A Soldier for Peace

Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated 4 November 1995 and Rabin remembrance day was officially held here on 9 November this year. The Kibbutz put together a beautiful ceremony that started with a video montage of the heated demonstrations against Rabin for his decision to sign the Oslo Accord: pictures with Rabin in a Nazi uniform and protesters holding signs saying "traitor" etc. The song "Shir L'Shalom" played in the background, the song that Rabin sang immediately before his death. (He put the paper with the words to the song in his breast pocket, and they found it stained with blood after he was shot.)

I walked in after the video had started playing, and at first was appalled that that instead of seeing pictures of adoration and love I saw hatred and violence. I then realized that it was meant to demonstrate the tension felt throughout the country at the time and put into context the events that followed. It was very powerful to place that juxtaposition in the foreground of his memorial.

The entire ceremony was in Hebrew, so I didn't understand very much of it, but it was clearly very moving for many people. The 11th graders put on the ceremony, they read passages about Rabin, gave some background on his life, and sang songs. Like I said, it was all in Hebrew, but it is clear what a significant figure Rabin is in Israeli consciousness.

The following evening, the Machon had a separate ceremony. We gathered on the roof of the dorms and sat in a circle. Everyone who wanted was given a chance to speak about their thoughts or memories of Rabin. Many spoke of what he symbolizes. One of the Jordanian students began by reading King Hussein's (of Jordan) speech given at Rabin's funeral in 1995. Some of the older students spoke of how they remember the event clearly, and for the Israelis, how devastating it was for them. A lot of them also spoke of the dream of peace dying with Rabin, or at least the hope that peace would be possible.

It was very powerful to hear the Arab students speak with admiration and respect for Rabin. Afterall, he began as a military man, and only much later in his life did he push hard for peace. Interestingly, Yasser Arafat died on 11 November 2004, so the anniversary of his death is at just about the same time. A few of the Palestinian students decided to speak about Arafat and honor him in the same ceremony. I was struck by how much they paralleled Arafat with Rabin - a peacemaker, a generous, kind man, a man in love with his people and willing to sacrifice for them. He holds the same place in the Palestinian conscience that Rabin holds for the Israelis.

I shouldn't be surprised by this because he did a lot for his people. But the West, especially Americans, have a very different image of Arafat. Many question what his true motives were, remember his days as a terrorist, and place most of the blame on him for the failure at Camp David in 2000 to reach a peace agreement (I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with all of this, but this is my general sense of what people think of when they hear Arafat's name).

Rabin and Arafat are clearly two very important figures and hold a lot of significance for people studying here, but I was still impressed, that on a day reserved for a national hero in Israel, the Palestinians were able to talk about Arafat. Clearly they are linked as the agreement was made between them, but one comment I frequently hear when I see a picture of the famous handshake is that Clinton had to physically push Rabin to extend his hand to Arafat. Not much love was felt between the two men, perhaps making the fact that they were able to reach an agreement so much more profound and says a lot about them as human beings.

Regardless, at our little remembrance, there was a sense of mutual respect and understanding of the importance that each leader's memory holds for the respective groups. I wonder what will happen on Israel's independence day...commemorating the outcome of the 1948 war, or the Nakba (catastrophe) in the Palestinian and Arab narrative.