Twenty-nine years have passed since the night that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was fatally shot by a fellow Jewish Israeli. The national shock and trauma of Rabin’s murder has faded over the past three decades, with an event that was burned into people’s life stories now reduced to a distant historical event. The ongoing conflict has further contributed to this phenomenon, with Rabin’s memorial going unmarked last year due to coinciding with the start of the war. Despite this forgetfulness, insights into who Rabin was as a leader and how Israel has changed in the years following his death can reveal important lessons for today’s Israeli society.
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1. The responsibility of a leader
Rabin was among the leaders who didn’t try to escape responsibility for their actions, even when they failed and brought on harsh consequences. The “minor” example is his stepping down from Labor party leadership in 1977 following reports that his wife Leah had an illegal overseas bank account. He didn’t pass the buck or try to dodge, and he chose to give up running for prime minister in the name of setting an example.
This sense of responsibility was also evident after the failed rescue attempt of Nachson Waxman, a 20-year-old soldier who was kidnapped by Hamas in 1994. Waxman was held hostage for six days until he was killed during a rescue attempt in which IDF Officer Nir Poraz was also killed. Following the failed attempt, Rabin held a press conference, during which he said, “I, as prime minister and defense minister, bear responsibility for the decision regarding the action that was carried out tonight against the terrorists who killed Nachson Waxman.”
The understanding that the person in charge is responsible, for failures as well as successes, is sorely missing in Israel’s current leadership. More than a year has passed since the massacres of October 7, and Prime Minister Benjamin Neyanyahu has not sat down the public and said, “I, as leader of the country, am responsible for what happened.” Instead of doing so, he has only blamed others. It’s possible that others really are to blame, but that doesn’t detract from his own responsibility as leader.
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2. Activism
Before Netanyahu took on the moniker, Rabin was known as “Mr. Security.” He served as IDF chief of staff during the Six-Day War and led the Oslo Accords process with the Palestinians as well as the Jordan-Israel peace treaty. It was during the Oslo Accords that the Palestinian Authority was established. The Oslo Accords and the establishment of the PA have been subject to harsh criticism from the right, both retrospectively and in real time. Among the criticisms was that the partner to the deal, Yasser Arafat, did not completely abandon the path of terror as had been promised.
But Rabin did not enter Oslo or other peace talks from a place of naivety. Rather, he came in with a security perspective. From his point of view, this was the best alternative for ending the first intifada and creating a different Middle East, one in which Israel is part of a covenant of shared interests with its neighbors. Creating such a covenant was an important counterbalance to extreme regional actors such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Iran.
As a military man and as prime minister, Rabin took an activist approach, consciously attempting to change the reality of the region. When evaluating what happened since then, we see the absence of any comprehensive Israeli initiative that relates to the Palestinians as well as numerous efforts to maintain the status quo (including the strengthening of the Hamas terror regime in the Gaza Strip) and the delegitimization of the Palestinian Authority without creating any alternative. How that ended, we now know all too well. Even those who claim that Rabin’s decisions were misguided must appreciate the fact that he chose to set out a vision and to act upon it, rather than simply letting reality play out.
3. “It will be okay”? Not so much
In a speech at the graduation ceremony of the IDF's Staff and Command College in 1992, Rabin said that one of Israel’s most painful problems was the phrase “it will be okay.” “This phrase, which many of us hear in the state of Israel’s day-to-day life, is intolerable. These two words usually conceal all the things that aren’t “okay”: arrogance and an exaggerated feeling of self-confidence, power and authority, which are uncalled for,” Rabin said. “The “it will be okay” has been following us for a long time, for years, and characterizes an atmosphere that borders on irresponsibility in many areas of our lives.”
The series of disasters caused by the arrogance of the “it will be okay” attitude started long before that speech and unfortunately continued after it as well. The 1997 Maccabiah bridge collapse, the 2001 Versailles wedding hall disaster, the 2018 Bnei Zion premilitary academy disaster, which was the apex of a longstanding lack of government oversight over premilitary academies, the 2021 Meron crowd crush, and the police crisis during the 2021 Guardian of the Walls operation are only some of the many examples. Rabin’s warning about this sociocultural phenomenon was not internalized. Unfortunately, that lack of internalization was also present in the failure to protect Rabin’s left the night he was murdered.
This speech, and this warning about “arrogance and an exaggerated feeling of self-confidence, power, and authority, which are uncalled for,” could serve as the first and last text presented at the October 7 investigation committee. All that remains is to hope that in the future, we will make different choices.
4. The real threat to Israel
The warning that must be taken away from Rabin’s murder is the necessity of protecting Israeli democracy and Israeli solidarity. This lesson has been tested in recent days of intense disagreement, as with the Oslo Accords and, in previous years, in disagreements about the judicial reform and then about the management of the war. In my view, everyone, from every side, opinion, and sector, needs to do some genuine soul searching.
Everyone in the electorate needs to ask themself how to resist decisions made by a democratically elected government without breaking the tools of democracy. And everyone in leadership needs to understand their responsibility over the entire public, not just the part of the public that agrees with them. Everyone needs to denounce discourse that is extremist, inflammatory, and violent. Israel’s current leadership has chosen to ignore incitement and violence, and some of its ministers are taking part in incitement themselves.
Planes, Iron Dome batteries, tanks, and missiles are extremely important for defending Israel’s continued existence, but they are worthless in a society undergoing an internal crisis, the citizens of which are alienated from the state and from each other. Israel’s enemies understand this all too well and are only waiting for the Jewish state to implode. For this, Rabin’s murder can serve as a warning.
This article was translated from Hebrew by Leah Schwartz.
