“Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated peace” by Denis Charbit

Exactly thirty years ago, on November 4, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a religious Jewish extremist opposed to the peace process. In Yitzhak Rabin, la paix assassinée ? [ET: Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated peace], Denis Charbit revisits the shockwaves caused by the event, the ambiguous legacy and fractured memory of the Israeli prime minister in his own country. For his name still divides, despite the commemorations that have become “a time for lies, a role-playing game, where, out of respect for form, Rabin’s opponents, who have been in power for nearly thirty years, have ‘a moral duty to commemorate him and a political duty to forget him’^[1]” writes Charbit, from whose book, to be published in French this week, we are publishing two excerpts.

 

The explosion of November 4, 1995

It doesn’t take a great strategist to see that Oslo was a failure. There are two conflicting explanations: the first attributed initial bad faith to one or the other of the leaders, or even to both. Rabin was suspected of having devised a process that worked to Israel’s advantage: thanks to autonomy, the Jewish state would be relieved of civil administration and direct control of the Palestinian population, but would retain control of security and could thus continue colonization unhindered. As for Arafat, he was accused of ulterior motives. Oslo fitted perfectly into the theory of stages defined by the Palestinian national movement: first, limited autonomy would be obtained in Gaza and Jericho, which would then be extended to the entire West Bank, leading to a sovereign state which, despite its demilitarization, would secretly build up an arsenal to conquer and destroy the State of Israel. There was no tangible evidence to support this hypothesis, other than a few discrepancies identified and dissected between his speeches delivered in English and the “raw” comments he made in Arabic when he was among his own people. In short, Oslo was a smokescreen: it is not despite Oslo, but because of Oslo that Zionism would confirm that it is more than ever a paragon of colonialism; while the Palestinian goal remains to “drive the Jews into the sea .” Oslo was a trap set for the adversary—Israel for the PLO, the PLO for Israel—and could almost be considered a conspiracy theory.

The opposite explanation, which seemed to us to be more substantiated, attributed the failure to the negative dynamics sown by the two forces opposed to the agreement. The five-year timetable before the start of final negotiations was designed as a period of mutual learning about coexistence and a time for mutual trust to be established between public opinion and the political apparatus on both sides. At the end of this period, it would be easy to convince both sides to overcome, on the Israeli side, reluctance to create a Palestinian state and end the monopoly of security provided exclusively by the IDF (in favor of security cooperation with the Palestinian police) and, on the Palestinian side, to renounce the right of return of refugees to Israeli territory and the dream of a Palestine from the river to the sea. In this phase, it was less peace that counted than evidence of peace, less words than deeds.

Yitzhak Rabin, la paix assassinée ? Une mémoire fragmentée (Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated peace? A fragmented memory) by Denis Charbit will be released on October 29, 2025, by Edition Jean-Claude Lattès.But for anyone who opposed it, on both sides, five years was a godsend and an eternity in which not a single second should be wasted in order to kill the nightmare of a reconciliation that could permanently destroy the respective fantasies of Greater Israel and Greater Palestine. This probationary period was seen by the Israeli far right and the Palestinian Hamas as a race against time during which it would suffice to reintroduce doubt, mistrust, and rejection into public opinion after the initial euphoria. The countdown began on September 13, 1993. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad carried out attacks. Although the number of victims was still low, these initial acts carried little weight compared to the positive developments: Jordan had announced its desire to establish official relations with Israel after years of tacit and discreet relations; the Holy See finally recognized the State of Israel, followed by India and other non-aligned countries; liaison offices were opened in several Arab countries. For the Israeli right, it was time for political battle. It borrowed its tactics from the repertoire of any parliamentary opposition: motions of censure, agitation in plenary sessions and parliamentary committees. It attempted to dampen the atmosphere of optimism with Cassandra-like predictions and self-fulfilling prophecies: Oslo will fail, Oslo will lead to bloodshed.

In the street where an attack had been carried out, Netanyahu, then the new hope of Likud, declared that Rabin—not the Oslo Accords—was directly and personally responsible for the bloodshed, breaking the first taboo in Israeli political vocabulary.

This would indeed be the case, but not on the side that was expected. Barely five months after the ceremony in Washington, on February 25, 1994, a Jewish holiday, Baruch Goldstein, armed with a machine gun, shot and killed 29 Palestinians praying in the Muslim section of Abraham’s Tomb in Hebron. This was the first test for Rabin and for the peace process. He refrained from taking repressive measures, such as evacuating the Jewish enclave in the city of Hebron, which consisted of no more than a dozen families. Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were temporarily suspended. Then it was Hamas’ turn to respond and inject an additional dose of violence by inventing a new form of terrorism: suicide bombings. Hamas and Islamic Jihad carried out a series of attacks, not in occupied territory, but in the heart of Israel, in Tel Aviv, at busy bus stations and major road junctions. The toll was considerable—94 dead and 741 wounded between September 1993 and November 1995—and incomprehensible and unjustifiable to the Israeli public, which wondered whether the PLO and Hamas, far from being rivals, were not in fact accomplices.

