One year ago, shortly after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the following editorial appeared in Globes' Business Arena.
As news of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination came through, Yitzhak
Rabin's image as a soldier emerged. With the news of his death, Yitzhak
Rabin's image fixed as a soldier who fell while on duty. Indeed, there
isn't a more accurate image. Rabin, our most Israeli Prime Minister,
fell in the battle for peace. And we awake to a different reality, to a
different country and to a different political historical conscience. A
conscience in which the impossible is highly possible. A reality in
which people have to be reborn once again, to complete Yitzhak Rabin's
enterprise. Anyone who values the enterprise of peace, will now
strengthen the hands of Shimon Peres.
"Globes" had a fruitful connection with Yitzhak Rabin. Behold, in any
of the international business conferences which took place in Jerusalem,
initiated by Globes, Yitzhak Rabin was a leading speaker and a central
personality. Rabin saw the connection between peace and prosperity, the
connection between a right policy and a right economy. This is what he
spoke about in these conferences.
He spoke of this and of the threat of terrorism. In the previous
conference, Yitzhak Rabin spoke of the identity between Israel's
extreme right wing and the Hamas. Some people were angered by this
equation. He was right. Obviously he was right.
In the previous convention, held last week, the extreme
right disrupted Rabin's speech. I don't care about them, said Rabin, in
English, to the convention participants. They won't deter me, they're a
marginal minority.
From talks and interviews we held with Yitzhak Rabin, as a Prime
Minister, we properly understood that the peace is one central aspect of
the revolution lead by Rabin. A planned revolution, conducted in part
in the fields of social affairs, infrastructure, education and economy.
Yitzhak Rabin urged privatization, construction, efficiency and a modern
culture of administration. He wasn't an expert economist, but a
statesman who knew the strength of wise economy.
Not everyone understood Yitzhak Rabin's political greatness. Because
amid occurrences and movement, visibility isn't always good. Today,
the morning following the assassination, the greatness of Rabin the
statesman, and the secret of his unique political personality, are
quickly emerging. A political revolutionist, a supreme patriot. And it's
correct to compare yesterday to the day President Kennedy was
assassinated, and say that Rabin was The Leader with a capital "T",
since David Ben-Gurion. Sometimes, and in Rabin's case as well,
phraseology is an existing fact, even if it sounds phraseological.
"Where were you that day?", one American asks his fellow countryman,
referring to Kennedy's assassination, without mentioning the word
"Kennedy". Thus, an Israeli will ask his countryman the similar
question.
The day of Rabin's assassination is the day which our collective and
private destiny becomes different. We lost Rabin, we lost the "us" of
yesterday. We weren't an accurate and uni-identified "us", but
nevertheless we knew who we were. In 1948 we invented ourselves, in 1973
we were exposed to ourselves, will we be born again in 1995?