Reflecting on a Hero's Death

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel is buried today in the hills of Jerusalem. He was born in Jerusalem and he fought there twice, securing its peace and that of Israel. As he is lowered into the hard and hallowed earth, an Israeli flag draped over his pine-wood casket, Rabin is not alone. A part of the state is buried with the man.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was a reluctant politician. He did not crave attention or court stardom. He treated power not as a perk but as a privilege. He desperately believed that there could be peace in the Middle East, but he never forgot that peace was hard and painful and still good.

It is hard to fathom the events of the last 48 hours: The Prime Minister of the first Jewish state in 2,000 gunned down by a Jew. For 47 years, Jews in Israel have carried out the bitterest debates, have seethed and raged and hated each other. With precious few exceptions, however, they had not allowed that hate to translate into bloodshed. And now they have.

The assassination is not the work of a lone lunatic. As the peace process marched on, Prime Minister Rabin at its helm, radical rightist elements began to abandon any pretense of respecting the authority of the Labor government. Rabin the traitor--not only to the Jewish state but to Jewish history and the Jewish God--became a virtual trope of radical rightist rhetoric. At a recent anti-peace rally, a manakin of Rabin, clad in an SS uniform, was hanged in effigy. The rhetoric on the Israeli extreme right has been so strident and so vicious of late that it is difficult to construe the murder as anything but the direct outgrowth of an increasingly poisonous political culture.

This is not to say, of course, that the majority of right-leaning Israelis would ever think to condone this grisly act. Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu has charted a course of loyal opposition, making clear that he respects the authority of the Labor government even as he vehemently disagrees with its policies. Still, a small but significant fringe has emerged on the right which callously disregards the rule of law--and threatens to rend asunder the Israeli social and political fabric.

Perhaps I overstate the case. To believe many of the learned heads who have already gone on the record about the Rabin execution, there are fringe elements in Israel as there are fringe elements in the United States. The Rabin assassination, on this logic, becomes something akin to the Oklahoma City bombing--a gruesome reminder that there are extremists out there somewhere who are willing to shed their compatriots' blood to drive home their own idiosyncratic political agendas.

But the Rabin assassination, it seems to me, is different. According to Israel's foundation myth, the country is a safe haven for Jews the world over, a place for Jews to flee from religious persecution. The murder does not simply call attention to the existence of a radical fringe. It begs a fundamental question about Israel's civic health: What can Israel mean if Israel is a place where Jews murder their own prime minister? What are the distinctive ideals of the Jewish State when Jews prove themselves as capable of gruesome violence as any other nation?

Prime Minister Rabin was in a unique position to steer Israel towards peace.

In the coming years, as Israel is scheduled to evacuate Jewish settlers from the West Bank, one can imagine the once unimaginable: uniformed soldiers representing the Jewish state trading fire with Jewish settlers. The Rabin assassination gives the lie to the native belief that somehow, some way, all Israeli Jews are part of one great big family. They are not. But if they are not--if the distance between the extreme right and left is so great that murder is within the pale of the possible--why should there be a Jewish state?

One of the greatest ironies of contemporary Israeli society is that intra-Jewish violence should be breaking out just as peace with many of Israel's formerly hostile neighbors is becoming a reality. It is a standard line in Jewish history that a little anti-Semitism has always been good for the Jews. While that logic seems bizarre and contorted, it is hard to imagine this assassination having taken place while Israel was engaged in international conflict.

The prognosis for Israeli society does not have to be so gloomy. Some have taken solace that Prime Minister Rabin was killed at a pro-peace rally that attracted over 100,000 participants. The mainstream Israeli pro-peace voice was being heard en masse for the first time in a while. It is possible that the assassination could serve to further the cause of a coalition of moderates from both sides of the political spectrum. As with so much else concerning the Rabin assassination, it is simply too soon to tell.

It is too soon to tell also what will be with the peace process Prime Minister Rabin was in a unique position to steer the Israeli public on a path towards peace. The first of the eight Israeli prime ministers to be born in Palestine, Rabin did not carry with him the scars of Europe's destruction of the Jews. His impeccable military credentials allowed him to command the trust of the majority of Israelis throughout the Peace Process.

Shimon Peres does not have those credentials and his popular support is not quite so far-reaching. But whether or not it is he that ultimately carries forth the project that Rabin conceived, the peace process must move forward. Rabin's legacy to the Middle East is the potential for peace. He knew that all peace is imperfect but still he was willing to take those first painful steps, steps that were as daring--and ultimately more dangerous--than any he took as an Israeli soldier.

As Yitzhak Rabin is laid to rest, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, King Hussein of Jordan and President Clinton will be among the many heads of state who will honor the memory of the fallen Israeli soldier and statesman. Their decision to attend betrays not only a respect for Rabin the man, but a deep-seated belief that the peace he envisioned ought not be allowed to vanish.

"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem," enjoined the Psalmist. As the murdered Yitzhak Rabin is laid to rest in Jerusalem's Mt. Herzl, one cannot help but think now more than ever.