The Rabin Assassination – Memoirs Of A Former Leftist

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There’s an old saying that goes something like “if you’re not a socialist by the time you are 21, you have no heart, and if you are still a socialist by the time you are 30, you don’t have a brain”.

Well, when I was young and just off the boat in Israel I was a big “Peacenik”. I actually grew up in the “revisionist” Zionist youth movement “Betar”, but I only really went there because thats where all the good looking girls were, and I had a reputation even there for being a black sheep and a leftie. When I made “Aliyah” in 1992, I found myself squarely on the left in Israeli politics. I voted “Meretz” in my first Knesset Election in 1992.

I was a soldier at the time and it still gives me goose bumps when I think of the day when Israel signed the Oslo accords. I remember I was on a bus in central Jerusalem on my way home that evening and I jumped off to join the people dancing in the streets celebrating peace. It felt like a mini version of those films and images of New York on VJ day in 1945 – strangers hugging each other, music, dancing…. I danced in my uniform, M16 on my back, with a mixture of pride, joy and hope that I had never felt up until that day.

Fast forward to November 4th 1995. I was in “Kikar Malkey Yisrael” for the largest peace rally I had ever attended. It was a strange rally. The left had taken a beating due to the non-stop terror attacks and huge Nationalist Camp rallies that were in opposition to the Oslo Peace Accords. That night though, it seemed like we were not alone. There were hundreds of thousands of us that felt the same way. Rabin and Peres famously sang – horrendously out of tune – “Shir LaShalom” or “Song for Peace”, and then Prime Minister Rabin ducked off stage.

The rally dissipated, and I hung around for a while, noticing an ambulance and a commotion, but not really understanding what was going on. I then went over to a friend’s house and it was there that I first heard the utterly shocking news that Rabin had been shot.

The next few days were unlike anything I have ever experienced anywhere else or at any other time. The country was in genuine shock and mourning. I would assume it was similar to the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination in the US, or perhaps the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The whole country just stopped. There seemed to be genuine and real disgust across the political spectrum for the idea that we had killed one of our own. Our country lost a great deal of its innocence on that night. Perhaps a cynic might suggest that we grew up.

Today it is is 18 years since that night in what is now called “Rabin Square”. I’m no longer the naive “Peacenik” I used to be and for the last decade or so I have relocated to slightly right of centre in a global political sense (although interestingly, in Israel we call ourself the centre but are still considered by the ultra right to be on the left). While I still have enormous amount of respect for Yitzhak Rabin, I have grown weary of the naiveté of the real left. I think Oslo was a mistake, even though I respect that it came from good intentions. After all, they were the same as my intentions. We just wanted to believe that we could live in Peace with our neighbours and there would be – like Peres dreamed – a new middle east where we could get on  a train to Damascus, or Beirut, or Baghdad…… Yeah, right.

I think back to that night and it is still the most meaningful “national” event that I have ever experienced. I know for sure that there is a large segment of the Israeli population that feel the same way – at least a few hundred thousand of them that were in Rabin Square that night. In the last few years I have heard many disrespectful things said about Rabin and Peres and Oslo. Someone recently scoffed at me and suggested that “everything in Israel in the last 18 years is named after Rabin”. They see the failure of Oslo, and apparently enough time has passed that they have lost that little feeling of guilt that we all had to varying degrees back in 1995. These people seem to have forgotten something though. Rabin’s assassination was a shameful event. It was a collective shame on our whole nation. We Jews like to think we’re special. To a large extent I think we are. But then all it takes is one Yigal Amir to suggest that we are just the same as everyone else.

9 thoughts on “The Rabin Assassination – Memoirs Of A Former Leftist”

  1. I have no problem with people still claiming that Rabin was “naive” — I’d say he was an idiot, tho. But, given the way Peres conducted the accords (among many other things during his shameful political career), I can’t use the same adjective when talking about him.

    A few questions:
    What is the “ultra right”? Who are they? What do they support? What makes them “ultra”?
    Is there a difference between “real left” and “ultra” left? How can we talk about the “naiveté” of the “real left”? Zehava Galon, Dov Khenin or anyone in Meretz/Hadash… naive? Naive are those who vote for them…

    I was too young when he was shot, so I couldn’t really understand what had happened or even remember what I felt at that moment. What I do remember is that, even though I grew up as a leftist, I could never shed a tear for him. I did however for all the people whose blood is on him and on Peres.

    “?????? ?????? ????? ???? ??? ????… ??? ???? ?? ??? ????? ?????? ????? ?????? ???? ????? ?????? ????? ????? – ???? ????? ?? ?????? ?? ????? ???? ?? ???? ?? ?? ??????.”

    We can survive an Yigal Amir. Overcome Peres, Galon and “real left” is not as easy.

  2. People, and especially diplomats, forget that Oslo II, signed that year by all parties including Arafat, legitimized Israel’s presence in Area C (I’m not sure if that’s the correct letter) of Judea and Samaria until at least a final treaty is ratified. It is one of the big lies of diplomacy to call Israel’s civil presence there an illegal occupation and this should be emphasized here and by the government loud enough to penetrate the thick skulls of the EU and Kerry.

  3. There’s an old saying that goes something like “if you’re not a socialist by the time you are 21, you have no heart, and if you are still a socialist by the time you are 30, you don’t have a brain”.

    That alleged pithy quote has been falsely attributed to Winston Churchill and it is a complete urban legend. I never was a socialist even during my college days and I always had a good heart.

    1. Maybe Travis you meaned stoned the same thing that happened to me once driving through Bar Ilan St one day….Hanged is a little to radical you want to be comparable to those dicks…Maybe their mother and father had something to do with it…What should we do about them… Ouch!!

  4. We’re coming up on the 50th anniversary this month of the Kennedy Assassination. I was 11 years old and I can still remember very clearly that day. I would think for Israelis, Rabin’s assassination was very much the same for them. But I don’t remember any Americans saying now that Kennedy deserved to die for the way he conducted his presidency. I do hear that now and again from what I assume to be far right-wing political fanatics. But they’re a very small number and every country has their share of sick people.

    1. To clarify, I was speaking of Rabin’s assassination, that some sick people have actually said Rabin deserved to die for his support for Oslo.

      1. Although I don’t think he should’ve been killed, Rabin and Peres were responsible for arming an enemy force who used it to kill our civilians. Peres also broke the law and committed crimes to reach the agreement.
        Peres should be rotting in prison and Rabin should be here to face the guilt and to be blamed for all the deaths. The damned Amir turned the creators of the biggest tragedy in the country’s history into a martyr and the other into a symbol of peace.

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