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by Michael Cooper
“I decided to kill him, to neutralize him politically,” calmly stated the Orthodox Jew who murdered Yitzhak Rabin in a recently released interview. When asked if he regretted killing the prime minister, he said, “Heaven forbid! I don’t regret it.”
Rabin now occupies a grave in the national cemetery on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem next to his wife Leah. Surrounded by cedar and pine trees, their graves are marked by two curving, almost intertwining headstones, his black, hers white.
I first visited the national cemetery soon after arriving in Israel in the summer of 1966. It was new then. I remember the oppressive heat and light, the newly-planted trees offering little shade. At that time, about nine months before the 1967 War, Rabin was commander of the Israeli Army. Now he’s here, the air is cool, and the trees have grown tall.
I stand, looking at the headstones and thinking of the passage in the Babylonian Talmud; “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world.”
I consider the extent of that destruction and close my eyes, feeling the weight of that loss.
Opening my eyes, I see that I’m no longer alone at the gravesite. A few paces to my right stands a young man with arms crossed, 20-something, and beneath tousled auburn hair, his face is tanned and freckled — a soldier, from the looks of him, although with open collar and scuffed brown leather shoes, not the look of a soldier of any modern army.
“How is it that you look so young?” I ask.
“I can be any age I choose,” Yitzhak Rabin replies.
“Why this age?”
“Because of her.” He nods past the headstones.
Moving out from among the trees is a young woman, her dark hair partially covered by a scarf tied beneath her chin. She wears a simple white embroidered blouse, white skirt, and sandals over white socks. Standing next to him, she takes his hand.
“My Leah,” he explains, though he doesn’t have to. “This is how we were right after we were married.” He draws a deep breath. “That was a good day.”
“You didn’t think so at the time.” She smiles.
He looks down at her feet and shakes his head. ““Well, for one thing, I didn’t like that they made you wear white socks under your sandals.”
“What could I do? The rabbi wouldn’t marry us without the socks.”
“I wanted the religious service over with quickly and I didn’t want a lot of guests. I wanted the ceremony short and private. Unfortunately, it was neither.”
She laughs. “Do you remember what you told me when it was over?”
“Of course. I said that this is absolutely the last time I’m getting married.”
“And it was.” Leah smiles up at him. “We had a good life together — until it was cut short by those thugs...’
“What do you mean, ‘thugs’ — in the plural?” I ask. “There was only one shooter.”
“True,” Leah agrees, “There was only one finger on the trigger, but others created the atmosphere of incitement that led to the murder. I believe that Bibi Netanyahu, himself, bore some responsibility for demonizing my Yitzhak.” She puts her arm around his waist. “That’s what I meant about thugs, even though there was only one finger on the trigger.”
“Unfortunately true, “Rabin says. “The right-wing parties went crazy after the Knesset endorsed Oslo II in 1993. Pictures of me dressed as a Nazi began appearing at their rallies. Netanyahu didn’t object. Quite the opposite. He accused me of accepting the directives of terrorists, of agreeing to Auschwitz borders.”
“Exactly!” says Leah. “That’s why I refused to shake his hand when he came to the house during Yitzhak’s shiva. Netanyahu has destroyed Yitzhak’s legacy. When he became prime minister the first time, in ’96, he immediately undermined the Oslo accords; he suspended all redeployments, confiscated Arab lands on the West Bank, built more Jewish housing on Arab land in Jerusalem, and gave free rein to settlers harassing the Palestinians. The Oslo accords unraveled, and our dreams of peace were destroyed. He did it then, and he’s doing it again now.”
“And the damage he did to our peace efforts was only part of the picture.” Rabin steps forward with Leah and they sit on the stone step in front of their grave markers. “Have a seat.” He pats the limestone. “After Arafat and I signed the Declaration of Principals and shook hands at the White House in ‘93, everything changed. Doors opened between Israel and the entire Islamic world. We set up diplomatic and trade missions with Morocco and Tunisia, we developed trade with Oman and Qatar, made peace with Jordan, and we began to explore a peace treaty with Syria. We were no longer a ‘nation that stands alone.’ But all that ended with Netanyahu’s lust for a Greater Israel. When he showed no interest in peace with the Palestinians, Morocco and Tunisia withdrew their representatives, and Oman and Qatar stopped trading with us.”
“I thought he was more pragmatic than that,” I said.
“Think again. Bibi’s always been an ideologue. He has a two-track strategy; to fend off pressure from the Americans, he pretends that he’s in earnest about reaching an agreement with the Palestinians. At the same time, he winks to his right-wing allies and reassures them that they have nothing to worry about; there will be no territorial concessions, and there will be no peace — only talk. It’s a balancing act that depends on the amount of pressure he’s getting from different...”
“It also depends on how quickly he can change the subject,” Leah adds. “Like he’s doing now; instead of talking about a settlement freeze and a two-state solution, he talks about international terrorism, Iran, Hitler, and the Holocaust . . .”
“He plays for time,” Rabin interjects, “and hopes for a change in the administration or in Congress. He knows that if he agrees to even one inch of territorial compromise, the settler block will turn on him and his government will fall. Apart from his own ideology, that’s why he’ll never make peace. It was the same last time he was prime minister – no progress.”
“Then and now,” Leah says, “it comes down to American pressure.”
