Five years after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Noa Ben-Artzi reflects on the road he paved
’Forgive me, for I do not want to talk about peace. I want to talk about my grandfather."With those words, Noa Ben-Artzi Filosof, a freckled 18-year-old, stood alongside statesmen and kings, and delivered her terribly personal eulogy to the slain prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.
Five years after the assassination of her grandfather, Ben-Artzi is tired of talking about her own loss. Now she wants to talk about peace.
She knows that it is precisely because she spoke about her personal void that she has become a magnet for other Israelis who need to vent their own sense of loss. "It happens several times a day,‘ says Ben-Artzi, 23. ’I’ll be out in the shopping mall, for instance, and strangers will come up to me and tell me what they felt when they heard about the murder and how much they miss my grandfather."
Embarrassed to be perceived as complaining about this, she says dismissively: "Let that be my biggest trouble in life.‘ But again and again in the course of an hour-long interview, which she was reluctant to give, she mentions that the invasion of privacy is taking its toll on her. ’Of course it’s a compliment to my grandfather who found his way into everyone’s heart, but it’s — I won’t say ’bothersome’ because I know that people don’t mean any harm by it — but difficult."
Ben-Artzi says she has doggedly tried to live a "normal life‘ since the tragedy. True, at 18, shortly after the assassination, she had published a book of memoirs about her grandfather and her own life. ’But I never gave up on the things that people my age do,‘ she says, noting proudly that she even embarked on the requisite post-army trip (to South America) and is now enrolled in university — ’the same path that most people my age take." She credits her family — she lives with her mother, Center Party MK Dalia Rabin Filosof, and stepfather Avi Filosof, in a large home in Herzliya Pituah — for ensuring an atmosphere of normalcy prevailed despite the abnormal situation.
But as time goes on, Ben-Artzi says that the price of being Yitzhak Rabin’s granddaughter gets higher and higher. "The cost is to be living the murder and living the loss constantly — and that doesn’t seem healthy to me."
This year more than others, as the fifth anniversary of Rabin’s death approaches, many more strangers are stopping her in the streets. And she understands why. She too feels the loss more poignantly this year than others — and it’s no longer just a personal void, but a political one.
"Because he was defense minister during the intifada and prime minister during the signing of Oslo, he is very tied to this conflict in peoples’ eyes. They want to know what he would have done."
With a near-war raging in the territories and the peace talks ground to a halt, Ben-Artzi says: "I don’t think we’d be in this position if my grandfather were alive."
Many, especially on the Right, don’t see it that way. In fact, they blame Rabin for bringing Israel to this point by launching the Oslo process. Over the course of the past month, since the Palestinians launched the "al-Aksa intifada,‘ even some of Oslo’s longtime defenders have declared the process dead, in effect relegating Rabin’s legacy to the dustbin of history.
When asked whether she thinks her grandfather’s legacy might be in jeopardy, Ben-Artzi doesn’t even wait to hear the end of the question before blurting out: ’I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to allow myself to think about it. I don’t want to allow us as a country to think that."
It’s a variation on a theme that she returns to many times in the course of the interview. When asked whether it’s possible that Israel has in fact no negotiating partner, whether Arafat is committed to winning his state through blood and fire, or whether our destiny is to live neither in a state of constant war nor in full peace but in some gray area in between, Ben-Artzi says: "I cannot allow myself to believe that." Unlike the 18-year-old ingenue who steered clear of peace and politics in her moving tribute to her grandfather, today Ben-Artzi leaps into the political foray, coming to the defense of Oslo, criticizing Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat, and speculating about what went wrong at Camp David.
To her credit, she qualifies her views with a disclaimer: "My opinion wouldn’t be any more significant than that of any other young girl if not for my connection."
Sitting barefoot on her living room floor, a tattoo exposed on her toe, and sipping a diet cola, Noa Ben-Artzi does look like any fashionable, 23-year-old, secular Israeli. She is wearing a shiny, short, burgundy dress with a black sweater tossed over her shoulders.
Her auburn hair — "I have the same gingi [redhead’s] temper that my grandfather had‘ — is cut shoulder-length and casually gelled back into place; she has black, thick-framed glasses that would once have suggested ’librarian‘ but today, at least on her, project an air of ’coolness." She could be any twenty-something-year old in a Sheinkin Street cafe.
But she is in fact part of a dynasty — a dynasty of women who have become the most vigilant defenders of Rabin’s legacy. Her mother last week lashed out at Barak for taking "time out" of negotiations and in a newspaper interview suggested that Barak may be more interested in his own political survival than in the best interest of the state.
While hospitalized with cancer, her grandmother, Leah Rabin, found the energy to lambaste Barak for making unthinkable concessions on Jerusalem at the Camp David talks. This week, she slammed his "time out" decision and urged him to make use of Shimon Peres to renew contact with Arafat and restart the peace process.
Now Ben-Artzi, a third-year student of law and government at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary College who says she may consider a career in politics in the distant future, is the youngest member of the dynasty to take to the political stage.
