Yitzhak Rabin
As a child at the Kaddouri school, 1935.
With (left to right) Yigal Yadin and Yigal Allon, 1948
With daughter Dalia, 1952
A moment of relaxation on the tennis court, 1992
Visiting the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem's Old City, 1995
With Jordan's King Hussein on the shores of the Kinneret, 1994
Blowing out the candles for his seventy-third birthday, 1995
Yitzhak Rabin: The Sabra, the Mensch
By Abraham RabinovichHe was not a particularly loved public figure during his lifetime, and he would have been the first to laugh off any attempt to associate his earthy persona with martyrdom, the secular equivalent of sainthood.
History, however, chose Yitzhak Rabin as Israel's first, hopefully last, national martyr. As the first anniversary of his assassination approaches it falls on 11 Heshvan, Thursday 24 October, according to the Jewish calendar the country is preparing to mark the occasion in ways intended to give the loss meaning.
Every nation shapes its myths according to its own needs. The deep differences that divide the country limit the nature of the consensus that will be shaped regarding Rabin. He left only half the nation politically orphaned and he alienated a substantial portion of the opposition with scornful dismissal. But Israel as a whole, except for a lunatic fringe, shares the same horror at his assassination. The Jews are no strangers to fanaticism but they have recoiled over the ages from murder.
Beyond revulsion at the deed itself, there is a shared fear that the killing may have opened a dangerous precedent in which assassination becomes part of the political lexicon. The phalanx of security guards that now surrounds the nation's leaders signifies the end to national innocence. Three shots that rang out that Saturday night last November in Tel Aviv erased the surety that whatever differences separate us, we remain, in the end, brothers.
There will be no consensus about the deepest part of the malaise revealed by the assassination: a strain of messianic fundamentalism that produced murder in the name of God. Yigal Amir was a fanatic, not a lunatic. He was a product of an ideological system which, like a Las Vegas slot machine, must inevitably spew its poisoned jackpot after a certain number of plays.
The group of young men and women around Amir who shared his ideological beliefs, although not necessarily his murderous conclusion, were wholesome youths from "good homes," not fringe elements from the underside of society. Their faces could have handsomely illustrated publications portraying modern Israel, as indeed Amir himself served as a model of a studious Bar-Ilan University student for a fund-raising brochure.
Though no rabbi was implicated in the assassination, a network of nationalistic rabbis had woven the ideology which spawned Amir, who took their preaching to what seemed to him as its "logical" conclusion. The line between "theoretical" messianism and "practical" messianism was crossed with a pistol loaded with hollow-tipped bullets.
A central question a year after the assassination is whether soul-searching within the ultra-right camp has triggered a self-righting mechanism that will have muted the danger.
Rabin himself will probably be remembered in time with greater warmth than was directed toward him by the public in his lifetime. A shy man, he projected a remote presence while earning credibility as an honest, gruff pragmatist. In his later years, he developed an almost avuncular personality with a colorful, often acerbic, turn of phrase and a more accessible public posture.
Unlike other public figures whose public image would not profit from close scrutiny, Yitzhak Rabin will likely grow in public esteem when memoirs of intimates reveal the "mensch" behind the man. As a handsome young Palmah officer, he had epitomized the sabra. He would remain prickly but "menschlich" to the end.
That end would indeed be that of a martyr. Yitzhak Rabin was not just a political leader cut down in office. He was a man in the service of a transcendent goal for which he died. In the last campaign, the veteran general was making the most breathtaking strategic move of his career despite sizable risks. It is doubtful he considered his own life to be at immediate risk, but it is certain that he would not have been deterred had he known. The memory he bequeathed of his sacrifice was his last great gift to the nation.
From Father to Son
By Leora Eren FruchtA deep need to do more than complain pushed Yuval Rabin into the limelight he had long avoided.
It's hard to know what Yuval Rabin feels more intensely: the powerful drive that pushed him into public involvement after his father's murder, or the sense of utter discomfort he has in his new role. Until November 4, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin's only son zealously guarded his privacy and devoted his energy mainly to his career in the private sector. Since the assassination, the 41-year-old Rabin has stepped into the political arena, becoming a leading figure in the new left-wing group, Dor Shalom ('The Peace Generation'). The group has organized demonstrations including one at Tel Aviv's Kikar Hamedina with drew about 50,000 people last month to protest the lack of progress in the peace process. Its bumper stickers, declaring, "Dor shalem doresh shalom" ("A whole generation seeks peace"), have been widely distributed.
