‘ We’ve learned nothing’ from Rabin’s assassination, says former D- G
Time is reputedly the great healer, but 25 years after the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, people who worked closely with him are still pained by the memory of a peace rally that turned into a night of mourning.
Others who may not have known Rabin are pained by the fact that a young Jewish man by the name of Yigal Amir would be so ideologically carried away as to be motivated to murder a prime minister of Israel.
Among those who were close to Rabin was Shimon Sheves, who worked with him for 12 years and ran the Labor Party primaries campaign, which resulted in Rabin becoming the leader of the party. Sheves then ran the party’s 1992 Knesset election campaign, the outcome of which was a victory that swept Rabin into the office of prime minister.
Of the positive memories that he has of his time with Rabin, Sheves, who served as the prime minister’s directorgeneral from 1992 to 1995, says that his greatest triumph was having Rabin win the primaries. “I knew then that he would be prime minister,” he recalled this week in a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post.
Prior to Rabin’s assassination, there were major demonstrations against the Oslo Accords, with protesters carrying placards with mock- ups of Rabin dressed in a Nazi uniform. The hatred and incitement were not only palpable but frightening.
Yet the security precautions that are nowadays being taken to protect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from demonstrators were not taken to protect Rabin.
“There were no obstacles put up against the demonstrators,” said Sheves.
Does he think that Israel has learned a lesson from the assassination?
“Israel has learned nothing,” he declared.
Does he envisage that another political assassination might be in the offing?
“No,” he replied, “because the inciter then is still inciting.”
Sheves was alluding to Netanyahu, who, as leader of the opposition during the Rabin administration, stood on the balcony in Jerusalem’s Zion Square along with other Likud stalwarts and addressed the crowd at the infamous mass demonstration in which Rabin was labeled a traitor.
“Today’s demonstrators are
people who served in the army and who have contributed to the development of the country, and they are also labeled traitors,” said Sheves, who commented that in most political murders, it is the Right against the Left and not the other way around.
Other than the night of the assassination, the most meaningful memory for Sheves of his long relationship with Rabin is when the prime minister, accompanied by a delegation of Holocaust survivors, went to Auschwitz in April 1993.
The prime minister had gone to Poland to attend the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and it was understandable that his itinerary would include a visit to Auschwitz. “For me as a Jew, an Israeli and the son of a mother who was a Holocaust survivor, this was an extremely meaningful and emotional visit,” said Sheves, whose grandparents and aunt had been deported to Auschwitz.
To hear “Hatikvah” sung in Auschwitz was a singular experience.
There were many uplifting moments with Rabin, but there were also some very sad ones, he said, citing as an example the 1994 terrorist attack on a bus traveling along Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street. Rabin had been in London at the time and was shocked by the news that 22 people had been killed and 50 injured. He decided to return to Israel immediately, but El Al did not have a scheduled flight so early in the day, so Rabin hired a small plane and he, his wife, Leah, his military attache, Danny Yatom, Sheves and Rabin’s bodyguard flew home. “We were all so shocked that none of us spoke during the flight,” said Sheves.
As soon as they landed at Ben- Gurion Airport, they sped off to Tel Aviv.
In the course of the interview, Sheves did not appear to realize that he had referred to a single bodyguard. Neither the president nor the prime minister of Israel goes anywhere with only a single bodyguard these days.
Another sad memory was of the terrorist attack at Beit Lid Junction in January 1995, where many soldiers were killed. Rabin, who had been a soldier from his boyhood up until a year after the 1967 War, and who later had served as defense minister, knew what it meant to lose comrades in arms and to see soldiers dying. He spoke collectively and individually to the surviving soldiers gathered at the junction. It was a very difficult moment.
Will future generations, to whom Rabin will be little more than a name in the history of modern Israel, continue to honor his memory and his legacy?
Sheves hopes that they will and is heartened by the fact that there are state ceremonies on the anniversary of Rabin’s death as there are for all deceased presidents and prime ministers.
But in Rabin’s case, there is an additional feature to the memorial. It’s more than a graveside ceremony and a special session in the Knesset.
Commemorative events begin with the lighting of a very large memorial candle known in Hebrew as Ner Yitzhak – Yitzhak’s candle.
Before the pandemic, children attending schools that have been named for Rabin came to the President’s Residence to join him in lighting the candle in the presence of Rabin’s family and closest associates.
The attendance of these youngsters, who each presented an aspect of Rabin’s life, was a sign of hope for the future and the preservation of both his memory and his legacy. •
CORONAVIRUS Continued from Page 1
example), as well as alternative medicine treatments.
