Nation to mark 25th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination today
President Reuven Rivlin will launch at 10 a. m. on Thursday a series of commemorative events to mark the 25th anniversary of the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Rivlin will light a large memorial candle in accordance with the Jewish tradition of lighting candles in memory of the dead.
This year’s ceremony will differ from those of the past in that very few people will be present.
It will be broadcast live on all of the president’s social media platforms.
Reflecting on varying attitudes to the memorial ceremony, Rivlin said: “Unfortunately, we often hear voices – sometimes serious, sometimes sarcastic – of opposition to the memorial day, calling it into question. They say that the day and the man have nothing to do with them. And on the other hand, there are voices that call for those that we remember to be in a special category and to emphasize the duty and the right to remember. But on this day of remembrance, it is so important to remind ourselves to what depths, what destruction, such division – the discourse of ‘ us and them’ – can lead.”
At least year’s ceremony, Dalia Rabin, the prime minister’s daughter, who heads the Rabin Center in Tel Aviv, voiced similar sentiments and cautioned all elected public officials to remember and beware of incitement, extremism and divisiveness, which must not be allowed to rule, because it can become a force against any public official.
Rabin’s remarks came against the backdrop of renewed incitement and hostility coupled with the resurgence of conspiracy theories in relation to her father’s murder, and the claim by Bar- Ilan University lecturer Dr. Mordechai Kedar, when speaking at a pro- Netanyahu meeting, that he had seen documents refuting that Yigal Amir was Rabin’s killer. Kedar had ascribed the murder to an unnamed politician who was opposed to the Oslo Accords and wanted to sabotage them.
Dalia Rabin had underscored the fallacy of the urban legend that the whole country had come together to mourn Rabin’s death and to condemn the murder of a prime minister of Israel by a Jewish citizen of his own country.
There might have been a brief moment of national unity, she acknowledged, but there were people who actually jumped for joy over her father’s death.
The implication was that his willingness to reach an accord with the Palestinians would indefinitely be put on hold.
Twenty- five years later, despite cooperation on certain levels, the situation vis- à- vis the Palestinians is worse than it was then.
While it was not done some 20 years ago to publicly express satisfaction over Yitzhak Rabin’s death, today it is acceptable, said his daughter, who has encountered such negative comments among adolescent youth who are part of student groups that visit the Rabin Center.
She has more than once heard someone say: “It’s a good thing that Rabin was killed. I
would kill him, too.”
Children tend to adopt the religious and political beliefs of their parents, so young people with predisposed negative attitudes to Rabin do not hesitate to express them when touring the Rabin Center, because this is what they learned at home.
IN REFERENCING the ever- growing malice between different segments of the population, Rivlin, when speaking of the assassination last year, worriedly wondered whether it could happen again.
This year, Rivlin, who was an officer in the IDF reserves during the Six Day War, recalls that Rabin as chief of staff visited
his unit in the Jerusalem Brigade on the eve of the war. “Even though we held different positions, even though there were deep disagreements between us, we knew that we were playing for the same team, a team that wanted the best for the country, for the people. Even if we disagreed from time to time on the way, we knew that we were bound together, responsible for each other.”
Not all right- wing or NationalReligious elements have failed to condemn the murder. They differentiate between policies with which they disagree and the actual taking of life on the basis of such disagreement.
Pinchas Wallerstein, a former head of the Yesha Council and the Binyamin Regional Council, wrote on his Facebook page this week that anyone who assaults a national leader is simultaneously attacking the state and has no right to exist.
Although his own political beliefs were diametrically opposed to those of Rabin, he wrote that as a National- Religious Zionist who sees the establishment of the State of Israel and its institutions as part of the process of the return to Zion as envisaged by the prophets, he believes that the state and its institutions require respect and should be treated as sacred.