The trigger was pulled by the assassin Yigal Amir on November,
1995, but the bullets that tore into Rabin's body had started on
their fatal course as far back as 1967.
Following the June 1967 war, Israelis, both leaders and citizens,
were drunk with victory, and a political climate hitherto almost
unknown emerged in the country. Rabbis claimed God's hand was in
this victory, as it had been achieved in six days "and on the
seventh the army rested." Thus the Almighty once again became "the
Lord of Hosts." The chief Army Chaplain, Rabbi-General Shlomo
Goren, was traveling up and down the newly conquered - in his view,
liberated - territories, blowing his shofar (a ram's horn) from
Nablus (Shchem in Hebrew), where, according to the Bible, Israel's
first king Saul had been anointed by the prophet Samuel, up to
Mount Sinai, where Moses is said to have handed down the Ten
Commandments to the Children of Israel.
So it went on: suddenly, the secular State of Israel became
increasingly impregnated with religious overtones and every site,
stone and tree, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) was
resonating with biblical meaning.
Taken by surprise, Israel's Labor government under Levi Eshkol and
Moshe Dayan, put up little resistance when, in 1968, Rabbi Moshe
Levinger forced down their throats the first Jewish settlement in
the OPT named Kiryat Arba, overlooking Hebron, the city of the
Patriarchs.
A new sociopolitical fabric was weaved in Israeli society - the
intimate fusion between religion and ultra-nationalism. This
combination molded a new Israeli consciousness: that of the deeply
religious person who at the same time was a fanatical nationalist,
ready to give his life and take the lives of others in the holy war
over the possession of all of Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel,
promised by the Almighty to "his people." Those "others" were,
first, "hated" Arabs and, ultimately, "traitorous" Jews as
well.
All that followed is history: the massive settling of the West Bank
and Gaza on land either confiscated from Palestinians or
conveniently proclaimed "state land"; the increasingly aggressive
attitude towards Palestinians, culminating in the killings
perpetrated by members of the Jewish terrorist group, misnamed the
"Jewish underground"; the massacre of some 30 Moslems in prayer in
Hebron; and, finally, the murder of Prime Minister Rabin - all can
be traced back to the fusion of religion and nationalism, that has
always been (as with Islamic Jihad and Hamas) such a highly
explosive cocktail.
Even today, most settler rabbis, as well as other nationalistic
rabbis liv¬ing in Israel proper, refuse to accept at least
moral responsibility for teach
ings that fertilized the soil from which those heinous deeds sprang
up.
Rabin was killed because he dared to recognize the PLO and Arafat
as legitimate partners in the peace process. He was killed because
he was ready to give up territory for peace. He was killed - and
Yigal Amir allud¬ed to this - because he had the audacity to
state that the Bible was neither a title deed nor a map outlining
Israel's frontiers.
Shimon Peres has pledged to continue Rabin's quest for peace. This
is not an easy undertaking, especially as Israel's
nationalist-religious opposi¬tion has again started to incite
public opinion against the peace process.