The first major political tragedy I remember was the death of Yitzchak Rabin in November, 1995. I was nine years old and until the Twin Towers fell Rabin’s assassination was my “Where were you?” moment, at least in Jewish school. I was walking into my parents’ bedroom and my mother had the TV on. She explained to me that Rabin, the Israeli prime minister whom I’d seen sign the Oslo Accords in first grade, had been shot and we didn’t know what was going to happen. Soon afterwards she told me he’d died.
My Jewish day school made a big deal of the assassination, rightly so, and just as we’d gathered when I was seven to watch that handshake on the White House lawn, so too my entire third grade came together after the murder to see Rabin’s funeral and wonder what would happen next. King Hussein spoke. Rabin’s granddaughter spoke. Bill Clinton said “Shalom chaver” and we all cheered. Things would be OK.
I assumed, living in the liberal, idealist, Democratic household that I did, that Peres would stay the course and we would have Middle East peace by, I don’t know, 1997. In my childhood naivety I was sure Labor would win the 1996 elections and I still remember looking in disbelief at the pie chart illustrating Likud’s win in the Chicago Tribune, 49.8 percent to 49.1, as I recall. That loss, more than Rabin’s assassination, shattered my youthful hope.
I know I was uninformed at age ten, not attuned to the ideological struggles of Israelis in the settlements and inside the green line, but from what I know now little reconciliation has happened between the country’s left and right and indeed politics now seem more polarized than they were in the nineties, perhaps because Israelis feel less safe or because few live with illusions of a smooth peace process like the one we dreamed of during the Clinton administration.
I read talk of settler-soldier violence more now than I ever have, with the Hilltop Youth and their “Price Tag” strategy leading the way in the territory we once envisioned would be a Palestinian state. On the Palestinian side, meanwhile, a terrorist group holds power over millions of people.
My reflections on this, which are not new, come today because this day marks the anniversary of the assassination of Gedalia, the last Jewish governor of the Land of Israel before the Babylonians took full control. Jew have traditionally fasted on this day because Gedalia was killed, like Rabin, by another Jew who was suspicious of the leader’s policies.
There was hate then and there’s hate now. In 1995 I would have told you that by 2009 Israel/Palestine would be some kind of Arcadia but here we are and times seem more like they were under the Babylonians than they were fourteen years ago. Several rabbis have called on this day for a renewed remembrance of Rabin’s death and the attitudes that caused it, for us to reconcile ourselves rather than fight. There are those that reject those claims, feeling that it’s the right thing to do, perhaps the tough thing to do, to choose sides and fight the good fight.
But there is no good fight and hating may make you look tough but it’s the easy choice, the coward’s choice. That’s why it’s lasted so long.
I want my idealism back. I want my optimism back. I want to believe that my dreams are possible and I want to see them happen. So heed the call and immerse yourself in the spirit of the season. The time for hate passed, over 2500 years ago.
