The Rabin Legacy

OTHER "‘

Dr. Isniar Schorsch, chancellor,
Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, New York;
Yitzhak Rabin was a sabra, the
first prime minister born in Israel.
And his upbringing had every-
thing to do with his relentless
effort to disentangle Israel from
the territories he conquered in
1967. Why does his birthplace
matter? Because it had everything
to do with his upbringing.
Rabin's mind-set betrayed no
traces of the Holocaust. He did
not brood on its horror nor
exploit it to justify his actions. He
did not turn it into a worldview
that saw a potential anti-Semite in
every gentile. Each time I heard
him speak about the need for
peace, I was struck by the absence
of fear in his public remarks.
To remember the past without
becoming its prisoner, and to con-
front the present in terms of its
own unique constellation, are
surely an essential part of Yitzhak
Rabin's indelible legacy.

Cynthia Ozick, novelist, New
York;
Rabin's legacy has been a Jewish
tragedy. He drove a population
into Utopianism. It is very clear
that it was a mistake from the
beginning. We are more disillu-
sioned now because it was an illu-
sion beforehand. We imagined we
had counterparts also willing to
compromise, but there never were,
not for Shimon Peres, not for
Binyamin Neta_nyahu and not for
Ehud Barak.

David Makovsky, Washington
Institute for Near East Policy;
former staff writer for the
Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz:
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
was neither warm nor fuzzy. He
was usually gruff. Yet, somehow
he conveyed a sense that he was
focused on the big picture, as well
as how that translated for real peo-
ple. When in conversations, he
puffed on his ubiquitous cigarette
and gave his incisive analysis .
about the forces influencing the
region.
His signature style was his can-
dor, never hyping flattering sce-
narios. This intellectual honesty

Reflecting On Rabin

Mixed political feelings co-exist
with unified feelings of grief

HARRY KIRSBAUM

Staff Writer

IT

osh Berkovitz remembers
standing outside watching
leaves fall from the big oak in
his West Bloomfield back yard
when his wife opened the door and
said, "The prime minister has been
murdered."
She had to yell it a second time
because it didn't sink in. "I ran into
the house with mud on
my feet, stained the
whole carpet, and I sat
in front of the TV. I
didn't move from that
TV until the next
morning," said
Berkovitz, president of
the Michigan Friends of
the Israel Defense
Forces (IDF). He stayed
home from work the
next day.
"I think we were in a
state of shock and the
mind started to work
overtime," he said. "It
got even worse when we
found out that it was
done by a Jew — an
Mark Myers
Israeli. The confusion
was even greater, and the
pain was unbelievable. Even though
my political views are not with the
Labor Party, it didn't matter at that
point. The pain was 'How can it hap-
pen among us? Where are the Jewish
values and morals?'"
Reports of the assassination of Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Nov.
4, 1995, left feelings of pain and
betrayal around the world. The Jewish
News ran a 24-page section at the front
of its issue that week, filled with reac-
tions and thoughts from Israel,
Washington, D.C., and Detroit. The
special section also included a profile
of the assassin, a story on a memorial
service at Adat Shalom Synagogue, and
editorials on future prospects for peace.

Indelible Memories

News of the assassination left perma-

nent memories not experienced by
Americans since the death of President
John F. Kennedy in 1963. People were
left wondering what ramifications

Rabin's murder would have on the
Middle East peace process.
"I think that, in the short run, some-
times the shock of it does bring people
together," said West Bloomfield's Larry
Jackier, national president of the
American Technion Society. "Resiliency

has - wonderful positive qualities, but
one of the nor-so-positive qualities is
you go back to business as usual. In this
kind of case, business as usual is every-
body pursuing their own agenda.
"I was very
concerned until
the wretched
events of the last
five weeks that
the rift in society
in Israel was as
great as ever," he
said. "Now, when
there's an external
enemy, again for
a while you can
lay down your
differences and
pull together.
They seem to be
headed in that
direction."
Jackier said if
Rabin was still
alive, the peace
process wouldn't
be different.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak
"laid it all out in August," Jackier
said, about offering to trade so much
land for peace. "And Arafat wouldn't
take yes for an answer."
Mark Myers, Michigan/Israel
Connection community shaliach
(emissary), agreed.
"No Israeli would ever dream of
seeing or hearing an offer like that
[before], yet Arafat turned it down.
It doesn't matter if it was Rabin or
[former Prime Minister] Menachem
Begin or Ehud Barak, I think that
the call for the uprising that we saw
would be there anyway.
Myers was living on Kibbutz Magan
Micha-el near Haifa when Rabin was
killed. "We were sitting at home kind
of getting ready for the upcoming
week and our good friend just came
running in saying, 'Turn on the TV.'
We just joined the whole country lis-
tening to partial and often inaccurate
reports of what was going on."