Yitzhak Rabin, then 23, was deputy commander of a unit of the unofficial Jewish defense forces in Palestine. Assigned to free the immigrants, Rabin's unit was to snatch them from the British internment camp and take them to a kibbutz, where they would then be dispersed through the country. However, a major detail was overlooked in planning the escape: there were toddlers who could not walk.
After freeing the immigrants, but before starting their climb up the Carmel mountain near Haifa with the immigrant group in tow, Rabin recalled in his memoirs, "We made slow progress...I ordered the troops to carry children on their shoulders. I picked a child up myself. It was an odd feeling to carry a terrified Jewish child - a child of the Holocaust - who was now paralyzed with fear. As my shoulders bore the hopes of the Jewish people, I suddenly felt a warm, damp, sensation down my back. Under the circumstances, I could not halt. We filtered through...the British reinforcements... The British conceded defeat."
There are many reasons for the profound and deep grief felt by so many about Rabin's death. However, three stand out: Rabin, his outstanding accomplishments, and what he represented to his people and the world; the sudden manner in which he died at the hands of a Jewish assassin; and, at this moment in Jewish history where Israelis find themselves at uncertain physical and philosophical crossroads. By proxy, as prime minister of Israel, Rabin was the unofficial leader of the Jewish people. His loss was therefore not a national one, but rather transnational. And the sudden and unpredictable manner of his death created a mix of hope and fear.
In announcing Rabin's death from the White House, President Clinton affectionately called Rabin, "haver" (friend). The president of the United States could barely contain his tears. At Rabin's funeral, Clinton invoked in Hebrew the last words of the Jewish prayer for the departed. A singular tribute in its own right, but it gave proof to the emotion that never before in the history of Israel and the United States, had such a strong bond been created between Israel's prime minister and the president of the United States. Clinton's loss was genuine and profound.
At Rabin's funeral, Jordan's King Hussein invoked Rabin's name along with that of his grandfather, Abdullah, as men who were assassinated in the quest for peace. In October 1994, at the signing ceremony of the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, I watched how Hussein and Rabin genuinely smiled at one another, lit each other's cigarettes, and after such a long march as adversaries, genuinely enjoyed each other's company. Hussein's presence at Rabin's funeral in Jerusalem spoke volumes about the personal loss Hussein sustained and the distance Israel and Jordan have traveled in the quest for peace.
Rabin came from that generation of enormously gifted individuals who established and sustained the Jewish state. Their personal talents, high intellect, foresight, grittiness and unwavering commitment to Zionism set them apart form the rest. Very few countries in recent memory could boast such a stable of thoroughbred political leaders: Allon, Begin, Ben-Gurion, Dayan, Eban, Meir, Peres, Sharett, Weizman and a dozen others. They were all giants. In so many ways, Rabin, like his predecessors, was a care-taker for the Jewish people. Rabin's passing graphically reminds Israelis that only a few of Israel's founding mothers and fathers are still around to lead the state; the question asked is: against whom and how will the next generation of leaders measure up to the task of guiding Israel's future?
For more than five decades, Yitzhak Rabin's credibility as a national leader came from a public record of hard earned and enviable accomplishments. Some may not have liked his politics or policies, but he had a steady hand on the rudder of state. For Rabin, land for peace meant land for security of the people of Israel, nothing less. For those who wanted to return none of the land of Israel or not put it under another's jurisdiction, Rabin's very existence was unacceptable.
In June 1967, Rabin was chief of staff when Israel united Jerusalem and liberated the "Western Wall," the sole physical remnant of the second Jewish temple. Rabin wrote in his memoirs, "When we reached the wall, I was breathless. I felt truly shaken and stood there murmuring a prayer..." Rabin was prime minister on July 4, 1976, when Israel liberated more than 100 Jews held hostage by Palestinian terrorists at Entebbe airport in Uganda; a bit more than a decade later, he was defense minister during the intifadah, coping with an insurrectionist Palestinian population and realizing that the Israeli army was not meant to monitor the lives of Arabs in the territories. So when he became prime minister again in June 1992, Rabin along with Shimon Peres, now the prime minister designate, set about to separate Israeli and Palestinian lives. In September 1993, he signed a Declaration of Principles with the PLO on how to define Palestinian self-rule; just two months ago, he signed another agreement on implementing self-rule. His death came in the middle of a process already fraught with difficulty and controversy. Because he died while in the last chapter of his life, the unfinished nature of the peace process had created suspense and tension.
Prevailing anxiety exists about substantive topics in the negotiations. Abundant Israeli skepticism exists about Arafat's trustworthiness. Unresolved questions in the negotiating process include the future of the settlements, the settlers, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and Israel's final borders.
For the last decade, Israelis of all persuasions have debated these issues openly, frequently, but often pungently. Now recriminations flow about who bears responsibility for creating an uncivil public discourse and where verbal threats against national leaders became a norm of behavior. All of these issues separately are sufficient to charge the political climate, but collectively they have proven burdensome. And yet as unresolved and unanswered as these issues and questions are, there is still promise for the peace process to continue.
Had Rabin died from, say a heart attack after one of his cherished games of tennis, we would also have lamented his passing. But his life was needlessly snatched by the act of one crazed Israeli Jew, the very same generation that Rabin had spent his life and most recent days in seeking to keep from dying, from going to war again.
In his address at the signing ceremony for the Declaration of Principles in September 1993, Yitzhak Rabin said, "We have come to try and put an end to the hostilities, so that our children, our children's children, will no longer experience the painful cost of war, violence and terror." One more time, he put the Jewish people on his shoulders.
Kenneth W. Stein is a professor of Near Eastern History and Political Science and director of the Middle East Research Program.