Recollections

It was sobering, to witness on live tv an assassination attempt on the presumptive Republican nominee for President. How could this happen? Or should we ask, how could this not happen? The incident awakened unpleasant memories from 1995 when I worked and lived in Israel. The country’s leader, Itzhak Rabin was a war hero who had saved Israel  from an Arab-led coalition of armies during the Six-Day war and who had placed the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula as well as the West Bank under Israeli control. Rabin sought to return control of those lands to their rightful inhabitants under the Oslo Peace Accords, and for this was denounced as a traitor, heretic and murderer by far right, religious nationalists.

The rhetoric in Israel during this time was unbelievably inflamed and incendiary. Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, led a mock funeral procession featuring a coffin and noose during a rally where people chanted “Death to Rabin”. In an effort to bolster support for the Oslo peace process, a Peace Rally was organized in Tel Aviv on the night of Saturday, 4 November 1995. I attended that rally with my husband Dani, my parents-in-law Aliza and Akiva as well as friends Michal and Aram from Potsdam.  

The mood at the peace rally was wondrous: light-hearted, happy, song-filled, even though the crowd was so dense that I could barely move my arms.  We sang and danced as one and we could not have been more happy.  On the elevated portion of the square stood Rabin and Shimon Peres, surrounded by friends, allies, song writers and musicians.  I remember laughing as Mr Rabin spoke: I could not understand the Hebrew, but his slow and soft speech, so sad-sounding, was in marked contrast to the loud, jovial mood around.  Life seemed perfect.  As we left the rally around 11 pm, we heard three pops; I assumed celebratory fire-works had been lit.

And Saturday’s assassination attempt in Butler Pennsylvania also re-awakened the feelings of horror I felt at age 17, when President Reagan, Press Secretary James Brady, secret service agent Tim McCarthy and police officer Thomas Delahanty were shot.  President Reagan survived with humor and grace, but it felt awful that our future could be hijacked by a lone madman.  Mr Brady’s brain damage by an assassin’s bullet, like that of Arizona Representative Gabby Giffords, prematurely cut short brilliant careers.

Would that we could end this type of theft, where the popular, majority vote can be usurped by lone gunmen.  Would that the days when inner turmoil is resolved by gun fights should be relegated to the pages of history, and that people discuss, argue and debate their way to resolutions of difficult matters.  

Above my desk hangs an unused sticker with the word Shalom written in Hebrew letters on a blue sky, all that remains of a peace rally in Israel 30 years ago.