The
sound of silence
Observations of and
contemplations on the Rabin Memorial rally
Adam
Keller
“I am not going to that rally, not at any price. To be among Barak’s audience? Barak?
Just this week, Shulamit Aloni
said he should be tried for war crimes. And you call that a peace rally?” “But we
don’t go to the Rabin Memorial Rallies for the sake of the speakers on the podium, we go there for the audience. This is the largest
gathering in the whole year of Israelis who care for peace. Even if there is a bastard on the podium,
there are still a lot of decent people in the audience, young people who can be
open to what we say. We should be there for them, to give out the leaflets,
especially the leaflets about what Barak is doing in
Gaza. ” “Sorry, this year you will have to do it without me”.
Also people less radical than this
veteran Gush Shalom activist had their considerable qualms. The call published by Peace Now reiterated that
“The continuing occupation, the expansion of settlements, but also the window
of possibility created by the upcoming Annapolis summit” made it “crucial for
us all this year, especially this year, to attend the rally and voice our call
for negotiations and peace”.
Nevertheless, former Peace Now Secretary General Moria
Shlomot publicly expressed her dilemma:
“Year after year, I return to the Rabin Square, for
the annual moment when the Peace Camp stands up to be counted. This year I
hesitate. I am not tired, nor did I forget, but the name of Ehud
Barak lies heavy on my conscience - a name with which
I have no wish whatsoever to be counted as part of the same political camp.
Ehud Barak: leader of the
Israeli Labour Party, builder of settlements,
provoker of the Al-Aqsa Intifada,
the man who caused the most dangerous fissure with the Israeli Arabs, the
greatest believer in unilateralism.
A man who sees himself as dwelling in ’a villa in
the jungle’ since he regards everybody else as beasts or savages, whom there is
no need to communicate with, to approach, to get to know or reconcile with. Barak ordered the electricity of Gaza cut off in response
to the shooting of Quassam missiles, even when
knowing that the shooting would only increase due to this move. He knows - but
still he prefers to cover his paucity of ideas and absence of moral values by
an act which would make Israel hated all over the world.
Barak represents the very opposite of what Rabin
represented at the end of his days. For most of us, Rabin represented exactly
the shrugging off of the illusions of power, the greatness of a man undergoing
a complete reversal of outlook at a far from young age.
Barak is not Rabin`s
successor, and I am deeply disappointed that this year he would get to mount a
podium which should have been reserved for true people of peace.” (Yisrael Hayom, November 1 - Full
text at http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=23217 )
Despite all qualms, when the evening of the rally
came by we set out for the Rabin Square, equipped with a folding table and
carriage heavily laden with printed material – feeling nostalgic for last year,
when active politicians were banned from the podium and an impressive keynote
speech delivered by writer David Grossman.
On
hearing our destination, the taxi driver burst out: “That’s very good, there should be many people there! This dirty
murderer, Yigal Amir – how
dare he make this dirty show with the circumcision? And the judges let him get
away with it! He should have been hanged, yes, hanged! We have no capital
punishment, but for the murder of a Prime Minister, we should have made an
exception. Yes sir! I did not hold with
Rabin’s views, but this is really unforgivable. He should be happy that he got
away with his life, he should never have gotten
anything more. No conjugal visits to have sex with that crazy woman who married
him, no visits at all. No privileges. Just lock him up like a dog, yes like a
dog, and throw away the key.”
This kind of vindictive feeling was quite
widespread in this year’s rally, fuelled by the new extreme-right campaign
openly calling for Amir’s release and by the
coincidence of the Amir child’s
circumcision talking place on precisely the anniversary of the murder. (In some
views, indeed, it was no coincidence at all, but diabolically clever planning
of the conjugal visit’s date by Amir and his wife
Larissa.)
The signs and stickers reading “We shall neither
forgive nor forget” seemed more common than in other years, and there were
yellow unsigned leaflets actually calling for the enactment of a “retroactive
capital punishment.”
We had an appropriate response, a Gush Shalom
leaflet in the form of a multiple-choice questionnaire:
How to honour the memory
of Itzchak Rabin
[] To show tolerance towards those
who hated him?
