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Determined to Reach a Common Objective

“We knew at the outset that the task would be difficult. We acknowledged that publicly and privately. We knew this would be a road with many bumps— and there have been many bumps—and that continues to this day. But we are not deterred. We are, to the contrary, determined more than ever to proceed to realize the common objective, which we all share, of a Middle East that is at peace with security and prosperity for the people of Israel, for Palestinians, and for all the people in the region. We will continue our efforts in that regard, undeterred and undaunted by the difficulties, the complexities or the bumps in the road.”—George Mitchell, special envoy for Middle East peace, remarks with Prime Minister Netanyahu, September 29, 2010

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The U.S. Agency for International Development and Conflict: Hard Lessons from the Field

May 17, 2011, 12:00pm – 1:15pm

From Afghanistan and Iraq to Pakistan, Somalia, and South Sudan, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, is engaged daily in trying to help some of the most troubled nations on the planet make a lasting transition to stability, open markets, and democracy. Few areas of the agency’s work are more challenging or more controversial.

Join us for remarks by, and a roundtable with, the deputy administrator of USAID, Ambassador

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The 12th Year

Noa Rotman, granddaughter of Yitzhak Rabin, published in Yedioth Ahronoth, adapted for Middle East Bulletin

My memory is worn, scarred, stimulated and pained. Once a year, I sit shiva in the national mourners’ hut, wearing a three-piece suit, hair styled, everything in place, crying reservedly. Once a year, they bring out my grandparents’ freckled wonder girl to say something touching, something authentic and real, while all made up for the cameras, hoping that she won’t forget to top it off with an interesting anecdote from her last encounter with him. The wonder girl, who turned 30 this year, who has the first hint of wrinkles around her eyes, isn’t sure how to sort between realities and revised memories, among the images in her head.
My memory is worn, but the jailed murderer, it seems, is not. He has enjoyed conjugal visits with his fiance. His fiance, who was introduced to him by right-wing activists since he was sent to prison and who divorced her husband to carry on a horrifying lineage, has been waiting to clutch her son. What sickening timing, for this child, , the result of a repugnant merger between pure satisfied evil, brought into the covenant as our dark reality is teetering on the edge of hell.

Our bodies hang on the edge of this abyss. It is a long, long row; this is the twelfth journey to this infinity; our fates on the silver platter of Israeli talkback culture, asking and being asked once again, to remember, with great pathos, and never to forget. Actually no, devoid of pathos, but rather with Rabinesque sincerity, feeling a pain that never abates, slightly ashamed, left with a suppressed anger presented with a civic smile. As everyone expects.

We make our way to another school named after him, with a choir comprised of sweet kids who today may want to remember him, but tomorrow may join the choir of those who dispute his legacy, wishing once again to believe that more people miss that man, whom we have been mourning for twelve years. Occasionally someone reprimands us for refusing to move on.

My memory hurts. How does it hurt? It hurts like longing, like a broken heart. Why use the word ‘like’? My heart is truly broken. Maybe I’m blessed because I used to have a normal family, with an omelet in the evening and a warm blanket at story time before bed, with pajamas with a faint smell of laundry detergent, with the table set for Friday night dinner, with cakes and relatives. And when everything shattered and we almost became a meager copy of the family we once had been—a faded row of almost painfully beautiful, mourning figureheads—I decided to rescue the remnants of the family I had and stopped cooperating with the collective memory.

After we stayed quiet for some time, we realized that wouldn’t work, because people said we were too quiet and that we had stopped remembering, that we were a lesser generation than our predecessors. But wait - just a moment ago it seemed like the winds of silence were blowing: after excess talk, mounds of criticism and garbage piled up on our queen mother, our beloved grandmother Leah, who was scorned until she was reduced to nothing, fading away in front of the news cameras on Mount Herzl.

My memory is pained, my anger has been provoked, my soul is tired, and my life has only just begun.

Please rise for the singing of our national anthem.