Thirty years after Rabin’s assassination, what remains of the peace camp? Israeli sociologist Ilan Greilsammer recalls the objectives pursued by Rabin’s policies and makes the bitter observation that the right wing has become the majority. Will the latter’s negligence, revealed by October 7 and the conduct of the war in Gaza, allow the cards to be reshuffled?
On November 4, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of the State of Israel, was assassinated by a fanatical right-wing Jewish extremist, Yigal Amir. Thirty years later, the war against Hamas in Gaza has ended and the hostages have been released.
The two pillars of Rabin’s policy: recognition and security
Since its creation in 1948, Israel has consistently had two fundamental objectives that have not changed, and which were always in the mind and actions of Yitzhak Rabin. The first was for Israel to finally be accepted by its neighbors, to normalize and establish full diplomatic relations with as many states as possible, especially Arab or Muslim states, which initially rejected Israel, and to achieve peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians. The second was to guarantee security at all costs in the face of threats to destroy the Jewish state. Let us never forget how important Israel’s security was in all of Rabin’s actions, both as a soldier and as a politician.
On the first objective, that of recognition and coexistence, until October 7, 2023, we could speak of a certain success since 1979, insofar as a growing number of Arab and Muslim states and peoples have recognized Israel, of course within the 1949 borders and not those of 1967 and the occupation. In 1979, after President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Israel, Begin signed a peace agreement with Egypt, which is now being pursued by President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Fourteen years after this first step, in 1993, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords, in which the PLO fully recognized the State of Israel, and in 1994, Rabin signed a peace agreement with King Hussein of Jordan, a man of vision and peace. In both cases, Egypt and Jordan, however, it was a very fragile peace, a cold peace, with no substance other than diplomatic, as long as the Palestinian question remained unresolved. We know that after Rabin’s assassination, it took 25 years, since it was not until 2020 that the Abraham Accords were signed with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and finally Morocco, where hundreds of thousands of Israelis originate. Before the massacres of October 7, the normalization process with Saudi Arabia was in its infancy, but seemed to be well underway thanks to Mohammed bin Salman, with the invaluable help of President Joe Biden.
Let us never forget how important Israel’s security was in all of Rabin’s actions, both as a military man and as a politician.
As I write these lines, there is talk of a certain normalization, at least militarily, between Israel and the new Syrian regime. As for Lebanon, the Israeli-Lebanese agreement on territorial waters and the possible disarmament of Hezbollah by the Lebanese government are cautiously creating a community of interests or even a small easing of tensions with Israel. Of course, this movement towards recognition of Israel, which Rabin would have strongly desired, does not stem from pro-Israeli or pro-Zionist sentiment. This normalization is based on interests: economic success, ending the war, protecting themselves against Iran, getting closer to the United States to guarantee their security, these countries’ very clear interest in Israeli military high technology, the Iron Dome and anti-missile systems, and even the excellence of Israeli medical and scientific research, etc. It is because of these very real interests that we can assume that after the current agreement and when the war in Gaza is completely over, this wave of normalization that Rabin would have dreamed of will undoubtedly continue.
On the other hand, Yitzhak Rabin’s second objective, Israel’s security, despite the very real power of the IDF, to which he contributed so much, was never really guaranteed. Even though the last general war between Israel and the Arab states dates back to 1973, following which Rabin won his first term as head of government, and even though there is in fact no longer any prospect of future war between Israel and the Arab states, Israel is still under threat. Firstly, by terrorism on its borders, as we saw on October 7, but above all, Israel is threatened by Iran, its regime and its satellites, an Iran that swears every day to destroy Israel and all its inhabitants, an Iran whose nuclear ambitions remain, despite the Israeli-American attack.