[] To curse Yigal
Amir by day and by night?
[] To continue on Rabin's road: negotiate for peace
with those whom the Palestinians have elected as their representatives?
Find the right answer and
you win a good future for
“Thank you, I was starting to feel that I was all alone
in thinking that the big fuss was exaggerated. Sure, he is a murderer; but
isn't he being punished already? I came here for other, more important
issues," said a youngster who apparently did not belong to any of the Blue
Shirt youth groups but had come all by himself – and very happy to find the
Gush Shalom table, decorated with two-flag placards and a variety of explicit
stickers.
“What is this? Talk to the Hamas? I think this sticker is premature, the time
has not yet come for such a step” said the man with the big dog. “Why
premature? We have come here to honour Rabin. Would
you have stopped Rabin from going to Oslo? Also then there were people saying
it was premature to start talking to start talking to the PLO.” “But they are
shooting missiles, every day! What if some of our kids get
killed!” “And we have already killed many of their kids, even if the
media hardly reports it. We should make a cease-fire, no shooting of us on them
or of them on us. We should do it before anybody else gets killed.” “Well,
perhaps… I don’t know, the Prime Minister should be thinking about all this…”
Meanwhile, at the front – where you could be seen
by the speakers on the podium, and more importantly by the TV crews - groups of
youths are jockeying for position, wearing various kinds of shirts – Peace Now,
Meretz, the Blue Shirts of the Working and Learning
Youth. Enormous banners, each needing ten of more people to lift, lie on the
ground, ready for the starting moment. We have declined to enter this race,
circulating instead in the midst of the crowds fast entering the square from
all directions. We are not the only ones, quite a few
other groups are making use of this opportunity, the best in the whole year.
Peace Now and the Geneva Initiative have jointly
launched a new graphic design, seen everywhere on big placards and small
stickers: a bullet and a pen facing each other, with the caption “This is the
Time! Choose for Peace!”
The Meretz Youth have
“Peace was not murdered – Yithchak’s way will
prevail”. Youths from the Galilee distribute an impassioned manifesto: “We
youths must rise and cry out that we believe in Peace and Equality, that we
believe in the Freedom of Speech and Human Rights, that we will never forgive
and never forget the murder of Rabin. We must cry out now, or we won't much
longer have a democracy!”
”The slaughtering of animals is political murder,
too” asserts the leaflet of the ‘Anonymous’ groups. “It is murder because
animals have as much right to live as human beings; it is political because the
entire political spectrum supports it”.
At the Peace Now table, signatures are collected on a petition calling
upon Olmert to “Sign peace within a year", and invitations to a meeting where a
glimpse “behind the scenes of the
Annapolis Peace Conference” is promised – as well as a brochures entitled “a
beginners’ course on the settlements”, based on the findings of the movement’s
famed Settlement Watch Team.
For their part, the Hadash
Communists distribute a flyer entitled: “Why the Annapolis summit will not be a
peace conference?” and giving the answer: “The Olmert-Barak
Government has no intention of really ending the occupation. The moves to
extend settlements at the E-1 area east of Jerusalem, and the cruel new
invention of cutting off Gaza’s water and electricity, testify to the reality
behind the words of peace”.
At another table, signatures are collected on a
petition “against the shirking of military service, and for an equal division
of the burden”. A youth is engaged in a hot debate: “Better to shirk the army
than to serve the occupation!” “This is a rally for Rabin, and he was a
military man most of his life. You extreme leftists are in the wrong place!”
“Rabin made peace and was murdered for it. On the last hour of his life, right
here in this square, he embraced Aviv Gefen – an
artist who refused military service. It is you, the militarists, who are in the
wrong place!”
The debate is cut short by the recorded voice of
Rabin himself, strong and confident on the last evening of his life, followed
by the recording of the announcement of his death at the hospital gates a few
hours later, and then the singing of “Captain, my Captain” – Walt Whitman’s lament for the
assassinated Abraham Lincoln, which was translated to Hebrew, set to music and
applied to Rabin.