She doesn’t like to use the word"blame,"but she says that the Israeli leadership, and Barak in particular, contributed to the crisis."I think it was a big mistake on the part of the prime minister to attempt to skirt around the Palestinians and try to make a deal with the Syrians [at the start of Barak’s term]. I think that, to some extent, we are paying the price for that today. Barak thought that if he had a partner in Syria, he could lower the price he would pay [to make a deal with] the Palestinians.
"But the way to a comprehensive peace in the region is first to deal with the Palestinians,‘ she insists. By the time Arafat came to Camp David, she says, ’It had been a long time since the Palestinians had brought home anything concrete. Arafat had very little to show for his efforts. The last thing he got was a small bit of Hebron" — and that was from former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Barak, she notes, never conducted the third redeployment called for in the interim agreement. But what about the offer that Barak made at Camp David, an offer that was considered to be more far-reaching than that of any prime minister — including her grandfather — had ever made? An offer that led Barak to be accused at home of crossing Israel’s, and maybe even his own, red lines, especially regarding Jerusalem?
Ben-Artzi fudges the question, maintaining that since she "wasn’t there, she doesn’t know with certainty what was really offered.‘ The fact that Arafat rejected it suggests to her that it couldn’t have been ’all that concrete." Could it be, conversely, that Arafat was unwilling to declare an end to the conflict even in return for a far-reaching settlement?
"I don’t think Arafat preferred violence. He went so far from Tunisia to Oslo. He has proved that he wants to and can choose a different path. After all, we had quiet for so long."Ben-Artzi is one of the few Israelis who’s seen the PA chairman without his trademark keffiyeh, without his bodyguards. In the blur of visitors who paid their respects to the family after Rabin’s murder, Ben-Artzi has a vivid recollection of Arafat’s condolence call at Leah Rabin’s home in Ramat Aviv."He came disguised, wearing a wool coat, a maroon scarf, a hat, and big strange glasses — he looked like a Polish uncle.
"I remember he was asked if after all these years he had learned any Hebrew, and he proceeded to recite lines that sounded as though they had been memorized from a phrase book: ’How are you? I love you. Feel good.’
"When he appeared at our house, it was strange and awkward. The fact that my grandfather signed the Oslo accord with him didn’t make me feel close to Arafat. In that respect I’m very much like every Israeli. The switch I made in my mind at Oslo didn’t mean that I grew to like Arafat on a personal level.
"When he came to our house for the shiva, he was — as terrible as this may sound — quite warm and amusing. Suddenly I saw him as a person."
And now, she says, "I want to believe that he is looking towards peace.‘ What then does Ben-Artzi make of his recent remark that Barak can ’go to hell‘? She calls it ’a low commentS made in a weak moment byS a colorful, controversial leader who is, let’s face it, a former terrorist."
Then, surprisingly, she compares Arafat’s remark to some of the faux-pas made by her grandfather. "He also had slips of the tongue,‘ she says, recalling when Rabin called the settlers ’propellers‘ and referred to Yossi Beilin as ’Peres’s poodle."
"My grandfather didn’t always guard his tongue. So I prefer to relate to that comment by Arafat as a slip of the tongue and not as a sign of his desire to end the peace process or partnership," she says. She rejects the notion that the PA chairman would prefer to win his state through blood and fire than a signed agreement. But she admits that she is puzzled and disturbed by Arafat’s reluctance to rein in Palestinian violence.
"There is no problem stopping the violence. If Arafat wanted to stop it, he could. The fact is, he isn’t doing it.
"If I could understand Arafat’s sense that he didn’t get anything concrete at Camp David, I was unable to understand him at all in [last month’s conference in] Paris. Why wouldn’t he be willing to stop the violence? If the Palestinians don’t stop it, they will make another historic mistake. Their leadership has to restrain them, not egg them on.
"But I think the Palestinians are more concerned with how things look than with how they really are."
Her attitude concerning the involvement of Palestinian children in the conflict is not clear-cut. On one hand, she regards Israelis who criticize this practice as hypocritical, since she points out that in Israel’s own battle for independence in 1948, there were 15-year-olds recruited and armed with guns.
On the other hand, she condemns the use of Palestinian children in the conflict because she says they are being used explicitly to score media points. "They’re being recruited for the TV cameras. That ceased to be legitimate as soon as it exacted such a price in human lives,‘ she says. ’It’s cynical exploitation."
As a teenager, Ben-Artzi was one of a select group of Israeli high school students chosen by the Foreign Ministry to spend time abroad boosting Israel’s image. She says she would be prepared to join the country’s international information (hasbara) campaign now, too — this, despite her criticism of Barak’s handling of the Oslo process.
"I see myself as a Zionist Israeli. I believe in the justice of the establishment of the State of Israel. I believe in the justice of our living here," she says.
What’s more, Ben-Artzi believes in the justice of the IDF’s response to the Palestinian violence. She doesn’t flinch when asked if she could explain the killing of Mohammed Durra, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy who was shot during a gun battle between IDF soldiers and Palestinians in Gaza and died in his father’s arms while television cameras recorded the entire incident. The boy’s death outraged Palestinians and blackened Israel’s image worldwide.
