Israel will mark the 20th anniversary of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination at the annual commemoration rally held at Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on Oct. 31. Former US President Bill Clinton is scheduled to speak at the event as is Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. The person who won’t be there is former Israeli President Shimon Peres.
The resounding absence of Peres, Israel’s ninth president, symbolizes a transformative process in Israeli society over the last 20 years. The Israel of Rabin and Peres, of the Oslo Accord and the peace process, of optimism and hope is, alas, no longer. Israel 2015 — the Israel of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Education Minister Naftali Bennett and former Minister Avigdor Liberman — is an insular, unyielding, distrustful and sober state. Even the pursuit of a peace process is practically considered illegitimate. Oslo has become a four-letter word, and the current wave of terror is bringing out the basest instincts and rattling already tense nerves. Democracy is being weakened, radical elements are gainning strength and the fundamental values of the Jewish state are under constant attack.
In the first decade after Rabin's assassination, which occurred Nov. 4, 1995, the remnants of the Israeli peace camp fought over the “Rabin legacy.” Today, this legacy has been so thoroughly rewritten that little of importance remains from it. In the past, Rabin’s legacy stood for striving for peace and reconciliation between Israel and its neighbors from a position of military and inner strength. Today, a large majority of the Israeli public feels that there is no such thing as the Rabin legacy.
That Peres will not be present at the main rally marking Rabin’s assassination has been met with almost total silence. Peres — who stood at Rabin’s side in the last minutes of his life, who sang the “Song of Peace” with him during the closing moments of the rally they attended that Nov. 4, who brought Rabin around to the Oslo process, who tried to continue along Rabin’s path but was halted — will make do this year with more marginal events commemorating the assassination. Peres has been pushed from center stage this year, as have the peace agreements signed by Rabin and the hope that Rabin tried to restore to the people.
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