Last night I went to the rally marking the 14th year since the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin. It was well attended by the blue shirt movements. The rally was demoralizing. What has changed in fourteen years? Rabin was a "soldier in the army of peace" who was murdered before he could complete his mission. Weren't there any other soldiers? Why didn't they complete his mission?
The youth movement hanoar haoved v'halomed distributed signs at the rally that said "lo nishkach v'lo nislach" -- we will not forget and we will not forgive. That's a rather uncompromising stance, especially for a leftist group. It would be natural to think that it refers to the assassin, Yigal Amir, but it actually refers to the atmosphere created by right wing groups leading up to the assassination. A few weeks before the assassination, Rabin was called a traitor, depicted in a Nazi SS uniform and burned in effigy at a rally attended by Ariel Sharon and Bibi Netanyahu. Rabbis like Avigdor Neventzal compared Rabin to a rodef, suggesting that it would be halachically permissible (or obligatory?) to kill him. The atmosphere that existed before Rabin's assassination was swept under the rug by public demonstrations of unity, but it would be easy to recreate because the underlying cause still exists: a significant number of Israelis think that civil laws are subordinate to halacha and that halacha permits political violence.
So Rabin's mission is unfinished and the societal factors that contributed to his death still exist. Will it help to listen to the sticker song and sing shir lashalom?
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