On the Question of Who Killed Rabin

 

 

     In Israel, Netanyahu, in order to remain in power and preserve the governing coalition, made concessions to religious and far-right politicians who were encroaching on the country's third branch of government, the previously independent judiciary. Netanyahu, a merchant of conscience, is willing to do anything to stay in power. Not only does the country lack a constitution, but with the elimination of judicial independence, Israel will slide into the category of countries with totalitarian regimes. There's an Islamic Republic of Iran, so why not a Jewish Republic of Israel? After all, in Israel, religion is not separated from the state, as is the case in all democratic countries. The people of Israel, realizing the potential consequences, took to the streets. Massive demonstrations swept the country, with even the military siding with the protesters. As a result, Netanyahu suspended the process of amending legislation concerning the judiciary. What will happen next is unclear. But it's entirely possible that forced elections will be held once again. Until Israel has a constitution with a clear separation of all three branches of government, electoral chaos will be a constant feature of the country. I foresaw a similar situation in 1996.

 

    This article was published in Israel in the newspaper "Our Country" (December 4, 1996) following the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish terrorist. Today, left-wing Israelis commemorate the 19th anniversary of the death of the man who hoped to bring peace to his country. It must be said that under Rabin, reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians was much closer than it is today.

 

 

Alik Bakhshi

 

On the Question of Who Killed Rabin

 

 

 

    More than two years ago, the people of Israel bid farewell to their Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. A combat general who fought Israel's numerous enemies without ever knowing defeat was vilely murdered by his own compatriot, a young religious Jew, simply because he passionately desired peace for his people. Fate decreed that Jews and Arabs, these two Semitic peoples, sharing common ancestors and a rich, millennia-long history of peaceful coexistence, who have made valuable contributions to world culture, would become enemies. But that same fate today presented an opportunity that Yitzhak Rabin sought to seize.

 

    Yes, Jews and Palestinian Arabs cannot and do not wish to live in the same state, but that does not mean they cannot be peaceful neighbors. Alas, there is simply no other way out. The political situation is such that only lasting peace is the key to Israel's future. And if this is not understood, the Jewish people may once again find themselves without a state. Israel needs to establish good neighborly relations with surrounding Arab countries before America abandons active military and economic support for Israel, which will happen sooner or later, as the US has recently been seeking closer ties with the Muslim world, as evidenced by the example of several Arab countries and Bosnia.

 

   Let's agree from the outset that we will deal with facts, not the subjunctive mood, about what would have happened if Rabin had not been assassinated and the right-wing had still come to power. The facts are that Rabin was assassinated, the right-wing has gained power, the peace process is stalling, the political situation has deteriorated, and, as a result, a worsening economic situation in the country is on the horizon. The planned provocations with the notorious Hasmonean tunnel and the construction on Har Homa, which triggered another round of unrest and terrorist attacks, have yielded no political dividends. The purpose of these provocations is to demonstrate to the entire world that political dialogue with the Palestinians is impossible and to once again highlight the error of Rabin and Peres's policy, which allowed the Palestinian Authority to create armed police units that will not hesitate to use the weapons given to them against Jews.

 

    The stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations puts Arafat in a very unenviable position. All his attempts to inject some momentum into the peace process are proving futile. The population of the territories is beginning to lose hope that the changes promised by the agreement will materialize. It turns out that Hamas leaders were right in calling for a boycott of all dialogue and claiming that only the destruction of Israel as a state will resolve the Palestinian issue. Arafat's departure from the political arena would lead to a dead end. There would be no one to talk to or negotiate with.

 

    The global political changes that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union also affected the Middle East. Moscow has almost completely lost its political influence over events in the region, as was clearly demonstrated during the Gulf War. Israel's value as an ally has diminished for America and is even becoming an obstacle to establishing friendly relations with Arab countries. Seeing no political or economic benefit, Washington will abandon such a recalcitrant ally. Then, fearing the prospect of becoming like a chained dog abandoned by its master, Israel will make the only reasonable decision—to resume the peace process. This time, however, the Arabs will have the initiative in the negotiations, and the conditions will be harsher. And they will have no one to blame but themselves.

 

    Israeli society lives in a world of illusions, striving to pass off wishful thinking as reality. We see a striking example of how illusions can lead to disaster in Russia. And there's no need for Zhirinovskys and Solzhenitsyns to look for culprits and suggest that someone is getting the Russian people drunk and orchestrating revolutions for them. The Russian people alone are to blame for all their troubles. They alone, not the Ruriks invited at the dawn of Russian history, not the German monarchs who converted to Orthodoxy, not Marx with his communist fairy tale, not the conspiracy of the "Elders of Zion," and not the Chechen mafia. The longer the illusion lasts, the more tragic the end. So we, too, should not be led by illusions, lest we later look for those to blame for our misfortunes among the Americans, Arabs, the French, or anyone else.

 

    Israeli society is gravely ill; it is divided along political, national, and religious lines, and the assassination of the prime minister is a symptom of this illness. Rabin's killer is neither mad nor a lone wolf. He fulfilled the dream of many. Some openly called for it with posters, while others silently wished for the Prime Minister's death, deluding themselves into thinking that with Rabin's death they could drag the world back to the days of superpower rivalry. But the Soviet Union collapsed. Europe underwent colossal changes. An avalanche of political change descended on the Middle East. And the policies of Rabin and Peres were based on these realities. And if the current right-wing government doesn't fall, what Yitzhak Rabin failed to accomplish will have to be accomplished by his opponent, Bibi Netanyahu. I wouldn't be surprised if some rabbi, waving the Bible, once again brandished him with shame and called him nothing less than a traitor to the Land of Israel, and the shadow of death loomed once again, executed by a religious fanatic and murderer. Alas, this is how political problems are resolved in Israel's religiously charged democracy.