“Consensus must be reached, and decisions implemented with an orderly and long- term strategy in mind,” Levine said. “The pandemic and its consequences will be with us for a long time. As such, I am happy that Prof. Ash will fill the role of Magel Israel project manager, and I hope that he will stay with us for a long time and build processes that will serve us for a long time.
“The real challenge is the political challenge: how to convince the decision makers to act in accordance with the professional decisions,” he concluded.
Dr. Zeev Feldman, chairman of the State Physicians Association, expressed similar sentiments: “I welcome the appointment of Prof. Nachman Ash as coronavirus commissioner… I am not surprised by his willingness to enlist in this national mission. I hope that his balanced, professional voice will be heard, and [ he] will not fall victim to political struggles and narrow interests. The success of Prof. Ash will be a success for all of us.”
It was not long ago that there were some officials in the cabinet who called for the role of commissioner to be abolished altogether because “it is simply unnecessary.” They said that the role was created so that the government had someone to blame for its handling of the crisis.
They accused Gamzu of acting like a politician and said that the country does not need another person like him inside the cabinet.
Ash is well known in the medical world, but less known to the public. He comes to the role as a senior staff member in the Health Management Department of Ariel University and the former director of Maccabi Healthcare Services’ Division of Medicine.
He received his medical degree from Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University in 1986, and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Sheba Medical Center in 1997.
Ash completed his Master’s degree in Medical Informatics from the Harvard- MIT Division of Health, Sciences and Technology in Boston. He also has a Master’s degree in political sciences from Haifa University.
With the return to routine, the new commissioner will be tasked with helping the cabinet decide on what will be included in the next stages of its exit strategy and with implementing Gamzu’s traffic light program in cooperation with the local authorities.
The cabinet is expected to meet again on Thursday to finalize its decision on which businesses will open on Sunday and whether bed and breakfasts can operate, too.
Edelstein, who supported the return of small businesses but opposed the opening of all trade, said during his talk on Tuesday that “I am also happy to say that this coming Sunday, if there will be no surprises, quite a few businesses will return to activity – people who have been without a livelihood for weeks.”
He said the principle is that people who work one- on- one will be able to operate.
The country hit the lowest percentage of positive test results since June on Tuesday – 2%.
There were 836 people diagnosed with coronavirus on Monday out of 40,464 tested, the Health Ministry reported Tuesday. Of the sick, only 464 were in serious condition – also the lowest number in months. The death toll stood at 2,463 at press time.
Edelstein also commented on the resumption of studies in the lower grades, whose students he said had taken a “fairly long break” from their studies.
“Grades one and two will unfortunately only be taught part time,” he added. “I hope many local authorities can expand the curriculum.”
Later in the day, the Jerusalem Municipality announced that it is preparing to restart the education system according to Health Ministry guidelines – but for five days per week for all students, instead of three. Teaching assistants will support the program and a daily enrichment budget will be allocated to each school.
“We are the ones who are connected. We know every street and every neighborhood, every school and every preschool, and there is no reason that we” shouldn’t determine our own outline, said Haim Bibas, chairman of the Federation of Local Authorities in Israel, in an interview on Tuesday. “We know better than everyone else what is needed in our cities.”
Several others also said they could find ways to offer more schooling. Stronger municipalities will be able to locate space and staff, while weaker ones will likely have no choice but to resume school for grades one and two only three days per week.
A report by the Coronavirus National Information and Knowledge Center published Tuesday warned that there may be a slowdown in the trend in the next few days when almost two weeks will have passed since preschools resumed operation.
To date, the Education Ministry reported on Tuesday, out of 592,000 kindergarten children, 255 have tested positive for coronavirus – this is 2% of all patients in the population, while their share in the general population is 6.5%.
Edelstein has warned against opening too much at once, saying that “we’re playing with fire.” However, the prime minister and alternate prime minister have spoken out in favor of opening at least street shops on Sunday.
Speaking on Israel Radio Tuesday morning, Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch said that the government is making decisions differently this time than after the first wave and that they are supposed to be made based on data and not dates, let alone on politics or populism.
“The Health Ministry has made it clear that opening trade alongside the education system… could have a heavy price in morbidity,” he said.
Edelstein said that “we will check all the data and the situation seven times before making any further decisions to open. We must understand once and for all that it is precisely our stubbornness in this area – maintaining a slow pace – that protects Israel’s economy and business owners. Haste is the devil.” •
ACT Continued from Page 1
June 5, 1967, and may not relate to subjects primarily pertinent to such areas.”
In November of last year, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US was returning to the position of former president Ronald Reagan’s administration that “the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.”
In light of that policy, the Trump administration moved to delete the sentence limiting BSF, BIRD and BARD to Israel’s pre- 1967 lines.
