PHOTOS BY AP NEWS SERVICE

FORGETTING RABIN

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of Rabin, was a political act. It was car-
ried out by the same force responsible for
the murder — the activist right wing, the
leaders and followers of the mass move-
ment that rose up against the Rabin-led
peace process.
After the assassination they rose up
again against those who accused them of
causing the murder. They intimidated
their accusers, and the Israeli public once
again shrank before the verdict of the most
fearsome voices in the land: No one was
guilty except Yigal Amir. If the right was
to blame for stirring up the hatred that
bred the murder, then the left was equal-
ly at blame. And if everyone was to blame,
then no one was to blame, so we can get
on with our lives.
The rest of the world, or the rest of the
world that pays any attention to Israel,
accepted that the crusade against the
peace process set the stage for the assas-
sination. With the popular chants of "Ra-
bin is a traitor," "Rabin is a murderer,"
occasionally even "Death to Rabin," the
commonly seen posters of him dressed as
an Arab or a pharaoh, the few that showed
him as an SS officer, the labeling of the
government as "kapos," "quislings," "Ju-
denrat," "Nazis," the worsening violence
at the demonstrations, the storming of
Rabin's car, the death threats — the world
had no difficulty making the connection.
But in brael (and among American
Jewry), it was different. Blaming the ide-
ological right was met immediately with
the countercharge of "blood libel," of "danc-
ing on Rabin's blood," of "stiffing dissent."
What about the government's "delegit-
The forget in of Rabin, like the killing imization" of the opposition, especially the

mention Rabin in front of the U.S. Con-
gress. He put the slain premier in right
at the beginning with a few lines about
that "barbaric" murder. In his maiden
speech in America as prime minister, Mr.
Netanyahu felt compelled to say some-
thing; in his debut before the Israeli peo-
ple, he didn't.
To outsiders we pretend that we're still
deeply shaken by that night in Kikar
Malchei Yisrael (now Kikar Yitzhak Ra-
bin). On television we see foreign digni-
taries and Diaspora Jewish tour groups
laying flowers at Rabin's grave.
The Israeli escorts look properly
solemn. But we sense something out of
sync: Foreigners think that Rabin's mur-
der is still a fresh tragedy, or that they're
supposed to behave as if it's so. But we
don't. It happened a long time ago. We
don't think about it anymore.
There are still photos of hini, bordered
in black, in many offices. His gaze doesn't
make us feel guilty. We can look him in
the eye. There are still a lot of "Shalom,
Chaver" bumper stickers. They're like vi-
sual white noise, unnoticed.
It's too bad that "Shalom, Chaver" be-
came the definitive good-bye to Rabin —
it's so safe, so soothing. This send-off would
be just as applicable if he had died of a
heart attack.
How did this happen? His murder was
called the worst crime in Israel's histo-
ry, our deepest-ever national trauma, a
cataclysm on the scale of JFK's assassi-
nation. And now? If anybody dared say
such things now, the people listening
would try not to giggle.

Former Israeli Prime
Minister Shimon Peres
shakes hands during a
campaign stop.

settlers, the right demanded? What about
the times we were called "crybabies," "ball-
bearings," "propellers," and told the set-
tlers' "2 percent of the population" didn't
matter?
For the record, it wasn't exactly the gov-
ernment that said these things. It was Ra-
bin hhnself. Actually, he was tame in his
counterattacks considering that he was
subjected to shrieks of "murderer" and
"Nan."
After the assassination, most right-
wing proponents, the National Camp, who
cited these epithets as proof of govern-
ment provocation, omitted mentioning the
speaker's name. They didn't want to state
plainly their belief — that Rabin was
largely responsible for inciting his own
murder.
With one hand the opposition's front
ranks swung back at their accusers; with
the other they waved the flag of "unity."
The mealy-mouthed among us, notably
the American Jewish establishment, took
up the cause. "Finger-pointing," they said,
was not what we needed. Everyone — left,
right, religious and secular — had an
equal responsibility to do a heshbon ne-
fesh, a spiritual soul-searching. We must
join to heal our wounds, to mend our di-
visions, and the best way is to rein in our

anger and bitterness.

This push for Jewish unity was a cam-
paign of the right, by the right and for the
right. The people who had vilified Rabin
displayed no outrage whatsoever over his
murder, so they had none to rein in.
Only the left, the "Peace Camp," was
outraged. The National Camp was furi-
ous all right — at being blamed. And self-
pitying. And paranoiac. "The reign of
terror has begun by ministers of the gov-
ernment and some of their followers,"
wrote Nadia Mater, the movement's La
Passionaria. Upon searching her soul, she
said she had nothing to atone for in hav-
ing labeled the government a "Judenrat."
For right-wingers, confidence only
grew. Police called in a dozen or so ex-
treme right-wing Orthodox rabbis for
questioning. They couldn't put the finger
on any who had explicitly marked Rabin
out as a rodef, or moser — Jewish traitors
who, according to Jewish law, deserve ex-
ecution. So these rabbis were let free; the
government was accused of a "witchhunt."
Avishai Raviv, head of the "Eyal" or-
ganization to which Yigal Amir belonged,
was found to have been a Shin Bet in-
formant.
The National Camp had found its
scapegoat. They accused the Shin Bet —
which had been under Rabin's direct con-
trol -- of "running" Raviv as an agent
provocateur to smear them. Mr. Ne-
tanyahu said he expected "all those who
incited against the entire National Camp,
who maligned and slandered us, to apol-
ogize now."
Above all, the right pounded home that
the left was blaming the assassination on
"half the country" — the half that had op-
posed the peace process. But no reason-
able leftist believed that all Israelis who
distrusted Yassir Arafat, or who were ap-
palled by the rise in terror, or who reject-
ed the Oslo Accords for a variety of other
reasons, had a hand in Rabin's murder.
We pinned the blame on the mass
movement — a movement where people
felt free to call openly for Rabin's blood be-
cause they knew nobody would stop them,
whose leaders kept tossing out the raw
meat (while covering themselves by say-
ing, "Now, now," when things got out of
hand). But the left failed to make this dis-
tinction clear, and the charge of "blaming
half the country" stuck.
This is why Shimon Peres and the La-
bor Party shied away from tying Mr. Ne-
tanyahu and the National Camp to the
assassination during the election cam-
paign. This was the strongest card Mr.
Peres and Labor had to play, and they
didn't play it. Haim Ramon, who led for
the Labor campaign, and whom many
blame for its loss, says television viewers
in the focus groups whose politics leaned
to the right felt like they were being
blamed. So, Mr. Ramon explains, he
junked the ads. A wise decision; Mr. Peres
might have lost by a wider margin had
they been aired.
But what really got the right wing off
the hook were the bus bombings in Feb-
ruary and March. They "canceled out" Ra-
bin's killing. If the opposition had to