Participants at memorial rally for Yitzhak Rabin say Israeli society has grown more divided, and more extreme, since he was assassinated
TEL AVIV — Twenty years after former President Bill Clinton uttered the words “Shalom, Haver,” at the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, he stood in front of the Tel Aviv municipality building as the lights spelled out the same message.
The peace rally where Rabin was assassinated and the memorial event commemorating its 20th anniversary on Saturday night shared so many similarities: almost 100,000 people streaming into the same square amidst what they saw as a similar backdrop of terror and animosity enveloping the country, bloodthirsty violence from within Israeli society, doctored photos of politicians in SS uniforms, and a deeply divided country that continues to move farther apart.
“The reality is different [from 20 years ago], because people are becoming more and more extreme,” said 82-year-old David Agami, a Bat Yam resident who was at the 1995 rally at the end of which Rabin was assassinated. “We are in the midst of a difficult environment, there is no tolerance and so much aggression.”
“It’s difficult, but we have to continue,” Agami added. “The young people must fight for tolerance, for peace, and for social justice.”
Many speakers at the event echoed these words, calling on the youth movements who organized the unexpectedly well-attended gathering to take up the banner of peace and tolerance. Tens of thousands of young people sporting uniforms from the various movements gathered in Rabin Square to hear speeches from Clinton, President Reuven Rivlin, as well as Rabin’s family members Dalia Rabin and Yonatan Ben-Artzi.
The crowd was overwhelmingly — but not entirely — young, secular and left-wing. “It was a political murder, so of course it’s still political,” said Anat Mendelson Machnes, from Tel Aviv. She had a newborn daughter in November 1995, so she watched the peace rally from home. Now that her daughter is 20, she said she still hasn’t given up hope for a diplomatic solution of two states for two peoples. “Today the violence and racism are worse, so yes, it’s very depressing to be here 20 years later,” she said. “But I have hope, I want something to happen.”
Machnes is a psychotherapist who works with victims of terror attacks and wars. “I see all of these wounds over and over, and it makes it so clear to me that we need to make a change, we cannot continue this way,” she said.
Alabid Amir brought a group of 47 Bedouin youth from the Beersheba region who are part of the No’ar HaLomed V’HaOved (Working and Studying Youth Movement). “We came to say that we need to keep the peace,” said Amir. He said members of the Bedouin group had a lot of shared activities with their Jewish peers, and it was only natural that they would join thousands from other youth groups at the memorial. “People need to think of the Arabs who are living here, they need to support coexistence, because that’s the only way to peace.”
Fifteen-year-old Hadas Amir, from the religious kibbutz Beerot Yitzhak, was one of the relatively few participants at the rally wearing a kippah. While he said he is not in favor of a Palestinian state, he certainly wants peace.
“I came because even if we are right-wing, we want to show that it doesn’t justify murder, especially now with all the terror attacks,” said Amir. “We’d like it to be more unified, to have more religious people here, so we can be accepting of each other.”
Unlike some of the older and more pessimistic participants, who remembered what the situation was like at the time of the Rabin murder, Amir was full of hope. “There are 100,000 people who care enough to come here,” he said.
Rabin square was filled with posters, mostly pre-made signs printed by some of the left-wing organizations like Peace Now, the Geneva Accords and Breaking the Silence. The most sobering display was a cutout of a man splayed on the ground beneath a chair, echoing the mob beating of Eritrean asylum seeker Haftom Zahtom, who was mistaken for a terrorist during a Beersheba bus station terror attack two weeks ago.
Perhaps the most poignant — and arguably the most discouraging — moment was at the start of the evening, when pop singer Ninet Tayeb sang Shir La’Shalom, “Song for Peace,” the song Rabin sang at the peace rally 20 years ago in the same spot. Rabin had kept the lyric sheet in his breast pocket, and one of the bullets pierced the sheet when he was shot.
“Don’t say the day will come, bring on that day / because it is not a dream,” Tayeb sang. “And in all the city squares, cheer only for peace!”
Twenty years had passed, and thousands of people were still gathered in the same city square, with the same plea.
As reported by The Times of Israel