COMMENTARY: Slain Rabin has become universal icon of peace

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) UNDATED _ Four years after his assassination in Tel Aviv on Nov. 5, 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has become a universal icon of peace, and his influence in death continues to grow. Both Israeli Prime […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

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

UNDATED _ Four years after his assassination in Tel Aviv on Nov. 5, 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has become a universal icon of peace, and his influence in death continues to grow. Both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, the current partners in the long and tortured Middle East peace effort, frequently invoke Rabin’s name as if it were a mantra.


Retired Gen. Barak, Israel’s most decorated soldier, publicly calls Rabin, another general, his political mentor and personal inspiration. Indeed, Barak declares he is now resuming the peace process precisely at the point where it was so brutally stopped when assassin Yigal Amir, in the name of God, fired three lethal shots at Rabin.

Arafat, now nearly 70 years old and in failing health, refers often to the policies of his”fallen Israeli friend.” Increasingly criticized by his own Palestinian people for widespread acts of corruption and arrogance, Arafat reacts by conjuring up the memory of Rabin who shook his hand, albeit reluctantly, on the White House lawn in September 1993. For Arafat that globally televised handshake was the high point of his checkered political career. But literally and figuratively, it was another time and another place that can never be recaptured.

A somewhat similar phenomenon is occurring within the American Jewish community where Rabin’s name is being used to validate a host of groups committed to an Arab-Israeli peace. Ironically, some of these dovish groups sharply criticized the now martyred Rabin a decade ago when he was Israel’s hawkish defense minister. At that time, Rabin ordered strong military action in an attempt to crush the”intifada,”the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

As the mists of legend rapidly engulf Rabin, it is important to remember some facts about the man. Although not religiously observant, Rabin clearly represents the biblical tradition of a successful warrior who at the end of his life becomes a peacemaker. In all the mushy prose and poetry about Rabin, it is sometimes forgotten that he could never have become so committed to peace had he not first been tested in the bloody crucible of war.

Think of King David, a world-class soldier who achieved extraordinary military victories for ancient Israel. But he is best remembered not as a great warrior, but rather as the gifted psalmist and, dare I say it, a lover of women, including Bathsheba, the beautiful wife of another man.

At the end of his life David wanted nothing more than to build the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Because his hands were bloody, God denied him that great privilege and the Temple’s construction was left to Solomon, the child of David and Bathsheba.

Dwight Eisenhower, America’s World War II soldier-hero in the titanic struggle against Nazi tyranny, was elected to two terms as our nation’s president in 1952 and 1956. In the twilight of his presidency, Eisenhower became an impassioned warrior for peace and undertook a global journey to personalize that quest.

However, his presidency ended on a bitter note when the U-2 spy plane was shot down over Russia and with it crashed any realistic hope Eisenhower had for a comprehensive peace settlement with the Soviet Union.


Although he did not die until 1969, in many ways the U-2 incident was Ike’s political assassination. Deep suspicion festered on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and less than two years after Eisenhower left the White House, the two nuclear powers nearly went to war during the Cuban missile crisis.

But perhaps as result of that frightening confrontation, the United States and the Soviet Union moved closer to peaceful co-existence one in the decades after Ike’s death. His prophetic vision of”open skies”throughout the world and his dire warning about the grave threat posed by the”military-industrial complex”have been cited often by Americans and Russians in their pursuit of peace.

As Barak and Arafat move, stumble, and then resume the elusive goal of a just and lasting peace, we can be certain that both men will continue to evoke the spirit of Rabin. And if an icon is required to accelerate and legitimize the complicated Middle East peace, there is none better than Yitzhak Rabin, the gruff-speaking, chain-smoking, Scotch-drinking general who became a statesman, then a peacemaker, and ultimately a martyr who was murdered by a fellow Jew.

DEA END RUDIN

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!