After some more singing, the first speaker: Shimon
Peres. He was always very popular in this millieu;
all the more so tonight, his first appearance here as President of Israel. His
words are punctuated by frequent cheers and clapping:
“Yitzchak Rabin wanted peace, and I had the honour to be his partner in the efforts to achieve it. He
wanted peace, not as an abstraction but as a simple daily reality. He wanted to
wipe away the bereaved mother’s tears. He wanted to end forever these terrible
moments at the doorstep, where the parents look at the army’s emissaries and
know that they lost forever what was most precious to them. Rabin wanted a
situation where nobody will ever again feel threatened by a suicide bomber or
a falling missile. Rabin wanted peace, and for that he was murdered.
Rabin was murdered, but you are here. You, all of
you here, are his inheritors, his torch-bearers. You have come here, not only
to commemorate a person who was so tragically cut down. You have come here to
carry on his task, the achievement of peace.
To go on undaunted, not to panic, not to despair, to stand fast like a
rock against all who seek to derail you - to hold on to the struggle for peace.
You are Rabin’s inheritors, you are the Rabin heritage. You are the
torchbearers!” (enormous applause).
Several minor speakers, to whose words nobody pays
much attention. Aharon Barn’ea,
the moderator, announces: “The entire square is full, as are the streets all
around. It is estimated that some 150,000 people are here tonight!” (cheers). Some more singing. The
dirigible with its security cameras crisscrosses the sky above the square;
tomorrow, Gideon Levy would remark in Ha’aretz that
dirigibles of the same kind are patrolling above Gaza, pin-pointing Palestinian
targets for the Air Force.
The two approaching the Gush Shalom table are in
their early twenties. One, otherwise in civilian clothing, has a faded khaki
t-shirt with the caption “Armoured Corps, Tank
Commanders’ Training Course – April 2005”. The other’s shirt has “Mañana
Hotel, Managua, Nicaragua”. Without a
word they pick up the round stickers with the joined Israeli and Palestinian
flags, put them on their shirts and depart smiling. And then the amplified
voice from the loudpeakers: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I
give you the Defence Minister of Israel, Mr. Ehud Barak”.
A thin spatter of applause. As Barak mounts the
podium on the
“This is a most important occasion, and this crowd
gathered here is a most important crowd, gathered to do honour
to a great man who has fallen, and I feel it as an honour
to be here tonight to address you” says the great amplified voice of Barak. He pauses for effect and meets complete silence. He
then goes on to praise Rabin to the heavens. Yitzchak Rabin was a great man, a
great leader, a man of exemplary honesty and probity, not like the leaders the
country has nowadays. He regarded being a Prime Minister as a mission and
trust, not just a workplace. (Olmert had said, less
than two months ago, that he regards the PM’s bureau as “the place where I
work"). Rabin, Barak goes on to say, did an
enormous lot for Israel. He renovated the educational system, he built up a lot
of infrastructure, and yes, among other things he was also involved in
peace-making. Yigal Amir
who murdered him is a real nasty bastard. “I pledge to you tonight, yes I
pledge: this foul murderer will never be set free, he will be behind bars to
his last day, he will never see the light of day!”.
That was the only moment when Barak did get a cheer
out of this crowd.
Then he goes on to other things: Israel is
threatened on all sides, by Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas – but all these enemies should beware, for the
Israeli armed forces are strong and ready. And finally, Barak
notes that a conference is about to take place in Annapolis, and that he
definitely does not not regard it as a threat, but on
the contrary as a chance, a good chance – though one should not expect too
much. (This is about the most positive thing which Barak
has uttered on the subject, since the conference idea started to be mooted).
After a few more cliches he concludes his speech –
again to the sound of silence. Icy, eloquent silence throughout
the square.
Throughout Barak’s long
and rather disjointed speech we circulate in the crowd, furiously giving out
copy after copy of Gush Shalom’s Gaza leaflet. No way
of flinging it in the face of the arrogant speaker – a face seen on the giant
screens set up all over the square. But at least it could be given out to
quite a few interested people in the crowd:
Electricity, the Red Herring
By forbidding the cutting off of electricity,
Attorney General Mazuz prevented Israel from arousing
the anger of the entire world. But the collective punishment he didn't stop,
the ever tightening siege of the Gaza Strip.
