The late former Israeli President Shimon Peres. Photo: World Economic Forum.

While the death of former Israeli President Shimon Peres drew countless heartfelt condolence messages from around the world on Wednesday, the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups — as well as a number of prominent anti-Israel personalities — celebrated the renowned statesman’s passing at the age of 93.

Palestinians “are very happy at the passing of this criminal who caused their blood to shed,” the Associated Press quoted Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri as saying. “Shimon Peres was the last remaining Israeli official who founded the occupation, and his death is the end of a phase in the history of this occupation and the beginning of a new phase of weakness.”

The Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar television station in Lebanon called Peres “the real face of the bloody and colonial policies adopted by the Zionist regime.”

Anti-Israel activist Max Blumenthal — the son of longtime Hillary Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal — tweeted, “To call Shimon Peres a man of peace besmirches the very concept of peace.”

Ali Abuminah, the co-founder of the Electronic Intifada website, tweeted, “Peres perfectly represents ‘Israel’: all ‘peace’ marketing on the surface, but his real story is unabated racism, ethnic cleansing and war.”

Electronic Intifada associate editor Rania Khalek tweeted, “Shimon Peres was a ‘man of peace’ like Saudi King Abdullah was a ‘reformer.’ Our media always fawns when western-backed criminals die.”

Writing in the Middle East Monitor, British freelance journalist Ben White asserted that Peres was “a man for whom ‘peace’ always meant colonial pacification.”

Peres, who served as Israel’s president from 2007-2014, was also twice prime minister — for two years in the mid-1980s and for less than one year in the mid-1990s. As a young man, Peres was a protégé of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister.

In 1994, Peres, who was foreign minister at the time, won the Nobel Peace Prize — alongside Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat — for the role he played in the signing of the Oslo Accords the year before.