FORGETTING RABIN "We don't think about it anymore." answer for that crime, the government had to answer for this one. Since the Oslo Accords were widely seen as the cause of the bombings, and Rabin was chiefly responsible for the Oslo Accords, his mem- ory was tainted. In the streets, some demonstrators shouted praises to Yigal Amir and chant- ed, "Peres, you're next in line." Again, no one stopped them. Television commenta- tors put it down to the "rage" and "sorrow" of the crowd. I stood in the throngs outside Dizengoff Center for days after the bus bombing there. Demonstrators, mainly teen-agers, were singing songs to Baruch Goldstein, and chanting that Mr. Peres was a trai- tor. One man tried to challenge them, and was told: "Get out of here, this is no place for leftists." I hid behind my role as a jour- nalist. I was afraid to say anything in these mobs. They were gleeful with ha- tred, and thoroughly intimidating. All the pledges made after the assassination — like, "We will never be silent again" — weren't worth a damn. After that, the memory of Rabin's mur- der went on a long, steady fade. The Is- raeli public was worn out — it didn't want to have to grapple with any burning moral questions. Most modern-thinking people under- stand that religious nationalism is a dan- gerous brew, that it carries the easy potential to turn violent and beastly. We Jews are wary of Christian nationalism or Muslim nationalism, but how can Ju- daism be carried too far? How can an Is- raeli be too nationalistic? It would mean that there were elements in our blood- stream that were potentially toxic. America has its Militiamen, its Ku Klux Klan; Europe has its skinheads and neo- Nazis; Latin America its fascists; Africa its tribal tyrannies; the Middle East and Asia its Muslim fanatics, but Israel? The Jews? We are pure, from the root to the branch to the leaf. Yigal Amir, we have decided, is the ex- ception that proves the rule. Maybe we have to add in Kach and Kahane Chai, but that's as far as it goes. To think that a hate mania has spread through wide sections of the population and that some of the leaders of these parties helped whip up this frenzy? No, the Israeli public did not and does not want to think about this. If we ven- tured into our country's heart of dark- ness, we wouldn't rest so easily. And anybody who challenges us to go to that frightening place is rejected or ignored — for example, Leah Rabin. She is no longer nationally admired, to say the least. She's insisted that neither Mr. Weiz- man nor Mr. Netanyahu speak at her husband's memorial ceremony. She has gotten a lot of flack for it, but I applaud her. Enough diplomacy, enough making nice, enough forgiveness to those who never apologized. What's needed is more exactly what the Rabin government is do- truth. ing." But there isn't much demand in Israel And as for Mr. Netanyahu's claim for truth; we prefer amnesia. about having dealt so sternly with "the About a week after the assassination, few hotheads," let me add one reminder: Mr. Netanyahu wrote a New York ?times At a rally in Jerusalem in July 1994, I op-ed piece in which he described the at- heard the roar of thousands, if not tens tacks on him and the Likud as "Mc- of thousands of protesters, chanting Carthyism at its purest." He and his through the night, "Rabin is a traitor!" colleagues were beyond reproach, he All the while Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. wrote: They had repeatedly condemned Sharon, Yitzhak Shamir and a lineup of the malicious slurs of Rabin "and the few fight-wing champions continued on with hotheads who yelled them." their blistering speeches. In response, political scientist Shiomo To remember the assassination is to Avineri, a kind of Israeli intellectual lau- remember the Two Year Hate that pre- reate, a man of the most moderate La- ceded it. Israel as a society has chosen to borite views, reminded Mr. Netanyahu in turn away from memory and judgment. a Jerusalem Post op-ed: "Just two weeks So Rabin's murder remains unresolved. before the assassination, you yourself com- Those who, metaphorically, have blood pared Rabin's Labor Party's activities to on their hands go unpunished. Yigal the 'methods of Ceaucescu,' who, as many Amir's sin is compounded by our own, of us remember vividly, was killed as a and it stays with us. dictator in a violent [Romanian] revolu- After the week of national grief that tion." He added, "Don't you realize that comparing a democratic government to Nazi collaborators is simply beyond the pale?" We don't read many articles like this in Israel anymore. We don't see the TV MARC BAKER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS clip that was rerun after the assassina- tion, the clip of Mr. Netanyahu claiming The great debate in Is- that a "very reliable source" told him the rael and the Diaspora, Rabin government was "signaling" underlying the differing Hamas, via the PLO, that it would not ob- responses to the 1993 ject to the murder of Jewish settlers. We Oslo Accords, is the an- are no longer reminded of what Ariel swer to the question: Sharon, now a powerful government min- What kind of country ister, told a Chabad newspaper about the will Israel be in the future? Will she reported threats on Rabin's life: "In the continue along her socialist-univer- '30s the [Soviet] government spread sto- salist path, following the example of nes about assassination plots against Stal- Marc Baker is active in several Zionist in, which enabled Stalin to eliminate the organizations in the Detroit area. high command of the Red Army...This is followed the assassination, I wrote that Israel had gone through "a catharsis, a purifying experience...The decent ma- jority emerged from the week of mourn- ing like someone who has survived a life-threatening illness: with a resolution to take much better care of themselves from now on." Boy, was I wrong. The president of the Supreme Court is under guard for his life. One of Aharon Barak's harassers vows that he will "rot in the grave next to Rabin's." The Reform Judaism office in Jerusalem has been receiving hun- dreds of death threats allegedly from yeshiva boys, some of whom invoke Yi- gal Amir's example. It barely causes a shrug. Israel's willed forgetting of Rabin's as- sassination has had its effect: It has weakened our resistance to evil. We have become a less courageous people. Our soul is smaller. ❑ From The Right... TT David Ben-Gurion and successive La- bor governments, or will she reflect the more individualist-nationalist vision of Binyamin Netanyahu and his philo- sophical mentor Vladimir Jabotinsky? The Oslo Accords were intended to ush- er in a peaceful and prosperous peri- od, but in light of the events since its signing, Israel is definitely not at peace. In fact, terrorism has increased and Is- rael is more vulnerable. What went wrong? The premise of the Oslo Accords was that Israel would trade "land for peace." Israel would withdraw from terri- tory it held, and in return, Mr. Arafat pledged to cease waging war against Israel. The problem right from the beginning of the negotia- tions was that Mr. Arafat would talk peace to the Is- raelis and continue preach- ing violence to Arab audiences. He refrained from meeting any of the Ac- A Jewish settler and a Palestinian man join in a demonstration.