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The Legacy of My Father

Yuval Rabin, Yitzhak Rabin’s son, spoke for the first time on Saturday at rally in memory of his father who was murdered 12 years ago, on November 4, 1995 (Translated from the original Hebrew by Middle East Bulletin)

“Good evening everyone,

Operation ‘Early Sunrise’ was the code name for the large security operation that was aimed at maintaining things peacefully at the peace rally that took place in this square on November 4, 1995. ‘Let the sun rise, the morning shine,’ sang the leaders on stage and the masses sang along. However, that hopeful evening ended with a great eclipse that has not left us since.

This evening, while we gather here in this square, a different ceremony is being conducted only a few kilometers from here. This ceremony originates in the tradition of studying Torah on the night preceding a circumcision ceremony. The purpose of the studying is to protect the newborn and not to leave him defenseless. This ceremony is known as ‘Brit Yitzhak’, the covenant of Isaac.

The other Yitzhak, my father and the Prime Minister of us all, the man in whose memory we are standing here now, was not protected by anyone. His blood was forfeited and his back offered up, to the right and the left of the murderer’s bullets, the father of the soon-to-be circumcised.

Twelve years have passed by, yet it seems to me more and more that nothing has changed and that the lesson is farther away than ever. Today, like back then, a cynical, well-timed, sophisticated campaign is running wild attempting to wash away the crime and turn blood again into fair game. Today, as then, the voices of the inciters remain unanswered, with on one side angry violence and on the other, the weakness of silence.

Today, just like back then.

Judge Zvi Gurfinkel wondered infuriatingly: ‘Why would it be a great disaster to conduct the circumcision ceremony in prison? After all, the petitioner is a Jew.”A Jew, in my opinion, is a moral person who obeys the law, a member of the people that gave humanity the universal code of ethics of the Ten Commandments, including the commandment ‘thou shall not murder.’ A Jew is a person who circumcises his son to distinguish him from the other nations, and not the person who turned us into just another violent and lawless country. A Jew is a person who knows that one of the objectives of circumcision is to mark the body with a common physical sign that unites rather than leads to separation and hatred among ourselves. A Jew is a person who knows that there is no value to the circumcision of the foreskin without a circumcision of the heart.

The man who stood at the bottom of the stairs in this square on that night twelve years ago and in cold blood assumed the role of the accuser, the judge and the executioner, the man who dismissed all democratic laws, continues to mock them to this very day, and for his own benefit.

It is inconceivable that with such emotional obtuseness, dismissing the public opinion, the State Attorney’s Office supported, the attorney general backed and the High Court of Justice handed down the Tel Aviv District Court’s disgraceful ruling from the day before yesterday. A ruling which turns the prison into a festive reception hall and makes the ‘mohel,’ the rabbi circumcising, happy, the new parents winners and band of cheerleaders triumphant. It is inconceivable that the sounds of happiness from the right will encounter nothing but a faded sticker from the left.

What started with permission for marriage, then birth and circumcision and continued in the path of incitement will end with a murderer who walking amongst us, surrounded by his many children, free and happy.

And so a horror film in which the actor playing the murderer says, “You realize that one day I will be released,” turns into a reality that is very close and not at all funny, in which the murderer will play himself.

Don’t be satisfied with the belief that it will not happen. Our strength as a society is ground into dust in the face of ongoing slander and denial. Destruction whose awful expression is silence.

And so I call on you:

Enough with the silence and enough with the opposition!!

This is not a personal insult or a single family’s pain.

This is not about one political camp or another.

This should be the outcry of all honest Israelis: Israelis that love the state and worry about its character and its future.Israelis who believe that the state of Israel needs to be Jewish, democratic and also civilized.

If we wish for life, if democracy is more than a dictionary definition to us, and if we don’t want the blood of the next one who’s murdered on our hands – now is the time to do something. To break the silence, and cry out, ask questions, and seek answers. The murderer, then as now, didn’t just act! He first and foremost was acted upon.Twelve years later – and those who manipulated him have still not been required to explain and pay the price. The gun of the murderer that came with him to the square that same bitter night was loaded with ammunition of moral and ideological support, and its owner charged with that same ammunition which gave permission to draw blood.

One finger pushed the trigger, but many hands led it there.

Those who screamed and those who incited, those who cursed and those who protested, those who put up the stickers and held the signs, those who carried the empty coffins and led the protests, those who stood on the balconies and called for boycotts, those who recited prayers and rendered religious decisions – all of those led over long months to this moment, the moment when the hand pulled the trigger of the gun of words in the first act, and washed over everything with words of hate, whose end is in the third act in which the shot rang out and the prime minister died in the square.

God forbid, answered the murderer a short while after the murder, when he was asked by the inspector if he regretted his actions. He does not regret his actions, nor pity us or the lost peace.

Those who shot my father wanted to hurt him and also to murder peace. But the way of peace has not been murdered. My father and he who was his full partner in the way of peace, and is today the president of this country, Shimon Peres – changed the controversy of yesterday into the consensus of today.

The legacy of my father is not a collection of empty sayings about exalted ideas. His legacy sought out the day to day, the simplicity that makes up our lives. He wanted to prevent the fine moment of Israeli sacrifice and pain, the moment between the ringing of the doorbell, and the appearance of those bearing bad news at the door. He wanted to wipe the salty tears from a mother’s face with laughter of children, to allocate enormous budges from another fighter jet to another computer for a child. To replace the order for reserve duty with a family vacation. He wanted to provide us all with the ability to live simply, to live peacefully, with no more wars.

It is not my way to stand in front of a square full of people and give speeches, and this is first time that I have done so in the twelve years that have passed. As I know the man, it was also not the way of my father, but on the last night of his life he not only spoke at the square, he even sang, and so bequeathed on his family and all of us the responsibility to stand here every year at the beginning of the autumn and to call for peace.

I stand here and look at you filling the square, and there is nothing greater than this sight, and I thank you all for being here. The thought that this is one of the last things my father saw, raises further the excitement. When the rally for peace started 12 years ago, a surge of hope swept this square. Let us not stop it, let us not let apathy kill such important parts of our existence here, let us remember why we gathered here, let us not forget what happens to a prime minister when public opinion abandons him, and when apathy becomes the public mood. Let us not be silent, let us act so that we will be able to live in a country that is sane and steadfast, in which Qassems are not the norm in Sderot, in which the socio-economic disparities are not decreed by fate.Let us not allow the P.O.W.s and M.I.As to fade from forgetfulness and apathy, and let us act quickly to bring them home.

The time has come for courageous decisions. So let us send from here a call of support and encouragement to the government to lead the peace process, without taking cover in the protective shadow of indecisiveness and inaction.Let us wish upon its leader, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a quick and full recovery and fruitful actions for peace and security.

The blood that ran from my father’s body, and with it his last breath of life stained the pages of the ‘Song of Peace’ that were in his pocket, and the lines from the song I read to you now.Don’t say a day will come, bring the day. Because it’s not a dream, and in all the squares, sing only for peace.’"