One year ago, shortly after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the following editorial appeared in Globes' Business Arena.
Samson the Judge was the one personality in Jewish history to whom the
title of "hero" ever stuck. All his life he fought the enemies of
Israel until, in a final act of heroism, crying "Let my soul die with
the Philistines", he succeeded in striking a harder blow than ever
in his lifetime.
It is a rare phenomenon, that a man of action, with so long a record of
living exploits, contrives, by the very circumstances of his death,
to record an achievement overshadowing all that has gone before. And
it was this exceptional merit that fell to the lot of Yitzhak Rabin
who, by his death, gained two breath-taking attainments, unlike anything
ever seen before. One concerns the Israeli people at home - the other
encompasses the world at large.
Words are inadequate to describe what took place within the State of
Israel during Sunday and Monday this week. It will be the task of
historians to grapple with this problem, but we, whose senses
registered the medley of sensations, need no descriptions. The matter
may be simply stated by saying that whereas, on the night of the murder,
the Israeli nation was confronted by a yawning gulf, yet over the next
two days, the people found, in Rabin himself, the leader who would
point the way to a renewed togetherness.
It sounds strange, almost unnatural, that Rabin should lead the nation
after his death, but a more accurate description of what has taken
place would be hard to find.
In the space between the rostrum in Kikar Malchei Yisrael and the
grave, between this world and the next, Rabin led the people as a
whole, he spoke to them and they to him. In those two days of a national
crisis of possibly unprecedented intensity, Rabin it was who restored to
the Jewish state and to the Jewish people as a whole, their faith in
themselves. He thereby overcame his murderer and vanquished the
forces of hatred and factionalism represented by the assassin, forcing
the people to bring to light its sources of unity which, for some
reason, in times of abeyance, it prefers to leave buried deep in the
realm of the sub-conscious.
This was Rabin's most important dying victory. But a victory even more
glittering and impressive was the one that surfaced as his funeral drew
near and was conducted. Not only was the world in
turmoil over his death but, because of it, and by virtue of his life's
work, he contrived, in death, to bring whole temples crashing.
Who did not come to pay their final respects? King Hussein, who
had always hesitated about permitting his feet to tread the soil of
Israel, not to mention Jerusalem; President Mubarak, suddenly coming to
the end of the seemingly inexhaustible stock of excuses and evasions
into which he had delved whenever the issue of visiting Israel came up;
the entire top brass of the United States; all the leaders of Europe or
their envoys; and many, many others.
They all came because of the man, Rabin. And by their very coming,
they cast into prominence the volte-face he had spearheaded in Israel's
world standing. He thereby contrived, in his death, to advance the
peace process even more dramatically, and even farther along the path
than he had in life.
But that is not all. The man who breached the road to Jerusalem in
1948, who commanded the occupation of the city as a whole in 1967,
now caused masses of Israeli citizens to return there - for many their
first visit in years - and got all the world's leaders to assemble in
Jerusalem, in a concentration and strength hitherto unparalleled. By
the very act of coming to salute him, they awarded him a final
achievement and a victory greater than any that had gone before.