Today, anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s death according to the traditional Hebrew calendar: י״ב בְּחֶשְׁוָן תשע״א . One may read a short account of the official commemoration ceremony at Mount Herzl.
Below, I post some notes taken about the event as it occurred, and dated according to the common calendar…
Sunday 5 novembre 1995 Last night, as a migraine kept me awake, I turned on the local radio and heard that Prime Minister Rabin had just been shot (2 bullets reported at the time) after yesterday’s large demonstration, around 9h30, and that he was in a very serious condition at the nearby hospital. I kept listening, and soon it was announced that Rabin had died on the operating table (at about 11h15). It would be learned later (this morning) that the assassin had used exploding bullets (9mm caliber).
Yesterday indeed, there had been a large demonstration of support for Y. Rabin and the government’s work towards peace. Perhaps 200,000 people from all areas in the country went to show their support . Some young friends of R. who are in the youth movement left kibbutz Farod early. This support brought great satisfaction to Rabin who has been under all sorts of attacks of the vilest sort in the past few months. He has been compared to Hitler, associated with Arafat as a murderer (רוצח), and called a traitor (בוגד), all things that hurt him deeply, as his face, I thought, made plain to see.
After his death, there was an extraordinary outpouring of emotion. People, especially young people, began bringing candles and flowers to the spot where he had been shot. Many politicians were interviewed and gave dignified and emotional answers, avoiding political debates though journalists often prodded them to take sides. Some Labor speakers, however, could not help but accuse the right (without naming anyone) of having created the climate leading to the assassination. After an hour or so, we heard Clinton’s declaration in the White House (the strange to my ears, “Shalom, haver…”). We also saw Arafat giving a message of condoleance. It began in a political vein, speaking of “those opposed to peace”, but after some hesitation, Arafat came back to the microphone and offered his condoleances to Mrs Rabin, the government, the people of Israel, on his behalf, that of the PA, and of the Palestinian people. This second part of the message looked very important to me. Apparently, there were expressions of joy in the territories as well as in certain very conservative Israeli circles. There was an emergency meeting of the government in which Shimon Peres was named interim Prime Minister. He spoke of his friendship with Rabin. Peres too apparently was a possible target of the murderer, although the secondary one.
This morning, we learned that Clinton, Bush and Carter (and Jim Baker) are coming to morrow for the burial ceremony, together with King Hussein, Hassan II, Mubarak, Chirac, etc…. We also heard a number of Israeli political leaders, among whom B. Netanyahu, who was very civil and decent, compromising. Rafael Eytan appeared defensive.
Rabin’s body lies in a coffin in front of the Knesset since noon today, and many thousands of people are coming from all over the country to pay their respects. It will stay there until about 2pm tomorrow, when it will be buried in a special ceremony. Perhaps over a million people will pass by the coffin. Some people are bringing flowers or candles, even pictures or drawings, and they are placed before the coffin by soldiers controlling the flow of people.
The murderer, 27, is from Herzliyah and was in his third year of law school (criminology) and computer studies at Bar-Ilan University. A show today gathered a few authorities in the legal and psychologigal fields, including people like Israel Lau. It was astonishing to see the latter immediately frame the event in biblical and traditional legal terms, everything flesh and human just grist apparently for the theological commentary mill.
November 6, 1995 The wake in honor of Rabin continued the whole night and will last until two o’clock this afternoon. Many heads of state and personalities will attend the ceremony at Mount Herzl. According to the Jerusalem Post, Arafat wished to come, but the Israel government decided that it was better if he didn’t come, for security reasons.
This morning, the television showed Leah Rabin and her daughter thanking people for coming. We looked at TV images of the ceremony for several hours. The speeches by King Hussein, Rabin’s advisers (Haber, etc.), his grand-daughter, were moving. Clinton, Mubarak and the Russian foreign minister appeared to be more prepared, more political.