"The IDF was engaged in a gun battle with armed Palestinians,‘ explains Ben-Artzi. ’The Palestinians did not stop their gunfire — even though the boy and his father were trapped in the crossfire. So neither did the Israeli soldiers. No one intended to kill him."
She calls French President Jacques Chirac’s question to Barak about "why the number of dead on the Palestinian side is so much higher than the number of casualties on the Israeli side‘ ’rhetorical and not serious. It always looks bad when soldiers fight civilians. But those who send the civilians out to the streets have to take that into account. No one can expect Israel not to defend itself."
If Yitzhak Rabin was comfortable with his role as defense minister during the Palestinian uprising that began in 1987, then his granddaughter seems equally at ease defending the army’s role in quelling the current intifada.
While the international community has accused Israel of using excessive force against Palestinian stone-throwers, Ben-Artzi maintains that the army is in fact employing extraordinary restraint. "Even though Palestinians in Beit Jala are shooting at [the Jerusalem Jewish neighborhood of] Gilo every night, the IDF response is cautious, restrained and carefully calculated,‘ she says, noting that the IDF, in an effort to protect innocent civilians, ’even warns residents in Beit Jala before they begin firing. I don’t recall any Palestinian who issued a warning before blowing up a bus," she says dryly.
Ben-Artzi wishes more than ever that her grandfather were in power now, for so many reasons, one of which is an admittedly selfish one: "At least I would know what was really going on."
There are not many teenagers who had the access she used to have to the prime minister. "Whenever I wanted to know something I would just call him up and ask.‘ Not that he always told her. ’Once I asked him about [MIA navigator] Ron Arad, and he told me that he couldn’t discuss it.‘ But on many other issues, Artzi had answers and — even an ear. ’During the spate of knifings in March 1993, I told him that he really should make a speech to the nation to calm the people — and he did."
Most of all, Ben-Artzi wishes her grandfather were here because she genuinely believes that with Rabin at the helm, Israel would not be in a violent confrontation with Palestinians today."He looked at the Arabs, including the Israeli Arabs, at eye level. I think part of our complex is that we don’t. That’s why the peace is in jeopardy.
"He [Rabin] was free of complexes. He didn’t feel guilty about the expulsion [of Palestinians] in 1948. He wanted to solve the problem on the basis of the fact that we’re here and you’re here so we must live here together. I’m not sure that’s the current approach. Leaders today have many more complexes.
’My grandfather shook Arafat’s hand in the name of all leaders of Israel after him; he didn’t know it would be so fast [that new leaders would take his place], but that was the intention — to do it in the name of all leaders. But we haven’t fully internalized the fact that Arafat is our partner."
Ben-Artzi recoils at the increasingly heard view, voiced even by government members, that Israel "has no partner."
"I don’t accept that expression,"she snaps."This is our partner because that’s who is here. We must come to terms with that. It’s not out of acceptance or great love or hate and shouldn’t be out of condescension.
"And what does it imply to say ’we have no partner?’‘ she asks, sounding angry for the first time."People who say that should remember that after every outbreak of violence, we return to negotiations. The question is only the price — how much blood is paid along the way. Saying that we have no partner is not only untrue but dangerous. It just makes the price higher.
’Today the Right says ’we won.’ But they don’t offer any alternative but living by the sword. There is no choice but to exist together — unless we believe in the disappearance of one people or another. I don’t think that even the extreme Right thinks we can just kill all the Arabs."
As for the Palestinian motivation to make peace, she says that "they have more to lose than we do if they don’t.‘ With the American elections approaching, ’Arafat is the only leader left who is personally obligated to the Oslo agreement,‘ she notes, ’and in this respect, his sense of duty to them is even higher," she says, voicing a faith in the PA leader that is becoming increasingly rare among Israelis.
Ben-Artzi dismisses questions about the disillusionment of the Left and talks about the peace rally to be held at Tel Aviv’s Kikar Rabin tomorrow night, exactly five years after the assassination.
"We [the Rabin family] plan to ‘exploit’ — so to speak — the anniversary of my grandfather to make a renewed call to return to the path of peace on November 4. The prime minister will be there, and I think that says something about his commitment to the path of peace."
Ben-Artzi’s faith in Oslo is unshakeable. "Even this situation, which is catastrophic,‘ she says with a nervous laugh, ’is not enough to destroy my faith in the Oslo process.‘
Is there anything that could? She pauses for a moment. ’I believe that, no, it doesn’t matter what happens, like it or not, in the end a Palestinian state will be established alongside the State of Israel and we will live here in peace."
What does she feel when she hears Israelis say that Oslo has failed, that Rabin’s way has been proven wrong? She deflects the question. "I want to call upon people to wake up: We have no other way. To say Oslo is bankrupt means we go back to living by the sword."
And that possibility is something Noa Ben-Artzi cannot bear to contemplate.
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