“And I hope it comes swiftly,” Rabin adds. “With every passing day, Netanyahu makes the moderate Palestinian leadership look weaker and more ridiculous, and by this, he strengthens the hand of Hamas. That’s why I made a deal with Arafat and the PLO in the early ’90s — I saw the rising strength of Hamas. I knew we had a strategic opening for peace, and I took it.”
“You see how my Yitzhak thinks?” asks Leah. “A lifetime of soldiering makes him see everything in terms of strategy.” She pauses to plant a kiss on his cheek. “When he was ambassador in Washington they used to say that Yitzhak always thought like a general — his diplomacy was just the continuation of war by other means.”
“I don’t deny that. I always believed that Israeli military power had to be exerted in such a way as to force the Arabs to despair of defeating us militarily — force them to accept our existence, to compel them to negotiate with us toward peace. That’s what I was doing when that bastard shot me in the back. He robbed me of the opportunity to finish the journey and to reach the goal of a secure, Jewish, and democratic State of Israel. He robbed all us of that peace.”
Leah sighs. “And that’s the real tragedy...”
“I probably only had a few years left anyway, with all my years of smoking.” Rabin shrugs. “I think I started when I was 16, when I began my military training.”
“You started your military training at 16?” I ask.
“It was very basic, just learning to clean and fire a rifle. Afterwards, when I attended agricultural high school in the Galilee, I did guard duty since the school was often attacked by Arab irregulars. But my real military career began in 1940. I was 19. Moshe Dayan interviewed me about joining the Palmach. We mobilized with the British and the Arab Legion, fighting the Vichy French in Lebanon. That’s where Dayan lost his eye, you know.”
“You see the irony?” Leah cuts in. “Yitzhak was fighting the Nazis when he was barely 20, and those right-wing bastards called him a Nazi.”
“You were fighting the Nazis?” I ask.
Rabin nods. “In coalition with the British.”
“But didn’t you fight against the British in Palestine?” I ask.
“That came later, when the British stopped Holocaust survivors from reaching Palestine.”
”Yitzhak raided the British prison near Haifa with the Palmach,” Leah interjects. “They freed hundreds of Holocaust survivors!”
“They’d been arrested by the British for entering Palestine illegally,” Rabin explains. “We got them all out, carrying the kids on our backs. I’ll always remember that.”
“But the crazies on the right don’t remember anything!” Leah exclaims. “Do they remember that he led the fight to open the road to Jerusalem with snipers everywhere? Do they remember that he prepared and commanded the army in 1967 — the most spectacular military victory in Israel’s history?” Leah pauses to catch her breath, and Rabin puts his hand on her knee.
“Settle down, darling,” he says. “The point is this: The security of a democratic and Jewish homeland has always my highest priority. That’s why I was moving toward a solution with two states, a Jewish state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine. The Palestinians agreed to this when they declared their statehood in 1988; they accepted the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state. You see? We won. The strategy of a strong Israel won. But, instead of accepting this victory and negotiating the terms of peace, there are those who want war to go on and on.” Rabin nods toward the pine trees. “When you came through the military graveyard, did you notice the ages of the dead from 1948? Some were my comrades, and some were boys under my command.” He sweeps his hand from West to East. “Their graves fill the hillside, and I know that just as we have graveyards, so do the Arabs. We have martyrs and they have martyrs. Enough of martyrs, already. We arrived at a historical moment where peace was possible — it’s still possible — not a perfect peace, but a beginning, a movement in the right direction.” He puts a hand to his chest. “I’m keenly aware of the price we’ve paid in blood to survive as a Jewish democracy. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to insure that survival. And when the moment came to make peace, I tried to seize it. It was and remains the strategic thing to do and the right thing to do — using strategy for strength and not destruction.” He stands and offers Leah his hand, helping her up from the stone step. “It’s strange, isn’t it? In ’67, I was a hero to the religious right for leading the army in war, but when I tried to make peace, they called me a traitor.”
I nod. “When you signed the Oslo accords, you signed your own death warrant.”
“I know, and I don’t regret it. I just wish I could have finished the journey. Most Israelis supported me. I remember the huge rally after Oslo II — the night of the assassination — the square full of people as far as the eye could see, full of light beneath the dark sky.”
“That was a good day,” says Leah.
“Yes, it was, and I’m so glad to have seen it, to speak to that crowd, to tell them that by making peace with our neighbors, we can finally join the community of nations, break out of the prison of our past and move away from the fear that Netanyahu uses to create a perpetual state of emergency, to finally move away from policies and actions that have branded us a rogue state, a lunatic state.” He smiles. “I was glad to tell that that we don’t have to be a nation that dwells alone.”
Turning, he looks down at Leah. “After the rally, I thought you were right behind me on the steps coming down from the stage. I remember looking for you as I approached the car. I remember the last two words I spoke before the shots; where’s Leah?”
“I’m right here,” she whispers.
He gathers her in his arms.
I turn away and wander into the cool shade among the pine trees.
When I turn back, I see only the gently curving headstones, intertwined. Hers white. His black.
Dr. Michael Cooper graduated from Tel Aviv University Medical School and is now clinical professor of pediatric cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. He visits the West Bank annually to deliver cardiac health care to children. His novel, Foxes in the Vineyard, a thriller set in Palestine at the end of the British Mandate, will be published this summer. Click here to read his article, “The Oath of Maimonides Hits the Wall,” in our Spring, 2010 issue.
