On the fifth anniversary of the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Prof. David Ohana of Ben-Gurion University pointed out in a Ynet article that the appropriation of Rabin’s memory by the Israeli Left prevented Rabin’s legacy from moving from its peace dimension – which sharply divided Israeli society – to the democracy dimension, in which Rabin’s record was immaculate, and at a time when the country seemed more united.
This division certainly seemed more relevant in 2000 than it does today. Then, the concept of peacemaking was associated with the Oslo Accords, which sought to start resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, based on territorial compromise. If all went well, it would eventually evolve into a two-state solution.
It did not go well.
Rabin's assassination
Rabin’s assassination on November 4, 1995, by a religious Jew, took place against this background: an assassination that was encouraged by certain rabbis, who declared curses of death against the prime minister, and various right-wing crowds, who yelled “Rabin is a traitor” and “death to Rabin” during violent demonstrations.
Benjamin Netanyahu, then head of the opposition, was one of the inciters against Rabin at that time, but was heard to say on several occasions: “Rabin is not a traitor – he is wrong.” He never called for Rabin’s death. Still, that did not prevent the assassination.
From the outset, the national religious parties and non-religious right-wing parties objected to the Oslo Accords on principle. This objection was based on a combination of two arguments. The first was a religious argument that the entire Land of Israel had been promised to the Jewish people by God, and that consequently no territorial compromise with the Palestinians was acceptable.
The second was a realpolitik argument that the Palestinians were not really willing to recognize the right of a Jewish state to exist in any part of Palestine, and that their actual long-term aspiration was to bring about the complete destruction of the Jewish state.
The war's effect
Did the outbreak of the 2023 Israel-Hamas War change anything regarding the prospects of using the memory of Rabin as a uniting factor?
Hamas’s mega-atrocities on October 7, 2023, as well as the refusal of the Palestinian Authority, and most of the Arab population in the region, to condemn Hamas’s hideous acts – have unfortunately turned many Israeli left-wingers into skeptics regarding the prospect of any sort of peace with the Palestinians based on compromise.
Meanwhile, during the first Trump administration, normalization of relations between Israel was attained with three Arab states – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco – based on the Abraham Accords, which were neither conditioned on a territorial compromise nor the establishment of a Palestinian state.
This had a strong effect on the peace narrative presented by Prime Minister Netanyahu, and was not related in any way to the Oslo Accords.
In February 2025, at the beginning of the second Trump administration, a proposal was floated to establish a riviera in the Gaza Strip, to be run by the US. It would involve the voluntary transfer of the entire Gazan population elsewhere. This was another “peace plan,” of sorts, that ignored Palestinian wishes; for a while, it was taken seriously in certain right-wing circles in Israel.
Under these circumstances, what chance did the Left (or Center/Left) have to revive the Oslo Accords? Interestingly, even though the Oslo Accords seemed to be almost completely irrelevant, on December 11, 2023, Netanyahu stated in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the number of Jewish fatalities resulting directly from the Oslo Accords was equal to that of the October 7 massacres by Hamas. The following day, he added that he would not allow Israel “to repeat the mistake of Oslo.”
Rabin and democracy
Regarding an attempt to use Rabin’s heritage to unite Israel around the issue of democracy, in 2000 there were already fears in certain circles that Israel’s democracy was not as stable and sturdy as it seemed to be.
However, we were nowhere near the situation that emerged after the formation of Israel’s most right-wing government at the end of December 2022, following the elections to the 25th Knesset, when Justice Minister Yariv Levin launched legislation, which, if passed, would have greatly weakened Israel’s existing democratic institutions.
Incidentally, even if the Center/Left had tried to link the memory of Rabin to Israel’s liberal parliamentary democracy, it would have faced arguments to the effect that democracy need not be liberal, and that what is most important in a democracy is that the wishes of the majority should prevail, irrespective of what these wishes are.
In practical terms, this meant that even if the government acted contrary to the existing laws and norms, the gatekeepers of Israel’s liberal democracy would be unable to stop it, as long as a majority supported these actions.
The conclusion is that as long as Israel’s current extreme right-wing/religious government stays in power, there is no chance that Rabin’s heritage, neither on the peace issue nor the democracy issue, can be a uniting factor.
Only after new elections will be held – should a Jewish liberal Right/Center/Left majority emerge – is there any chance that the anniversary of Rabin’s assassination will turn into a day of unity.
Civil war?
In his 2000 article, Ohana brought the example of US president Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865. Lincoln was shot by a Confederate sympathizer, just days after the Confederate surrender, which effectively ended the Civil War.
He explained that the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination did not turn into a dividing event commemorated by the victorious Union of the northern states alone, while leaving out the defeated southern Confederate states.
However, one cannot ignore the fact that it was the victory of the northern states in the war, which ended slavery, that kept the United States united. Had the southern states been victorious, unity would have come to an end.
Hopefully, our disunity will not deteriorate into civil war, and the direction in which Israel will go will be determined by free elections, and not by violent means.
What will remain of Rabin’s heritage will depend on whether we manage to establish stable national unity governments in the future, rather than unstable, extreme, and relatively uniform ones.
The writer has written journalistic and academic articles, as well as several books, on international relations, Zionism, Israeli politics, and parliamentarism. From 1994-2010, she worked in the Knesset Library and the Knesset Research and Information Center.