From the peace camp to the domination of the Israeli right wing
Thirty years after Rabin’s assassination, it is important to remember, amid the current international chorus of anti-Israel sentiment, that Israel is fortunately a democratic country based on elections, with a large number of political parties that operate freely, ranging from the anti-Zionist far left, such as the Palestinian Arab Bal’ad party, which is hostile to Israel’s very existence, to the extreme right-wing fascist and racist, such as Itamar Ben Gvir’s xenophobic party. These political parties compete freely in Knesset elections, under the watchful eye of the Israeli Supreme Court, which is truly the bulwark of our democracy for all Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike. (Let us recall here how much Yitzhak Rabin, unlike the current Israeli government, was a legalist and scrupulously respectful of Israel’s democratic institutions, even resigning over his wife’s dollar account affair.)
Even before the creation of Israel, there were always Jews who believed that an agreement with the Arabs of Palestine was not only possible but essential: this is where the peace camp comes from.
However, it is the parties’ positions on the Palestinian question and the occupied territories, rather than economic or social issues, that clearly distinguish them between the left, the center, and the right. First of all, when it comes to the Zionist left, the camp of Rabin and Peres, the leaders of the Labor Party, what we call the peace camp, there have always been, even before the creation of Israel, Jews who believed that an agreement with the Arabs of Palestine was not only possible but essential. I would mention the great philosopher Martin Buber, who in the 1930s founded the Peace Alliance in Mandatory Palestine, a movement in favor of a binational Israeli-Palestinian state, or more recently, great Israeli intellectuals, writers, and artists who today support the two-state solution for both peoples. This is our camp, the camp of Rabin and Peres, now renamed the Democratic Party (and including Meretz and the Labor Party), which has always advocated negotiation and protested against the uncontrolled use of force and the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, and which campaigned here very early on for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and the release of all hostages. In recent years, this peace camp has, it must be said very clearly, become increasingly marginalized in Israel and has shrunk year after year. Fortunately, it was in power between 1992 and 1995, until the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a fanatical Jew, and it was during this period that the Oslo Accords were signed, bringing hope. It is this camp of Israelis, deeply shocked by the terrible images of the war in Gaza, that can be seen today in the streets of Israel.
But the other current, represented in the past by Menachem Begin and today by Benjamin Netanyahu, i.e., the Israeli right and far right, is the camp that never believed, even at the origins of Zionism in the late 19th century, in the possibility of reconciliation and agreement with the Arabs, and which has advocated only the use of military force, always force, and more force. Let us remember that Netanyahu, the representative of this bellicose right wing, was on the famous balcony where words of hatred were uttered against Yitzhak Rabin, a Rabin depicted beneath that balcony in an SS uniform… Already, the “spiritual father” of this movement, Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky, spoke of an “iron wall” to be erected against our enemies. Yitzhak Rabin had clearly seen how this camp of the right and the far right was gaining strength among the Israeli public, and the fact is that this right-wing camp is now undoubtedly in the majority.
I am often asked: why? How did Rabin’s country, the country of kibbutzim, socialist pioneers, and universalist idealists, fall into the hands of ultra-nationalist partisans and religious zealots of Greater Israel? For those who live in Israel, the answer is obvious: out of fear. Fear of terrorists, fear of attacks, fear of a new and even more terrible October 7, fear of Iran and its future nuclear bomb, fear of Iran’s proxies, fear of jihadism, fear of Hezbollah, etc., etc. Incidentally, the images of the unbearable savagery of Hamas’ macabre ceremonies during the handover of the first hostages certainly did not strengthen the peace camp. We even saw well-known Israeli left-wing intellectuals withdraw from the fight with a sense of disgust. But above all, Yitzhak Rabin had clearly seen the emergence of an increasingly active and extremely dangerous messianic, ethnocentric, mystical, and annexationist far right, supported among others by the American far right and evangelicals, for whom only acts of violence and military force can bring the Palestinians to their knees. It was this movement that assassinated Rabin. At the time, this camp was represented politically by Gush Emunim, the Faith Bloc.
