November 21, 2008
I remember clearly the night that the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.
Ilan and I were spending a quiet evening at home with our 1-and-half-year-old daughter, Yarden, who was blissfully asleep in her crib. We were watching "Crocodile Dundee" when a news report broke in that the prime minister had been shot during a much-hyped peace rally, the largest of its kind ever held in Tel Aviv.
Shortly before midnight, the official announcement was made that Rabin was dead, struck down by the hand of a Jewish assassin. This one single event changed our country's political and social climate forever.
Earlier this month, Israel marked the 13th anniversary of the assassination. Like every year following that 1995 peace rally which was held to inspire hope, tens of thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square to honor the memory of the fallen leader and celebrate his legacy.
This year, Yarden, who is almost 15, was one of thousands of young people who attended that rally. The trip was an organized local youth group activity, the same youth group that planned and carried out a town assembly which was held in the schoolyard later in the week to honor Rabin's memory. As a proud citizen, I was thrilled that my daughter would be there; as a mother, I was slightly apprehensive recalling that 13 years earlier, shots rang out from within the crowd in that very same city square, causing an atmosphere of chaos.
While the media reported that fewer and fewer people are coming out for the rally each year, they optimistically pointed out the fact that large numbers of youth attended the event. Although I am not old enough to have attended similar peace rallies in the U.S. held during the 60s and 70s, I can only imagine that our youth, like those before them on another continent at another time, felt empowered by taking part in an event to keep a universal dream for peace alive.
Sometimes I think that the fulfillment of Rabin's dream - a dream for peace and harmony between Israelis and Palestinians - is elusive. These two peoples have been arguing for generations over a relatively small strip of desert land with no natural resources, but with great religious significance to both. Israelis are now torn among themselves; some are willing to make painful sacrifices to achieve peace while others feel that making those sacrifices is just too painful. As elder statesman and Israeli President Shimon Peres said when he addressed the crowd at the rally, "The disputes between us have intensified, and they are severely harming the great human fabric that is the state of Israel."
Ilan and I have an implicit agreement that we are raising our daughters to understand that peace will only be achieved through dialog, empathy, and sacrifice. I believe that the thousands of youth who attended the rally have been brought up by parents with similar values. I also believe, sadly, that this generation of would-be peacemakers will not be the ones to achieve a peaceful co-existence with our Arab neighbors. Rather, it is our children, the same ones who attend peace rallies in Tel Aviv, who have the best chance of turning the dream for peace into a reality.
I truly hope that our peace partners are passing these very same ideals on to their offspring who, as far as I know, don't attend peace rallies. At the very least, I would expect Palestinian parents to finally take a very public and unequivocal stand against those terror machines sending their children on suicide missions within Israel. Then maybe, to paraphrase the late Prime Minister Golda Meir, peace will finally be achieved when they demonstrate that they love their children more than they hate us.
Gayle Danis Rinot is an independent journalist, copywriter, and editor, who has been living in Israel since 1987. Married to Ilan and the mother of three daughters, Gayle makes her home in a suburb of Netanya.