November 7, 1995 Throngs of people keep visiting Rabin’s tomb in Jerusalem and the place where he was murdered, in the Tel Aviv square now renamed Kikar Y. Rabin. This morning program on the radio introduces various personalities, among whom Elie Wiesel. Elsewhere, politics has returned. Last night already, Shulamit Aloni severely criticized the Israeli and US religious authorities who, according to her, created a favorable climate for the murder, and have not yet recanted, or have done so too late. Today, Aryeh Sharon insisted on the unity of the Jewish people as being the most important thing to guard at the moment, but he did not forget to mention that Menahem Begin and he had been branded “murderers” during the war in Lebanon. Is one to conclude that a violent act did not necessarily flow from this kind of accusation, or that they too had been subject to the same type of violence as Rabin?
Another thing I have noticed: the confessions of guilt by many people, who feel guilty for not having done enough to defend and support Rabin. How could this have influenced the murderer? But perhaps do they feel guilty for not being stronger supporters of peace and shown to Rabin alive that he truly represented their aspirations?
Lightning and intermittent rain this afternoon. Is it rain, the recent blooming of cyclamens and crocuses among the rocks and under the olive or pine trees, the sight of Arab families harvesting olives, and above all the powerful feeling of national mourning? but I suddenly realize I love this country more for itself, and not only as a mythical object of study from which sprang the Bible, the basis for my judgment and my moral conscience, such as it was shaped through Latin, celtic, and the French brand of christianity.
The name of Yitzhak Rabin will continue to live in the person of a 27 year-old Russian immigrant who yesterday, at the time of qiddush after his circumcision, declared that this would be his name.
November 19, 1995 Visit to Jerusalem, to a friend on Nissim Behar street, a street opening onto Bezalel, not far from the Supreme court and the Knesset. From Nes Ziona, we came this morning to the Old City where I parked the car in the courtyard of the College des Freres, near New Gate. Frere X, the Brother Director, had already left, first for a ceremony at the Greek Orthodox Church in the neighborhood, and then for Bethlehem where he was to try to get temporary permits to allow several teachers to come from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. When we see him around 3h30, he is disappointed, because he failed to obtain them. He was made to wait several hours for nothing. The teachers will probably wake up very early the next day, take back roads, and travel for several hours before reaching the college (a ride which could take minutes if one came straight from Bethlehem).
After our visit to the Kotel haMa’aravi, we go towards the Dung Gate to see if we can walk on the walls, but we discover it’s not possible. A kind of crazy-looking and apparently well-known red-haired Celt, with cheap glittering clothes and a paper crown is playing (scratching) a harp on the path leading up to the police checkpoint before the Western Wall. As we are walking back towards the Wall, we hear him shouting at a couple of small orthodox kids, in a heavy American accent: “Zeh lo yehudi, zeh lo tov!” King David is vehemently pointing his finger and cradling his useless harp under his left arm. He is angry at two little kids, especially one who apparently hit a little Arab girl with his stick. We noticed that another one was playing with a pocket knife. They both may be acting fantasies out of the book of Joshuah. The police check things out eventually.
About Rabin’s assassination. One often heard comment is: “How could this happen, coming from a Jew?” Or: “How could this happen to us? It is not supposed to happen to us!” Our reaction on the contrary was to say: “What if the killer had been an Arab?” (outside of Israel, in any event of the kind, our reaction is rather: “Hope it’s not a Jew”). The possibility of peace would have vanished for a long time, and the relationships between Israeli Arabs and Jews would have been much more difficult in Galilee and elsewhere.
Everywhere, on many cars and doors, the sticker Shalom Haver, which doesn’t prevent drivers from taking excessive risks. Old, more aggressive slogans have disappeared, for the most part, except some strong statements regarding the Golan (“The people with the Golan;” or “We shall not move from the Golan”).
Religious Jews (especially Zionist religious Jews) feel threatened in their identity: one of “them” committed the murder, he came from the leading religious university, studied Torah everyday. They presently fight for unity above all, because dispersion under the negative impression of more than half of the country would mean political dilution and loss of power.
Many people have been invoking the necessity of a חשבון נפש or accounting (confession): couldn’t all kinds of individuals have done more to show their support for Rabin, and perhaps thus prevented the “right” from going too far? To my mind, it seems naive to think that such good intentions, even realized, could have made any impact on the will of Y. Amir, Rabin’s killer. His reasoning is of a different nature entirely. He has heard a voice or a teaching (rabbi’s authority, coming from other authorities, etc…. more on this listening vs seeing business at another time), telling him that relinquishing any part of Israel’s territory (i.e. what was conquered in 1967) is going against the divinity’s promise, the highest crime against Judaism, and is therefore tantamount to high treason and punishable by death. The land itself is sacred, perhaps the Jewish people too, but as a collective first, and in that order. He also has lived the frustration of a religious youth of traditional Yemenite background, upset by the threatening secularization of the country, especially where he lives (Herzliyah). I am struck by the near total absence of discussion about the real feelings of Palestinian Arabs, either when talking about Rabin’s death or about the so-called peace process. Peace as a one-way street.