Rabin is on the five-member board of the organization and is touted as the likely leader of the group, which claims 10,000 members nationwide.
"Dor Shalom arose as an act of protest against the murder of my father," says Rabin. "It's made up of young people who are not part of the political establishment. They went through much the same process that I did, but without the family dimension. It was a feeling of watching the country headed in a direction that you can't accept, and feeling that you can no longer just stay home and complain."
Rabin represents Dor Shalom at public forums, where he promotes its stated goals: advancing the peace process his father began and bolstering democracy in Israel.
"The political assassination cast a giant shadow on our democracy. There are signs that democracy in Israel is I wouldn't go so far as to say in danger, but in need of safeguarding."
Rabin took part in a demonstration in Bnei Brak recently to protest haredi verbal attacks against Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak. "There are still threats of violence against representatives of the state," he says. "If this government decides to advance the peace process, it too will be exposed to the same threat of violence. If it chooses peace, it will have opponents, and some of them will be uncompromising."
Rabin's foray into the political arena he prefers to call it "public involvement" seems almost painful. In an interview, he is tense, constantly searches for phrases in Hebrew, and prefaces almost every answer with a drawn-out sigh. He is accompanied by Dor Shalom director Tal Silberstein. Before responding, he turns and looks at Silberstein as though seeking cues. Sometimes he makes mistakes, referring, for instance, to the right-wing protest group Zo Artzenu as "Zo Ha'aretz," or defending MK Dedi Zucker's words without knowing exactly what he said. He is conspicuously ill at ease.
"I never enjoy this," he says frankly during the interview. "It's not easy for me. It's not natural. I'm not someone who sees himself as a politician. I never strived for it or prepared myself for it. I do this from an inner need, a deep drive."
That drive is borne of profound disappointment. A year after the assassination, Yuval Rabin feels that "no one paid the price" for his father's death. Of course, the man who pulled the trigger is in jail. But others who bore some responsibility for the murder have escaped with impunity, he maintains. Rabin won't name names, but he is bitter about the lapse in security.
"Yes, there was a commission of inquiry, and conclusions were made concerning certain individuals doing certain tasks. But there was no accountability," he charges. "An entire system failed, from the operatives in the field to the top command. I don't want to sentence anyone, but it is clear to me that no one paid a price." The dismissal or resignation of a few security personnel was insufficient, he adds, but refuses to say what further action should have been taken.
He is equally disappointed by the failure to punish those who orchestrated a campaign of incitement against his father. "He was targeted. There were posters in which he actually appeared with a bull's-eye superimposed on his face. The talk of din moser [one who turns a Jew over to a hostile non-Jewish authority] and din rodef [one who pursues another to kill him or whose actions would cause others to die] circulated for a long time before the murder. And to the best of my knowledge, legal action was taken against only one person. No one else was brought to court for incitement."
What galvanized the younger Rabin into action was another disappointment: the outcome of the election. He cannot say whether he would have become involved in a political movement had Peres won. But he describes his growing public involvement as a process that began with his father's murder. Rabin is convinced that his father would have won the election, but he accepts the people's verdict. "I can't say this government isn't legal. I can't even say it's not moral. There were elections, and people decided what they decided."
But at another level, he finds it difficult "to come to terms" with the election's results. "There is no historical precedent in which the murder of a leader resulted in the downfall of a democratic government," he maintains. "Not in the case of Sadat or Kennedy or anyone else."
"You have murdered and also inherited?" That accusation borrowed from the Bible was the bitter response of many left-wingers to the electoral outcome. Rabin shares that view.
"There are certain bodies which to this day justify the murder. Those who say that Amir was right, that someone had to do it, have achieved their goal. They did murder and inherit.
"I am not saying that the entire right wing was guilty of murder. But the right played a role in creating the atmosphere of incitement." Rabin adds, "But they did believe in the need to change a democratically elected government, claiming that it had acted against the people of Israel."
His charges against the right are sure to be viewed by some as collective guilt, even blood libel. So how can he, in the next breath, speak about the need to build bridges between left and right, religious and secular?
