REMEMBERING YITZHAK RABIN

 

The terrorist group Hamas recently lead what was the deadliest attack on the state of Israel in over 50 years.  (Indeed, it appears that the attack was made to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war.)  The attacks were well coordinated and utterly brutal, with civilians, including children, targeted and hostages taken. 

It appears that the group's motive was an attempt to stop a normalization process that is currently being negotiated between Israel and Saudi Arabia.  Also, the recent chaos in the Israeli government, with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing corruption charges while he's also trying to controversially overtake the country's judicial system, may have lead to an image of perceived Israeli weakness.  Of course, the attacks have only unified the Israeli government behind  Netanyahu.

Israel now is readying a full on military assault into the Gaza Strip, and it is already telling civilians to flee away from the northern area of the Strip, where they are preparing to invade.  While I certainly support Israel's right to exist and defend itself, I do fear that the force of the attack may result in such heavy civilian casualties that it will further inflame the hatred of Israel in the Muslim world.  And such a war may not necessarily be easily won, not when Hamas is willing to use both civilians and hostages as human shields.

Given all the sadness and horror going on, it's hard not to reflect on how things might be very different right now if Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin hadn't been assassinated back in 1995.  At that time Rabin had begun a peace process with then Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yassir Arafat known as the Oslo Accords, that would have returned some  territories occupied by Israelis  to the Palestinians.  While the accords were inevitably controversial in both Israel and Palestine, it seemed then that Rabin truly wanted peace and was willing to compromise to get it.  He was even awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

In 1995 Rabin was shot and killed by Yigal Amir,  a right wing Israeli who felt that Rabin was selling out Israel.  The killing was a double tragedy, in that it not only ended Rabin's life, it also pushed Israel to the right politically, with every prime minister since pursuing an aggressive stance with Palestine and the idea of compromise being forgotten.  While there's certainly no way of knowing just what the Middle East would be like now if Rabin had never been assassinated, in the wake of a horrific terrorist attack, it's hard to believe that things could be worse if Rabin had lived.  I see him as truly heroic man who's killing set both the Middle East region and the world backwards.