Ner Yitzhak, the official state ceremony that marks the anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, begins each year at the President’s Residence with the lighting of a huge memorial candle, after which a service is held at Rabin’s grave on Mount Herzl, followed by a special memorial session at the Knesset.
Because this year is a milestone year since the incident, which occurred 30 years ago and drove a deep wedge between the Right and the Left, memorial events began or were advertised well in advance of the actual anniversary, and more events will be held throughout the month in Israel and abroad.
Before the official opening ceremony, President Isaac Herzog, a former leader of the Labor Party, published a statement in Hebrew on social media in which he noted that mutual attacks and accusations of incompetence have increased, and inflammatory remarks only serve to exacerbate a dangerous situation.
Herzog emphasized the importance of learning the lesson from events that led to the assassination and from those that much more recently affected all sectors of Israeli society. It is essential to probe deeper and to learn much more with all that this entails, he insisted.
This year, there were more children and fewer adults at the President’s Residence, along with members of the Rabin family, head of the Democrats Party (formerly Labor) Yair Golan, former chief justice Esther Hayut, and Peres Center top executives Efrat Duvdevani and Yona Bartal, who had been part of Rabin’s close-knit team, before continuing with Peres.
Rabin’s grandson, Yonatan Ben Artzi, is in New York participating in a memorial event jointly organized by the Zionist Enterprises Department of the World Zionist Organization and Temple Emanu-El.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not attend the Ner Yitzhak ceremony as the Rabin family continues to hold him responsible for the anti-Rabin incitement that a month earlier at a mass rally in Jerusalem’s Zion Square preceded the assassination.
At the volatile and frequently violent rally, there were digitally altered placards of Rabin dressed in the uniform of an SS officer. Such a display was already too much for some of the Likud ministers standing on a balcony above the crowd. Three of the ministers, Dan Meridor, Bennie Begin, and David Levy, left.
Herzog assures Rabin assassination 'not a thing from the past'
“It is difficult to realize that 30 years have passed since three bullets pierced the heart of Israel’s democracy,” said Herzog in his address. Democracy and its preservation were the main focus of his tribute to Rabin, and he repeatedly returned to the subject.
Herzog noted that a whole generation has been born in the interim, and although the shock of this national tragedy has not abated and is still regarded by many as if it happened yesterday, it can now be discussed in the context of history.
“But it’s not just something of the past,” he said, drawing a parallel between the state of the nation 30 years ago and that of two years after October 7, 2023, when there is mutual venom between the Right and the Left of the political football field.
“Can we halt the hatred in time?” he asked. “Thirty years later, we see the same violence and discord against elected officials from every party, on social media. In schools and in the Arab communities.”
Continuing in this vein, Herzog said, “Violence is not a democratic right. It spells the destruction of democracy.”
He described the current maelstrom as one of the most chaotic periods in Israel’s history.
While acknowledging that disputes are legitimate, they must not reach the point where people of differing opinions become each other’s enemies, he said.