Rivlin, Dalia Rabin: Vicious hatred could spark political assassination

The climate of vicious hatred and incitement based on opposing political ideologies, which is now permeating Israel and seeping down to the next generation, could spark another political assassination, President Reuven Rivlin and Dalia Rabin, the daughter of slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, implied on Sunday.

They were speaking at the President’s Residence at the Ner Yitzhak (a candle for Yitzhak) ceremony, which marks the official beginning of a series of annual memorial events on the Hebrew anniversary of Rabin’s death.

A massive memorial rally is held annually at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on the Saturday night closest to the anniversary of the murder, according to the Gregorian calendar.

In addition to four generations of the Rabin family – currently headed by the prime minister’s 94-year-old sister Rachel Rabin Yaakov and including his son Yuval, and some of the prime minister’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren – there were two former leaders of the Labor Party: former prime minister Ehud Barak and Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog. 

Current Labor leader Amir Peretz was also present, as was Shimon Sheves, who was director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office under Rabin and who is today involved in cyber security.

Prior to the ceremony, Labor Party veterans, in conversation with each other, were mourning not only Rabin, but also the decline of the party’s glory days, with Labor having all but sunk into oblivion.

Relating to the resurfacing of conspiracy theories about her father’s assassination, former deputy defense minister Dalia Rabin said that in the past, she had preferred to ignore them, but under the present circumstances, she felt compelled to respond that her father was killed by a Jewish person who was spurred by a different political ideology.

From the very night of the assassination 24 years ago, there were those who agreed with assassin Yigal Amir, she said, but only in the last decade has it been accepted for people to say so out loud.

It is not uncommon, she said, for young people who visit the Rabin Center to say that Amir was right, and that if they had been around at the time, they also would have killed Rabin.

Both Rivlin and Dalia recalled an address that Rabin had given to the Federation of Jewish Communities of North America in the year he went to Washington to sign a peace accord with Yasser Arafat.

Rabin had said to the representatives of American Jewry, in relation to the peace treaty, that it represented “a new agenda for the Jewish people in the Diaspora and for the State of Israel. We are one, whether we are in Montreal, or in Jerusalem, Miami, Chicago, Ramat Gan or Netanya. We are one people, separated only by our addresses.”

The underlying message was that Jews, regardless of their differences and their location, share a common destiny.

This was the interpretation both by Rivlin and Rabin’s daughter.

Dalia warned that the nation should wake up before it is too late.

Rivlin said that we must not forget the social deterioration into hatred, incitement and bloodshed that preceded Rabin’s assassination, and to do everything in our power to ensure that such a phenomenon never occurs again – especially on the grounds of political ideology.

Recalling the nightmare that most Israelis thought could never happen, Rivlin urged all political camps to tone down their rhetoric and to refrain from spewing hatred.

“This is not our way; this is not the way of the people of Israel,” he declared.  “We have to be cognizant of the destruction we could wreak with our own hands.”