COMMENTARY: Rabin: A martyr in his grave cannot lead anyone to peace

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) (UNDATED) Has anything really changed since Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated last Nov. 4 in Tel Aviv? Decide for yourself as you consider what has happened during the past year. At her husband’s funeral, Leah […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

(UNDATED) Has anything really changed since Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated last Nov. 4 in Tel Aviv? Decide for yourself as you consider what has happened during the past year.


At her husband’s funeral, Leah Rabin refused to shake hands with Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the opposition Likud party in Israel. Her act of rejection, which was carried live on television throughout the world, seemed to crush any hopes that Bibi Netanyahu would be elected prime minister.

Leah Rabin believed that Netanyahu’s Likud party had condoned, and even encouraged, the ugly personal attacks that were hurled against her husband. She believed a venomous climate of hate had been created in Israel that led to political murder.

Conventional wisdom told us that Leah Rabin’s public repudiation of Netanyahu virtually guaranteed the election of Shimon Peres, once her husband’s rival and later his closest partner in the peace process with the Palestinians. Rabin’s legacy would live on in Prime Minister Peres.

But less than seven months after Rabin’s death, Netanyahu, the political pariah, narrowly defeated Peres in a democratic election, and became Israel’s new prime minster. As it turned out, the conventional wisdom was wrong.

The past year has been a surprising one for Yigal Amir, Rabin’s youthful Orthodox Jewish murderer. He was brought to trial and found guilty of killing Rabin. Amir is currently in prison, but in some demented way, he has become a poster boy for some young Israeli women.

Amir’s boyish good looks, his Mona Lisa smile and his fervent declarations that he pulled the trigger on behalf of God and the Jewish people are attributes many find attractive. No doubt someone will be inspired to write Amir’s political and spiritual biography, proving once again that some people find radical evil more interesting than fundamental goodness.

In time, there may be a campaign to release Amir from jail. We will be assured that he has been rehabilitated while in prison, and that he regrets his crime.”Free Yigal Amir”may someday become a rallying cry on the Israeli political scene.

In the weeks immediately following the Rabin assassination, a flurry of soul-searching took place within the Orthodox Jewish community, a segment of which provided Amir with his beliefs. Responsible leaders, both here and in Israel, promised to bring civility to the political process. There was much brave talk about Jewish unity and the urgent need to stand together as one people in the wake of the Rabin tragedy.


But it is once again business as usual within the world Jewish community. Recently, a leading Orthodox rabbi in Israel sharply denounced Reform Judaism. The latter group responded by accusing the rabbi of fomenting violence against Reform Jews, a charge that was denied.

Bar-Ilan Street runs through an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem, and a violent controversy has arisen over whether the street remains open or closed to vehicular traffic on the Sabbath.

Stones, Jerusalem’s main weapon of protest, were used in the intra-Jewish uproar. Indeed, the Bar-Ilan debate represents a host of other”synagogue-state”issues that are certain to erupt in Israel.

Finally, what has become of the peace process to which Yitzhak Rabin dedicated so much time, talent and energy, and which ultimately cost him his life? There were the usual, predictable words following the assassination that Rabin’s death would accelerate the efforts to settle the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. Conventional wisdom told us that stunned Israelis and sympathetic Palestinians would quickly achieve a final agreement as a fitting memorial to the martyred prime minister. Not quite.

Perhaps the real lesson to be learned a year after Rabin’s death is that martyrs must always be recognized, revered, and remembered. But a martyr’s death rarely changes the basic political or religious landscape. Indeed, it often enlarges the fissures that already divide a society.

A martyr is rarely the catalyst for shaping public policy. Alas, martyrs in their graves cannot lead anyone or change anything. Only we, the living, can do that. And this is not conventional wisdom. It is the ultimate truth.


MJP END RUDIN

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