How did Rabin’s country, the country of kibbutzim, socialist pioneers, and universalist idealists, fall into the hands of ultra-nationalist partisans and the religious followers of Greater Israel? For those who live in Israel, the answer is obvious: out of fear.
Another aside: in view of the elections in Europe and the racist, Islamophobic, and anti-immigrant demonstrations in European countries, such as recently in England, we all know that this rise of populist, xenophobic, and far-right parties is not unique to Israel and is taking place almost everywhere. Moreover, in exactly the same way, we all know, and Rabin knew very well, that the Palestinians are clearly divided between pragmatic moderates who would be willing to compromise with Israel under certain conditions, and criminal jihadist fanatics like Hamas, for whom violence, brutality, assassination, and armed struggle are the only means of achieving their sole goal: the destruction of the Jews and Israel.
The Gaza War and the Trauma of October 7
I now come to Israel’s war in Gaza.
October 7, 2023, has been largely forgotten outside Israel. I would even go so far as to say that October 7 has completely disappeared from European memory. On that day, approximately 4,000 to 5,000 Hamas terrorists made a surprise incursion into Israeli territory along the Gaza Strip. To this day, on a purely military level, no one in Israel has been able to understand how this could have happened, and the Netanyahu government is still preventing the creation of a national commission of inquiry. These Hamas men entered Jewish towns, villages, and kibbutzim and committed atrocious crimes, including at the Nova youth party. They massacred more than 1,200 Israelis, men, women, children, and babies; they mutilated bodies, raped young girls and committed sexual crimes, killed children and babies, tortured, destroyed everything, and burned the inhabitants alive in their homes. Moreover, it should be remembered that among the victims who were brutally murdered or kidnapped were the greatest advocates of peace in the border kibbutzim, men and women working for compromise and reconciliation, people who campaigned alongside the Palestinians of Gaza and regularly picked them up by car at the border to take them to Israeli hospitals. No one here has forgotten the surveillance camera footage showing Gazan villagers of all ages and backgrounds coming to search, devastate, and loot the rubble of burned houses. Hamas took 250 people hostage in Gaza, most of whom were murdered, and the rest, about 20, have just been released after rotting in Hamas’s underground tunnels, chained and tortured. I say this very frankly: over the past two years, our primary concern, our first priority, our obsession even, I might say, among all Israelis, until this agreement in Sharm el-Sheikh, was the immediate release of all hostages, alive or dead.
October 7, 2023 has been largely forgotten outside Israel. I would even go so far as to say that October 7 has completely faded from European memory.
People will immediately say yes, it’s abominable, Hamas massacred, raped, and burned, but the Israelis killed tens of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza in the war that followed, undoubtedly more than sixty or seventy thousand, the vast majority of whom were innocent women and children. This is absolutely true, it is horrible, but I say this as a sociologist of Israeli society: the massacre of October 7 remains a fundamental fact for anyone who wants to try to understand the collective psychology of the Israelis. There is no doubt that in the collective consciousness of the Israelis, October 7 was nothing less than a continuation of Shoah and the crimes committed by the Nazis. Of course, there were no extermination camps, gas chambers, or crematoria, but in any case, it was the greatest crime committed against Jews as Jews since the creation of the State of Israel, in fact since the Shoah and the end of World War II. When we consider the absolutely central place that Shoah occupies in Israeli political culture, we cannot be surprised by this instinctive and unavoidable reference, as much for schoolchildren as for adults or the elderly. For an Israeli, when there are murders, rapes, mutilations, torture, kidnappings, and houses set on fire, it is Nazism. It is something that overshadows everything else and unfortunately creates a total numbness to the suffering of others.
