Israel Matzav

Victory?

Caretaker Prime Minister Ehud K. Olmert used the occasion of a memorial for Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin to once again take personal revenge against the country that scorns him.

"If we want to keep Israel Jewish and democratic, we need to give up parts of the homeland we have dreamed about for generations and [mentioned] in our prayers, even Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, and to return to a 1967 Israel with certain amendments," he said.

"The decision must be made now. The moment of truth has arrived. There is no escaping it, but [the opportunity] can be missed. If, God forbid, we dither, we will lose the support for the idea of two states. There is no need to expand on the alternative…Rabin will win," he continued.

"The moment of truth has arrived," he repeated. "We can push if off for many years in which blood will be spilled. But we must look at it honestly, proudly and responsibly. The bullets that killed Rabin could not stop the historic path that he led. Even after his death, Rabin will be victorious."

But Olmert is rewriting 'Rabin's legacy' to fit his own new leftist agenda. Yitzchak Rabin would never have agreed to divide Jerusalem. This is from July 2000 just before the Camp David fiasco between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat.

Eldad Yaniv, one of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's spokesmen at Camp David, declined to restate Barak's commitment to an undivided Jerusalem in a live interview with Daliah Yairi on Israel Radio Reshet Bet Wednesday. Yaniv introduced a new formula: "Our red line is a large Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty with a Jewish majority." Israel can achieve the new red line by adding various Jewish Jerusalem suburbs to the Israeli side of a divided city.

Leah Rabin, widow of the murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, said on Israel Radio that her husband fought two wars for Jerusalem and that Jerusalem is the very essence of the Jewish People and cannot be divided. She declared that her husband would never have divided Jerusalem.

Would Rabin have considered a divided Jerusalem a 'victory'? No. And he's probably rolling over in his grave because Olmert said he would.

Later in the same JPost article I excerpted above, Israel's ultimate divider Shimon Peres is quoted:

During the state ceremony at Mount Herzl, President Shimon Peres emphasized that even today, there were those who were inciting and causing harm and he said that the state must "utilize the law to its fullest, without fear."

He said that like then, there was now a small minority that had "the audacity" to undermine the state's authority.

...

"Yitzhak underwent a difficult metamorphosis," continued the president. "It didn't develop overnight and wasn't devoid of misgivings and deep concerns. As 'Mr. Security,' who for most of his years dealt with strengthening Israel military might and in ensuring its capability to win wars, and also as 'Mr. Peace,' Yitzhak suffered misgivings. But when Yitzhak made the moral and diplomatic decision, he never looked back. He reached forward with a determined and energetic heart."

But unlike Peres, who has spent a lifetime deluding himself that Yasser Arafat and the 'Palestinians' want peace, Rabin was repulsed by Arafat. Unlike Peres, who lost the 1996 election in Israel because the Likud ran ads showing Peres and Arafat arm in arm (there's a lesson in there for John McCain - unfortunately it's too late to learn it), Rabin was visibly repulsed by Arafat, as could plainly be seen by anyone who has watched the infamous 'signing ceremony' among Arafat, Rabin and Clinton on the White House lawn. It is questionable whether Rabin would have reconsidered the decision to engage with Arafat had he lived. There are at least as many arguments that he would have looked back as that he would not have.

As to Peres, Treppenwitz rips him some new body parts.

You are a fraud, Shimon Peres. You took office with a promise to heal old wounds and bring about a national reconciliation. From that time until this, you have barely even given lip service to that admirable goal. Instead you have studiously ignored every violent act by leftists and anarchists and branded every misdeed from the right as the harbinger of 'the next inevitable political assassination'.

You have never been interested in a national reconciliation, so it puzzles me why you would bother even mouthing the words at this point in your career.

In your famous Haaretz interview with Daniel Ben Simon following your loss in the 1996 elections, you divided our people neatly into two camps; 'Israelis' and 'Jews'. According to that interview, the Jews are those who don't have "an Israeli Mentality". You counted yourself then among the Israelis, and sneered down your prominent Semitic nose at the Jews.

Tell me President Peres... what has changed since then? Have you and your friends come to a new way of reckoning our people? Have you arrived at some new formula for doling out legitimacy? If not, why would you think that 'the Jews' would suddenly come to your party?

Make no mistake, we feel the same loss of national innocence that you do when we look back at that tragic night. But we have never been allowed to publicly grieve for a murdered Prime Minister who was just as much our leader as yours. That privilege has been reserved each year for you and 'the Israelis' who use the occasion to point accusatory fingers towards the right... daring us to profane the night with a harsh word for your St. Yitzhak... and hunkering down at the podium as if the bullets might begin flying again at any moment.

You look out at Rabin Square and wonder rhetorically where the other part of the nation is... but did you even bother to invite us?

The JPost quotes a third participant in Monday's ceremony: Yitzchak Rabin's son Yuval.

"Another year has passed and we are still here. The atmosphere is similar, the mood has not changed. The same things are happing, the same voices are being heard," he lamented. "The smell of gunpowder is upon us again, this time from the house of an academic, and again the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head has warned of a political assassination. Again, it is clear to everyone that the gun is loaded."

But unlike Peres, Yuval Rabin doesn't smear the right. In fact, he has endorsed Binyamin Netanyahu - who was vilified by Peres and the Left in the period after Rabin's assassination and since - for Prime Minister. The fact that Yuval Rabin sees clearly now that Netanyahu's argument with his father was a political one and now believes that Netanyahu was correct about it is a victory for rational discourse in Israel. And that's the victory we should be celebrating.

Maybe Yuval Rabin (pictured at top) should be President of Israel? He'd certainly be more of a unifier than Peres.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:57 AM