Rabin’s granddaughter joins Barak’s new party
Noa Rothman, granddaughter of assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, has joined former prime minister Ehud Barak’s new political party, it was announced on Monday.
The decision could boost Barak’s electoral successes, although it will likely have little impact on attracting more right-wing voters as the Left needs to do, to improve its chances of forming a government after the September election.
The 42-year-old Rothman said that getting involved in politics was “not an easy” decision, but she could no longer sit on the sidelines.
“I know from up close, very close, the price of hatred and incitement,” said Rothman. “We cannot accept the radicalization of Israeli society, it does not have to be our fate.”
She said that the time had come to make “tough decisions for our children” and to restore “statesmanship, humility and hope,” saying that no one else would do it other than her generation.
Rothman said that she has had disagreements with Barak in the past, but that it was time for “determined and courageous people” to step forward, “experienced people who are not afraid, who are willing to pay the price, who are not coming just to keep the seat warm. It seems to me that we are coming at the very last moment in order to return Israel to the [right] path.”
Barak welcomed Rothman’s decision to join his party, saying it was “our duty to pass along the scepter to the next generation, and not bequeath them the same problems and challenges which the older generation should have dealt with.”
Barak pledged that he “will do everything I can in order to restart the state so that our children and grandchildren will merit a better reality than ours.”