This article was published in Israel in the newspaper Our Country (04.12.96.) in the wake of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish terrorist. Today, left-wing Israelis mark the 19th anniversary of the death of a man who hoped to bring peace to his country. I must say that under Rabin, reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians was much closer than it is today.
Alik Bakhshi
To the question of who killed Rabin
More than two years ago, the people of Israel said goodbye to their prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. The military general, who fought against numerous enemies of Israel and did not know defeat, was vilely killed by his own compatriot, a young religious Jew, only because he passionately wished peace to his people. Fate decreed that the Jews and Arabs, these two Semitic peoples, having common ancestors and the richest thousand-year experience of peaceful coexistence, who made a valuable contribution to world culture, became enemies. But, the same fate today provided a chance that Yitzhak Rabin wanted to take advantage of.
Yes, Jews and Palestinian Arabs cannot and do not want to live in one state, but this does not mean that they cannot be peaceful neighbors. Alas, there is simply no other way out. The political situation is such that only lasting peace is the key to Israel's future. And if this is not understood, then the Jewish people may again find themselves without their own state.
Israel needs to establish good neighborly relations with the surrounding Arab countries before America withdraws its active military and economic support for Israel, and this will happen sooner or later, because the United States has recently been making closer contacts with the Muslim world, which can be seen in the example of how a number of Arab countries and Bosnia.
Let's immediately agree that we will operate with facts, and not with the subjunctive mood, what would have happened if Rabin had not been killed, but the right would have come to power anyway. The facts are that Rabin was killed, power is in the hands of the right, the peace process is marking time, the political situation has worsened and, as a result, worsening of the economic situation in the country is on the horizon. Planned provocations with the notorious Hasmonean tunnel, with construction on Har Homa, which caused another series of riots and terrorist attacks, did not bring any political dividends. The purpose of these provocations is to show the whole world that political dialogue with the Palestinians is impossible and once again point out the fallacy of the policy of Rabin and Peres, which allowed the autonomy to create armed police units that will not fail to use the weapons given to them against the Jews.
The stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations puts Arafat in a very unenviable position. All his attempts to give at least some movement to the peace process are futile. The population of the territories begins to lose hope in the reality of the changes promised by the treaty. It turns out that the Hamas leaders were right when they called for a boycott of any dialogue and asserted that only the destruction of Israel as a state would solve the Palestinian problem. Arafat's departure from the political arena would lead to a dead end. There would be no one to talk and negotiate with.
The global political changes that took place after the collapse of the Soviet Union also affected the Middle East. Moscow has almost completely lost its political influence on events in the region, which was well manifested during the Gulf War. The value of Israel as an ally for America has decreased and even serves as an obstacle in establishing friendly relations with the Arab countries. Seeing no political and economic benefit, Washington will renounce such an obstinate ally, and then, the fear of becoming like [sorry for such a rude but vivid comparison] a chain dog abandoned by the owner will force Israel to take the only reasonable decision - to resume the peace process, but this time the initiative in the negotiations will be on the side of the Arabs and the conditions will become tougher. And there will be no one to blame but themselves.
Israeli society lives in a world of illusions, seeking to pass off the wishful thinking as reality. We see a vivid example of how illusions turn into troubles in Russia. And there is no need for Zhirinovsky and Solzhenitsyn to look for the guilty and make assumptions that someone is drugging the Russian people and arranging revolutions for them. Only the Russian people are to blame for all their troubles. Only he, and not the Ruriks invited at the dawn of Russian history, not the German monarchs who converted to Orthodoxy, not Marx with his communist fairy tale, not the conspiracy of the “wise men of Zion” and not the Chechen mafia. The longer the illusion lives, the sadder the end. So we should not be led by illusions, so as not to look for those responsible for the misfortunes that have befallen us among the Americans, Arabs, French or anyone else.
The Israeli society is seriously ill, it is divided for political, national and religious reasons, and the assassination of the prime minister is a symptom of this disease. Rabin's killer is neither crazy nor alone. He fulfilled what many dreamed of. Someone openly called with posters, someone in their minds wished the death of the prime minister, deceived by the fact that with the death of Rabin they would be able to take the world into the past, to the time of superpower rivalry. But the Soviet Union collapsed. Europe has undergone tremendous changes. An avalanche of political changes has come to the Middle East region. And the policy of Rabin and Peres was based on these realities. And if the current right-wing government does not fall, then what Yitzhak Rabin did not have time to do, his opponent Bibi Netanyahu will have to do, and I will not be surprised if again some rabbi, waving the Tanakh, does not stigmatize him and call him nothing but a traitor to the earth Israel and again looms the shadow of death in the performance of a religious fanatic killer. Alas, this is how political problems are solved in the conditions of Israeli democracy with a religious filling.