The State of Israel prevents the entry of vital
goods – from fuel to baby food and everything in between. No one is allowed in
or out - neither students on their way to study nor terminal patients in urgent
need of medical care.
Today, eighty percent of the Gazans
are under the poverty line – without money to buy what the shops still have.
And the result? The Army’s experts expect that the collective
punishment will only increase the shooting of missiles.
Meanwhile, up on the stage Aviv Gefen
is singing, like every year: ”I am going to sing for
you, my brother/my longing is like doors opening in the night…” He then leaves
off, and thousands of young throats continue the song on their own: “Forever,
my brother, forever I will remember you/and we will meet again in the end, you
know”. It was originally composed as a dirge for a young man killed in a
motorcycle accident, half a year before Rabin was assassinated – but hardly
anybody remembers this now, it has become a central part of the Rabin Canon.
And then – the most intriguing speaker: Yuval
Rabin, the son. He had not really been involved in politics until his father's
death. In the immediate aftermath of the murder he was a central figure in the Dor Shalom (Peace Generation) movement, which rose
meteorically – only to disappear just as swiftly and leave no trace. He then
went on a decade of self-imposed comfortable exile in the US, and was hardly
heard of – until suddenly coming back a few weeks ago, claiming his right as
son (and heir?) to deliver the keynote speech in his father’s memorial.
Yuval Rabin starts by giving the crowd a massive
dose of Amir-bashing: “Judge Gurfinkel
allowed my father’s murderer, and the murderer’s friends and relatives who
support him and applaud his crime, to hold this circumcision ceremony and celebration
inside the prison on the very anniversary of his murderous crime. Judge Gurfinkel said that he could not deny it because this is a
major rite of Judaism and Yigal Amir
is a Jew. A Jew? Is he a Jew? Funny, I always thought
that the very heart and core of Judaism was the Ten Commandments, which the
whole world identifies with us, and that the most important and fundamental of
the Ten Commandments was ‘Thou Shalt not kill’. But
it seems that Judge Gurfinkel has other criteria and
definitions.
But enough of this contemptible
killer. The important
thing to remember is that he did not act alone. No, he did not act alone. One
finger pulled the trigger, but many hands pushed the killer to this square, to
commit his deed. The hands of those who incited and shouted
‘traitor!’ and marked out my father for death.
I look at you here, filling this square, and I am
deeply moved. I remember that this was nearly the very last sight which my
father ever saw, and I am even more deeply moved. The blood which flowed from
his body and was irretrievably lost had stained the page which was in his
pocket, the words of the Peace Song. You all know it very well, and still I
want to repeat it to
you here: “Don’t say ‘a day will come’/ bring the day!/and in every square/cry
out for peace!.”
The story is not ended. It is starting again. A
Prime Minister makes a first cautious step, and already he is attacked and
vilified, already the incitement begins. We know how it is when a prime
minister who tries to make peace is abandoned, left alone in the face of
inciting mobs, as my father was for many months. It must not happen again! Ehud Olmert, if he fulfils the
dream and hope of peace, fully deserves your support".
So, Yuval Rabin did not after all claim the mantle
of Yitzchak Rabin for himself, but rather threw it over the shoulders of Ehud Olmert . And this conclusion was greeted with an enormous
applause.
Prime Minister Olmert,
who did not attend the memorial in the Rabin Square, made within twenty-four
hours an impeccable dovish televised address in which he took up the theme and
greedily posed as Rabin heir. It was too good to be true - to be offered such a
role and a constituency willing to support him in it, after a full year in
which he led Israel with no more than single digit popularity ratings.
There is no doubt that Olmert
would like to prolong this situation of being seen as the one charged with
"finishing the work of Rabin". Being seen –
definitely. But as yet, we don't see signs of what we did sometimes feel
to be the case with Rabin - in spite of all what was wrong at that time, and
without forgetting the numerous occasions that we demonstrated against him –
but still, there seemed to be in Rabin a genuine determination to move forward
on the road towards peace. And that is not exactly what Olmert
conveys.