For the first time in the interview he shows emotion. "Was there a murder?" he asks angrily. "Was there an atmosphere of incitement? Should I ignore that? Erase it?
"If you recognize reality you can deal with it. Am I ready, in the name of bridging gaps, to ignore what was? The answer is no. But we have to go on. I believe we can change reality. If we can bridge gaps with enemies with whom we were at war, we can bridge gaps among ourselves."
Rabin says he advocates dialogue between right and left, but admits that he has not participated in any such encounter. He is quick to point out, however, that Dor Shalom has brought left- and right-wing youth together a few times. Two meetings were held with the young leadership of the National Religious Party, and there has been close cooperation with dovish religious groups Meimad and Netivot Shalom.
If the assassination and electoral defeat led Yuval Rabin to embrace politics, they have prompted other left-wing Israelis to opt out of politics or even out of the country. Rabin acknowledges this. "I imagine it's not entirely marginal. There are people who have been overcome by despair.
"I was in New York a few weeks ago and I met a young Israeli couple who had just left the country. They told me they couldn't bear to be in Israel any longer. They came to that conclusion after the murder, and what finalized the decision for them was the election. I can understand them emotionally; it's a way of expressing their despair. But I can in no way condone such a reaction.
"The left has a certain " he pauses, hesitating to use the word, "problem. It sometimes criticizes itself for not responding to events with the same stubbornness as the right. I don't think the left has any less resolve than the right. It's just more difficult to demonstrate an unwavering opinion than it is to sit in Hebron and say: 'We're not moving.'"
There are not many ways for the left to back up opinion with action, he implies. "What is our alternative? Violence or illegal acts? To refuse to serve in the army? Absolutely not. My father would never have supported that, no matter who was in government."
Rabin doesn't criticize the Labor Party outright, but it is obvious that he is disillusioned with "establishment parties." He won't reveal his preference for party leader; he is not a Labor member. But he urges Labor to "take an example from the Likud and choose a new leader earlier rather than later." Netanyahu was elected the Likud's standard bearer in 1993, less than a year after the party lost the 1992 elections.
Could the Labor Party's election loss have anything to do with its alienation from residents of development towns and disadvantaged neighborhoods? "That's what people felt. I can't argue with that feeling. The question is whether that feeling was justified or not. I say there are enough objective measures to show that the previous government perhaps more than any other acted to advance the interests of all sectors of the population."
Yuval Rabin grew up in the north Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Hehayal and lived in a villa in Kfar Shmaryahu until his recent divorce. He now lives with his girlfriend in an apartment in the center of Tel Aviv. He works at Sapiens, a Rehovot-based computer company, and spent several years in North Carolina and Munich representing the firm. He served in the tank corps and does his reserve duty in a computer unit.
He has never been to a development town. "I can't even say I have passed through development towns and I certainly won't pretend to have any in-depth knowledge of them," he admits. But he rejects the characterization of Dor Shalom as a yuppie movement preaching the leftist creed to converted Tel Avivians. "There are branches in Beersheba and Dimona," he says in defense of the organization. He argues that Dor Shalom's strength is that it is not a political party. "It can work for change that cannot be measured in four-year intervals at election time. It doesn't have to act merely for votes." He regards its inexperience as an asset. "There are no veteran political 'operators' in this movement," he boasts. In this respect, Rabin has found his natural milieu.
He continues to work at his private-sector job. But he doesn't rule out a full-time political career in the future. "Never say never," he declares. But he makes one thing very clear: "I don't strive to be like my father or to hold the positions that he had. I don't have his background and don't compare myself with him."
If Yuval Rabin does move deeper into politics it will be thanks to his family name. He is the first to admit that. This terribly private man wouldn't be doing this at all, if not for his father.
Third Anniversary coverage: November 1, 1998
Mordechai: Continue Rabin's legacy
From the day following the assassination:
From the day of the funeral:
From the First Anniversary:
From the Second Anniversary:
A lesson in remembrance (Feature)
Nothing has changed (Opinion)
Rabin's victory (Opinion)
November 5, 1995
Rabin Assassinated
November 7, 1995
Rabin laid to rest on Mt. Herzl
October 24, 1996
Yitzhak Rabin: The Sabra, the Mensch
From Father to Son
November 9, 1997
Massive rally honors Rabin