I had never seen the square in the heart of Tel Aviv as full as it was that night ten years ago. The city's streets were barricaded for blocks and were quickly being filled with people from all over the country ? families with young children, aging activists, and my high school classmates. We had been to many pro-peace rallies there before, but this one was different. Our hopes for peace had never been higher. Instead of criticizing the Israeli government for doing something wrong or not doing enough, on November 4, 1995 we gathered to say: ?Keep up the good work! We are on the way to peace.? I remember how on the stage set up in front of the small pool, long-time rivals Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin hugged. I remember tough-guy Rabin, hardened through decades of war serving in the pre-state Palmach forces, the Israeli military, and as Minister of Defense, trying his very best to sing ?Shir Lashalom,? (A Song for Peace). And how, as in a perfect ending to a tragic movie, the sheet of lyrics was later pulled out of his breast pocket?bloodstained.
Dressed in black, my friends and I returned to the square a couple of nights later. Amidst a sea of candles we huddled in circles on the ground talking, crying, in silence.
Did Rabin's assassination derail the peace process? Over the past ten years we have not had another ceremony?complete with handshakes and balloons?such as the one celebrating the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty. Negotiations with Syria have been at a long standstill. The Israeli-Palestinian front has reached new levels of bloodshed. Peres, Rabin's co-Nobel Peace Prize recipient and arguably the main figure behind the drive for peace, could not move the process forward and spoke of a closing window of opportunity. Successive Israeli prime ministers and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat failed to make breakthroughs. Following Arafat's death and with the unilateral Israeli disengagement, there is now some new hope, though many remain skeptical and fearful.
For many Israelis, the mid nineties were marked by emotional swings and an effort to move forward in spite of great pain. We felt that even the bombings, whose carnage made our stomachs churn each time, had unified us in the understanding that neither side can go on like this. We must have peace. Yet, ten tumultuous years later, Israelis seem divided as never before.
Then, did Rabin's murderer actually derail Israeli society? The question of who to blame dominated the media in the days and weeks that followed his death. There were the technical aspects: Why did Rabin refuse to wear a bulletproof vest? Was there intelligence information that could have prevented the murder? How could the killer get so close through tight security? Conspiracy theories, as in Kennedy's murder, about the number of bullets, who shot them and who might have wanted Rabin killed are still being debated today.
And then there was the hate speech. Opponents of the peace process have been accused of creating an atmosphere that condoned the murder of an Israeli head of state. They had labeled Rabin a traitor and a Nazi, pasted his head on a photo of a German S.S. officer and paraded it at rallies in the squares of Jerusalem. The Israeli political ?right,? especially Netanyahu, is seen as having collaborated with the provocation in a way that was sinister at worst and irresponsible at best.
For many, the most shocking element was the feeling of fratricide: How could a Jew, whose first of the Ten Commandments is ?thou shall not kill,? murder another Jew? How could a so-called rabbi grant him ?permission? to commit such an act? We found ourselves seriously asking, perhaps for the first time, what has happened to our society?
The illusion of being unified Israelis who may vehemently disagree but are ultimately bound by cultural and historical heritage was gone. The division among Jewish sub-groups?long demarcated by adjectives such as ?secular? ?conservative,? and ?orthodox,? as well as ?Ashkenazi? vs. ?Sephardic??became heightened to the point that we found ourselves asking: what has become of our society?
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