Tuesday, November 28, 1995 By a beautiful autumn afternoon, I listen to B. doing scales (doing time?) and repeating a few melodies: Mélancolie de Chopin, Étude de Bréval, a gavotte, an air by Offenbach. This morning, we went to a garage in Carmiel to have the car checked. On the way out of the kibbutz, on the entry road lined with olive trees and rock slabs emerging from the heavy ocre earth, we picked up two old ladies from the kibbutz. One came from Hungary (ממש הונגרית, said she, from Budapesht, and, with a touch of pride, “I only speak Magyar!”), the other one from Transylvania, from a region first belonging to Hungary, then to Rumania. As a little girl, she lived in a Hungarian village, but had to go to school to a Rumanian school. She spoke Magyar, Rumanian, and Yiddish. Without explaining her circumstances in any detail, but in a kind of comment on the small difficulties at the beginning of our stay which we were mentioning to her, she told us that it is difficult to change. She herself had found exceedingly hard, she said, to change husband, children, country, language, and culture. The list was so short, compact, striking. We didn’t ask about the first two items. Having lost everything, and in spite of all difficulties, she had embraced Israel as her country, a home where she feels at ease and free.
It is by the strength or measuring-rod of this feeling coming from a modest person that one must judge the value and even the grandeur of the zionist movement, and it is at this level that one must place oneself when speaking of the “Palestinian question”. One must have in mind the life of people on both sides of the divide — a life including the willfully preserved memory of previous generations as well as the desire or hope that their children may have a future to look forward to.
In the evening, we went to see a bike store on Jaffa street in Haifa. We stopped in one of the malls of Lev haMifratz to eat Mexican food. The excellent food is prepared fresh by an Arab Israeli (or is that an Israeli Arab?) who lived for 17 years in California. Everywhere around us, sounds and sights invite Israelis to consume without any restraint and indulge their passion for objects, cars, electronic items, gadgets… Along the highway, high degree of pollution, impression of a mess in the transition from old industrial areas to the new kind of malls, the squeaky cleanliness of Toys R Us or Office Depot, and so on…. huge tiled and carpeted stores which in truth invite a real mess, moral that one, but appear to be so clean, vast, efficient, organized, complete. A spotless conscience.
Friday, December first, 1995 Rabin’s murder goes to the heart of the Israeli political question (and the impossibility of agreeing on a constitution). Two forms of zionism, one starting with the Biblical text and obeying the command to love Israel (ahavat Israel), the other one starting from a modern situation (but not without antecedents), the necessity to found a national home for the Jews of the world who need it, two forms of zionism are locked in permanent struggle. Both are necessary to each other. The organization of a modern state utilizing individual energies on as wide a basis as possible can be done only on a secular basis (but one might disagree on what is meant by secular, the old immanence/ transcendence debate). This is the springwell of the strength of citizens who organize their defense, conquer a land, develop an industry, etc…. But the heart of this state is the return to Zion, so the religiously grounded concept is also at the center of the state, though its visible representatives are in relatively small numbers.
Tuesday, December 5th, 1995 Last night, a fine rain fell for a few hours. It was a great joy to receive Lieberman’s Tosefta kifshuta, the thirteen tomes of it, a work which I have wanted to have for a while now. Other works by Lieberman are being reedited or reprinted. Tosefta kifshuta is a rich and exact commentary setting the reader on the path to talmudic, Greek or Latin texts which throw light on the text at hand.
Rabin’s death, thirty days ago, is being commemorated in TV and radio programs. Unfortunately, the cameras focus on the political actors of the moment: friends of Rabin, the present government, and also the opposition tenors, especially Netanyahu. Very thin presence of the religious element: not invited or tolerated? or excusing itself?