Prof. Eugene Kontorovich of George Mason Law School and International director of the Israeli think tank Kohelet Policy Forum was a major proponent of the policy change in recent years.
“This is really quite momentous,” he said on Tuesday. “It is the first time the US has adopted a policy that explicitly and clearly authorizes the use of funds across the green line… It’s a very strong recognition that settlements are not illegal. They announced that, but now they’re putting meat on the bones.”
Kontorovich also called the change an “explicit rejection of UN Security Council Resolution 2334,” which the US under former president Barack Obama allowed to pass, and states that settlement activity constitutes a “flagrant violation” of international law and has “no legal validity.”
Now, Kontorovich said, “the US is going in the exact opposite direction.”
Kontorovich also said the new agreements “send an important message that science has no borders and you can’t politicize science. The idea that scientific research shouldn’t be funded based on where it takes place is a problematic one; it holds progress hostage to politics.” •
FINALLY
has long felt strongly about the future of peace between the two countries.
“I did see this coming,” Shaham said, in an interview with The Jerusalem Post. “I was brought into this position as a change- maker for IRENA, but we came out with so much more.”
The Israeli office for IRENA was the first Israeli mission in the UAE. Opened in 2015, it was led by Rami Hatan, and since then, there had been signs of warming relations. From the announcement of an Israeli pavilion at the Expo 2020 event ( now postponed to 2021 due to COVID- 19) to Israeli athletes slowly being welcomed to the UAE capital in martial arts competitions, and most of all, the announcement of plans to build the Abrahamic Center in Abu Dhabi, an impressive complex housing a synagogue, mosque and church, the UAE’s first official acknowledgment of Jews within its state, clearly things were changing in the right direction.
During his long career, Shaham held diplomatic postings including in the US, Germany and the UK, but the UAE was his first in the Middle East. “As Israeli diplomats, we usually hit the ground running, with contacts, programs in place that we continue,” he said. “Yes, you can make your mark, put your personality to these programs, but in the UAE, it was the chance to start almost from scratch.”
It was when the UAE’s ambassador to the US, Yousef al Otaiba, began making public declarations to the Israelis that it was “normalization or annexation,” that things became very clear. “Taking a possible crisis and turning it into a positive development was a stroke of genius on the part of political leadership and the US,” said Shaham.
Since normalization was announced, research and development partnerships between the two nations in the likes of health, AI and finance have flourished, and as the world watched the UAE’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed write the poignant words “never again,” there was much more happening around the diplomatic table.
“While everyone looked at the visit to the Holocaust Memorial, behind the scenes, they were actually also agreeing on cooperation in the field of renewable energy,” explained Shaham. “This year was a time to understand that building a bridge wasn’t about just selling the UAE products and technology. What the UAE really cares for is to have the innovation capacity for advanced food farms, medical services, water and energy. Things that benefit the population.”
During his years in Germany, this innovation diplomacy model was pioneered with “the new kibbutz” system, bringing Germans to Israel to intern in start- ups, and from there, building “partnership accelerators,” whereby young innovators from the two nations collaborated to solve real world problems. “The UAE’s vision is to make the desert green. So my vision is to assist them to create that ecosystem and the capacity to support that,” Shaham explained. “It’s about creating a center to develop the next 50 years of innovation in the Middle East.” Not only will this include universities, but it will be a comprehensive plan including start- ups and businesses.
“Diplomacy can happen in a variety of ways, beyond the commercial or security aspects of a relationship,” he said. “In essence, it’s about building solid enough networks beyond the political ones.”
While the likes of tourism will build themselves quickly and commercially, as both nations are curious to experience travel between the two states, and business relationships are already building organically, innovation relationships are those which need to be nurtured carefully, said Shaham. A more long- term and sustainable relationship of cooperation and trust is necessary, he said.
“In the case of Germany, science was the building block of the relationship we now have,” Shaham said. “It’s not a transactional relationship, but is collaborative, requiring a lot of trust. Scientists don’t want the interference of politicians, they want the independence of innovating, so they’re not only building a bridge, but it’s a very meaningful connection.”
In London, during his time at the embassy there, the importance of scientific collaboration was proven critical amid the Second Intifada ( 2003- 2005). There was a move to boycott the scientific institutions of Israel through the AUT, which his diplomatic team managed to block.
“Scientists argued that they didn’t want to be used in the political discourse of the conflict,” he said. “They saw themselves as bridge builders. A boycott went against the very thing the scientists stand for – being a force for unity between both sides. I was happy to be part of that as it could have been one of the biggest challenges to Israeli legitimacy in the academic world and beyond.”
It is with this knowledge that Shaham moves forward with his role in the UAE – using science and innovation as the path to peace and modern- day diplomacy. •