Following October 7, Israel launched a terrible offensive in Gaza, both aerial and ground, a total war with massive bombardments, aimed at destroying Hamas’s governmental and military capabilities, a deadly war that left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead and tens of thousands wounded in Gaza. We have all seen the horrific images of this war, which has virtually destroyed all the infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, causing great suffering and massive population displacement. This is a humanitarian disaster of enormous proportions that Israelis are not sufficiently aware of, as they hardly see any images of it on their screens, even though we are perfectly entitled to discuss whether this absolute catastrophe should be classified as genocide. The word genocide brings to mind Shoah, which continues to weigh heavily on European memories. Many have said to themselves: if even the Jews, who suffered genocide, are themselves committing genocide, then we Europeans are not ultimately so guilty for what happened in the time of our parents and grandparents. However, genocide is based on a conscious desire, a conscious will to annihilate, destroy, and eradicate an entire people, their identity, history, and culture, which is clearly not the case here, despite the war crimes and violations of international law committed by Israel. Critics of Israel, in order to stir up emotion in their audience by evoking the great crimes of history, make abundant use of suggestive words such as genocide, colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, etc., but even for a left-wing Israeli intellectual who supports the Palestinians, this is semantic manipulation. Since the average Israeli does not have a moral sense or moral criteria different from those of Europeans or Americans, I think that Israelis associate these catastrophic destructions with the fact that Hamas cruelly used the civilian population of Gaza, the entire civilian population, men, women, and children, as human shields, whether by force or consent. The IDF insists that there is not a single building, not a single hospital, school, or university building in which weapons, explosives, rockets, or missiles aimed at the Israeli civilian population have not been found, as well as entrances to hundreds of kilometers of underground tunnels intended solely for preparing attacks against Israeli civilians, assassinating them, or kidnapping hostages.
For an Israeli, when there are murders, rapes, mutilations, torture, kidnappings, houses set on fire, it is Nazism. It is something that overshadows everything else and unfortunately creates a total anesthesia to the suffering of others.
Once again, one can only be horrified by the scale of Palestinian civilian deaths and injuries and the destruction in Gaza. This war should have ended immediately, and the Israeli army must, according to the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement, withdraw gradually and completely from Gaza, except for an essential security perimeter, and Gaza must be completely rebuilt as soon as possible. However, any honest person must say that it was the unspeakable crimes committed by Hamas on October 7 that triggered this war and unimaginable suffering. These crimes by Hamas must not be forgotten with time, erased, ignored, or even denied, as is often the case today.
What remains of Rabin’s dream?
What would Yitzhak Rabin have said about the current situation? It is difficult to engage in political fiction! Rabin himself had evolved considerably: from a “hawk” (“break the bones of the demonstrators” during the first Intifada), he had become the “dove” of Oslo over time. I believe he would probably have agreed with the positions of the Israeli peace camp, which supports the two-state solution for both peoples, with a totally demilitarized Palestinian state, and where Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and any other jihadist organization would no longer play any role, a State of Palestine that would in fact be the result of negotiations between a future moderate and responsible Israeli government and a renewed and uncorrupted Palestinian Authority, probably under the auspices of the United States and the Arab states. Another unanswered question: what would Rabin propose today to do with the Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank, who, 57 years after the Six Day War and the occupation, now number more than half a million, around 600,000? Many people around the world who know nothing about the situation respond with confidence: the settlers will be told to return within Israel’s borders, they will leave their homes, and everything will be fine. This poses a real practical problem, because I do not believe that the Israeli army, or the US army, or any other army, is materially capable of removing these settlers. What would Rabin have said about this situation (let’s not forget that the colonization of the West Bank continued during the two periods when Rabin was in power…)?
In any democratic country, foreign and military policy is defined and implemented by the government. Israel has been fortunate in the past to have governments and heads of government whose foreign policy has been in the right direction, towards peace, as was particularly the case with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. After the terrible tragedy in Gaza, Israel must absolutely return to a radically different government, led by men of restraint, moderation, and understanding, determined to conclude a definitive peace with the moderates of the Palestinian people, in security and mutual respect. Israel is heading for new elections in 2026, and we can only hope.
Ilan Greilsammer
Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Ilan Greilsammer is the author of ‘La Nouvelle histoire d’Israël : essai sur une identité nationale’ (Gallimard).