 

   Can you name a single instance where the American Secretary of Health or, say, Transportation, made a political statement? I don't think so. Even the US Secretary of Defense wouldn't allow himself to make such statements. That's the prerogative of the President and the Secretary of State. In our country, all ministers are preoccupied with politics. Apparently, it's much easier than solving the specific problems of their ministries. So Mr. Sharansky has successfully integrated himself into the government. He makes political statements like this: we can't conduct peace talks with Syria while the Hafez al-Assad regime is in power, and Syrian schools teach history from poor textbooks. Let democracy first be established in Syria, then we'll talk about peace... Great, huh? And while the courts are busy, we can wage war for the glory of democracy.

Does Minister Sharansky really consider Israel a truly democratic country? And what about the fact that democratic countries do not accept the oppression of one people by another. A country that still lacks a constitution, a country with socialist principles of governance, a country in which executive and legislative powers are not separated, a country in which part of the population has no rights at all, a country with a conglomerate of mutually exclusive democratic and halakhic laws, and finally, a country that replaces its prime ministers with assassins—this cannot be democratic.

And if this is so, then our Arab neighbors have every reason not to negotiate with us "until democracy arrives."

 

    Homo sapiens is distinguished from other members of the animal kingdom by the three values ​​it has created: art, science, and religion. These are the fruit of a free spirit and do not tolerate regulation, and any attempt to use them for inhumane purposes is disastrous.

The use of science and religion to exert power over people is associated with colossal sacrifices. The application of scientific achievements and technological inventions in wars has claimed millions of human lives.

 

      Power based on an ideology founded on dogma, whether religious or communist, is especially dangerous. By exploiting dogma and exploiting the name of God, religious officials achieved unlimited power over people. Europe experienced an entire era of medieval obscurantism, when any free thought was cruelly punished. Thousands were burned at the stake by the Inquisition, quartered, hanged, and tortured with exquisite methods—thus religious officials, empowered to judge in the name of God, dealt with all who encroached on the dogmas of the faith that they used as the foundation of their power.

History has mocked them cruelly, immortalizing Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei while consigning the names of their executioners to oblivion. The Sanhedrin of Pontius Pilate's time sentenced to death a man who preached a new philosophical concept, and the world learned the name of the most popular Jew—Jesus Christ.

     It must be clearly understood that neither science nor religion in themselves are to blame for being misused by wicked souls for their own selfish ends. Having come to power in Iran, Muslim fundamentalists plunged the country into the darkness of the Middle Ages. In an instant, Iran became a danger to the entire world. In the name of Allah, movie theaters filled with people watching "obscene" Western films were set ablaze, and the guardians of Islam delighted in publicly executing unfortunate women who dared to appear unveiled or were caught unfaithful to their husbands. Is there a fundamental difference between Muslim fundamentalists who force all women to wear the chador and Israeli Orthodox Christians who forbid travel on the Sabbath and set fire to non-kosher stores? In both cases, it is ultimately an attack on individual freedom.

      The essence of religion is not coercion, but freedom of spirit. Only then can a believer be close to the spiritual principle of nature. Where religion takes the path of coercion and prohibition, it transforms from a path to God into a destructive path to power.

   The Orthodox's struggle to close Bar Ilan Street on Saturdays is a stage in the struggle for power in Jerusalem. By calling on believers to demonstrate and riot, under the pretext that this is pleasing to God, religious officials, with the help of the crowd, are uncontrollably striving for power. Have you seen the looks on the faces of those in the dark crowd at Bar Ilan? They are all the same—the look of madness, and it's terrifying!

 

    Although believers make up a minority of Israeli society, they are strong in their organization and discipline. The Bolsheviks were also numerically inferior to the Mensheviks, but thanks to their close-knit organization and iron discipline, they seized power in Russia. By handing over the main Bar-Ilan Street to the religious orthodox, the secular population will ultimately lose Jerusalem, and the emergence of another religious state, after Iran, is just around the corner, in which power will belong not even to a king or dictator, but to a virtual viceroy of God, whose will will not be questioned. And then it's hard to figure out what's primary and what's secondary.

 

    A true believer is far removed from vanity; he cares nothing about who drives where, when, or who eats what. He is alone with God at the hour of prayer and needs no intermediaries. It's no wonder that Western democracies and even Muslim Turkey, having understood the root of evil, separated religion from the state. Religion immediately acquired a human face, cleansed of those thirsting for power.

 

      The religious oligarchy rightly saw peace and democracy, these two inseparable concepts, as a threat to its selfish goals. Although the Orthodox power struggle has been set in motion, it will not have time to gain momentum, because the peace process initiated by Rabin will culminate in the establishment of peace and the advent of true democracy, which the politicking rabbis so fear, and which will return them to what they are obligated to do—to the Creator and faith.

 

     There you have the answer to the question of who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and why.

 

 

    . 04.12.96.