Be my Friend, for Peace', video on the social network.

The former Israeli premier and foreign minister launched his Facebook account earlier this week at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters, alongside the web giant's founder and boss Mark Zuckerberg.

In a jump-cut video set to a thumping beat, Peres is shown at a lectern asking online surfers to be his Facebook 'friend', while archive footage shows him at various points in his long political career.

"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.

Asked about joining Facebook at an event in Beverly Hills on Thursday night, Peres said that the Jewish people were a 'people of the book', but that they had now become a 'people of the Facebook'.

The Israeli statesman traveled to California after accompanying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week to Washington, where the Israeli premier met President Barack Obama in the White House.

After Thursday night's event at the Beverly Hilton hotel, Peres was due to head on Friday morning to the headquarters of Dreamworks Animation in Glendale, just outside Los Angeles.

On the eve of his LA visit an Israeli flag outside the offices of a University of California, Riverside Jewish organization was defaced with the word 'terrorists' scrawled on it.