Can you think of a single instance where an American Secretary of Health or, say, Transportation would make a political statement? I don't think you can. Even the US Secretary of Defense will not allow himself such speeches. This is the prerogative of the president and the secretary of state. In our country, all the ministers are occupied with politics without exception. Apparently, this is much easier than solving specific problems of their own ministries. So Mr. Sharansky successfully absorbed himself among the members of the government. He makes political statements of this nature: they say, we cannot negotiate peace with Syria while the regime of Hafez al-Assad is in power there, and history is taught in Syrian schools from bad textbooks. Let democracy be established in Syria first, and then we will talk about peace… Great, right? In the meantime, the court and the case can be fought for the glory of democracy.
Does Minister Sharansky consider Israel to be a truly democratic country? And what about the fact that the countries of democracy do not accept the suppression of one people by another.
A country that still does not have a constitution, a country with socialist principles of government, a country in which the executive and legislative powers are not separated, a country in which part of the population has no rights at all, a country with a conglomeration of mutually exclusive democratic and halachic laws Finally, a country that changes its prime ministers with the help of assassins cannot be democratic.
And if so, then the Arab neighbors have every reason not to negotiate with us "until the onset of democracy."
"Homo sapiens" differs from other representatives of the fauna in three values created by him - this is art, science and religion, which are the fruit of the creation of a free spirit and do not tolerate regulation, and any attempt to use them for inhumane purposes turns into disaster.
The use of science and religion to spread power over people is associated with colossal sacrifices. The application of the achievements of science and technical inventions in wars claimed millions of human lives.
Especially dangerous is a power based on an ideology based on dogma, be it religious or communist. Using the dogma of faith and speculating on the name of God, religious officials sought unlimited power over people. Europe has gone through a whole era of medieval obscurantism, when any free-thinking was severely punished. Thousands of those burned at the stakes of the Inquisition, quartered, hanged, tortured by sophisticated tortures - this is how religious officials, giving themselves the right to judge on behalf of God, dealt with everyone who encroached on the dogmas of faith, which was used as the foundation of their power.
History mocked them evilly, perpetuating Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, consigning to oblivion the names of their executioners. The Sanhedrin of the time of Pontius Pilate sentenced to death a man who preached a new philosophical concept, and the world learned the name of the most popular Jew - Jesus Christ.
It must be clearly understood that neither science nor religion in themselves are guilty of being used by dirty-hearted people for the sake of their selfish goals. Having come to power in Iran, Muslim fundamentalists plunged the country into the darkness of the Middle Ages. In an instant, Iran became a danger to the entire world. In the name of Allah, movie theaters filled with people watching “obscene” Western films were set on fire, and the guards of Islam took great pleasure in public executions of unfortunate women who dared to appear with a bare face or who were convicted of infidelity to their husbands. Is there a fundamental difference between Muslim fundamentalists, who force all women to wear a veil, and Israeli Orthodox, who forbid driving on the Sabbath and set fire to non-kosher shops? In both cases, this is ultimately an encroachment on the freedom of the individual.
The essence of religion is not in coercion, but in the freedom of the spirit, only then is the believer close to the spiritual principle of nature. And where religion takes the path of coercion and prohibition, it turns from a road to God into a pernicious road to power.
The struggle of the Orthodox to close Bar Ilan Street on Saturdays is part of the power struggle in Jerusalem. Calling on believers to demonstrations and riots, under the pretext that this is pleasing to God, religious officials, with the help of the crowd, are irresistibly rushing to power. Did you see the looks of the people in the black crowd towards Bar-Ilan? Everyone has one - this is the look of madness and it's scary!
Believers, although they make up a smaller part of Israeli society, they are strong in organization and discipline. The Bolsheviks were also outnumbered by the Mensheviks, but thanks to a cohesive organization and iron discipline, they seized power in Russia.
By handing over the main street of Bar-Ilan to religious orthodoxies, the secular population will eventually lose Jerusalem, and there is not far off the formation of another religious state after Iran, in which power will belong not even to the king or dictator, but almost to the vicar of God, will which will not be discussed. And go and make out then what is primary and what is secondary.
A true believer is far from fuss, he is completely indifferent to who, where and when he travels, who and what he eats, he is one on one with God in the hour of prayer and does not need intermediaries. It is not for nothing that the countries of Western democracy and even Muslim Turkey, having understood the root of evil, separated religion from the state, and religion immediately acquired a human face, having been cleansed of people thirsting for power.
In peace and democracy, in these two concepts inseparable from each other, the religious oligarchy quite rightly saw a threat to its selfish goals. Although the mechanism of the struggle for power by the Orthodox has been launched, it will not have time to gain momentum, because the peace process initiated by Rabin will end with the establishment of peace and the arrival of real democracy, which the political rabbis are so afraid of and which will return them to what they are obliged to do - to the Creator and faith.
Here is the answer to the question of who and for what was killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
To the question of who killed Rabin
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