Now, the opposition was stepping up a gear: it was no longer confined to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, but was taking extra-parliamentary action. Netanyahu, the strongman and new hope of the Likud party, went to the street where one of the attacks had taken place to declare that Rabin—not the Oslo Accords—was directly and personally responsible for the bloodshed, breaking the first taboo in Israeli political vocabulary. Netanyahu was surrounded by white-hot activists. The lesson was quickly learned. Actions had to be coordinated and everything that moved and opposed Oslo had to be brought together: political parties, think tanks, ideological press, newspapers, magazines, pirate radio stations, associations of all kinds, religious, cultural, charitable, student, and political. The defeat of Oslo, according to them, required occupying the streets and inflating rhetoric to a fever pitch. While Yitzhak Shamir, Prime Minister from 1983 to 1992, had established a “cordon sanitaire” around the supremacist rabbi Meir Kahanah and his followers, the fight against Oslo now legitimizes collaboration and coordination with ultra-nationalist religious fringe groups engaged in clandestine and violent actions.

An ultra-nationalist who managed to snatch the hood ornament from the Prime Minister’s Cadillac declared on television: “We will get Rabin.” He was nineteen years old and his name was Itamar Ben Gvir.

This outcry orchestrated by the right wing in the Knesset and in the streets did not deter Rabin from his long march toward peace. The Palestinian Authority was established and began to exercise its prerogatives in the major Palestinian cities. Military redeployment was the pretext for organizing new demonstrations that brought together settlers and their allies. The stakes were high: if Oslo achieved its goals, even if they were still implicit at this stage, the mission that a generation of settlers had set itself since 1967 was in jeopardy: the establishment of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.

So, to challenge Oslo, there was nothing better than to attack Rabin, who became the main target. Posters depicting him wearing a keffiyeh were brandished at demonstrations; and for those who did not understand the visual message, the caption was unambiguous: “traitor” and “betrayal.” One of these extremists, who managed to tear off the hood ornament of the prime minister’s Cadillac, declared on television: ”Just as we reached this symbol, we can reach Rabin.” He was nineteen years old, his name was Itamar Ben Gvir, and he would go on to become one of the leaders of the supremacist far right. In addition to rallies, sit-ins, and demonstrations, a question began to circulate in religious circles: Was Rabin not comparable to those Jewish informers of the Middle Ages who made common cause with their oppressors? Should he not be classified as a rodef (persecutor) and a mosser (informer), found guilty and sentenced to a violent death as provided for by the community justice system of yesteryear? Instead of being immediately dismissed, these outdated notions were examined, discussed, debated by rabbis who rendered their verdict in the shadows and religiously legitimized a political crime. A Kabbalistic-inspired ritual of excommunication, pulsa diNura (literally, strike of fire or incendiary strike), was also being revived, calling on God to strike the individual with divine wrath. The ceremony was held in secret on October 2, 1995, one month before his assassination.

The climax was reached during the October 5 demonstration in Jerusalem, attended by many Likud MPs, including Netanyahu, the leader of the opposition. The slogans shattered the boundaries of decency: “Rabin traitor,” “Rabin murderer,” “Death to Rabin.” Among the placards and posters brandished by the demonstrators, one constituted an unprecedented transgression of all Israeli social and political codes of protest: Rabin was depicted in a Nazi uniform. Enough was enough. Ministers left the scene, outraged by this despicable excess and unrestrained violence. Netanyahu decided to remain on the podium. He later stated that he had seen and heard nothing and that, moreover, he had made it clear in his speech to the demonstrators that “Rabin was not a traitor.”

Among the posters brandished by the demonstrators, one constituted an unprecedented transgression of all Israeli social and political codes of protest: Rabin was depicted wearing a Nazi uniform.

Indignation reached a fever pitch. Israeli political discourse regularly invoked notions borrowed from the vocabulary of the Holocaust and Nazism. To dress the Prime Minister of the State of Israel in an SS uniform was sacrilegious. To associate a sabra, a Palmach fighter, a leader of the IDF, Yitzhak Rabin, with a Nazi dignitary was perceived as a desecration of the memory of the Holocaust.

It was time to give the silent majority a chance to speak out. Jean Frydman, a French-Israeli close to Rabin, suggested organizing a demonstration at his own expense. Rabin was ambivalent: except during election periods, rallies serve to express discontent, not support. He finally accepted the proposal: the November 4 gathering would be like an informal referendum from which he could learn something about the state of public opinion. The aim was to denounce the climate of hatred created against him by the right wing under the pretext of opposing his policies. In his speech, he warned against verbal violence that could degenerate into physical violence, and against violence in general, which undermines democracy. The event was a success. Hatred had been defeated, retreating before the jubilant crowd. Rabin, who was beginning to doubt his popularity in the run-up to the general elections scheduled for the end of May 1996, seemed reassured. This popular demonstration was seen as a political turning point for the peace camp, which, intimidated by the attacks, had ceded the streets to its opponents. Rabin was relaxed, even smiling, which was rare for him. In addition, that evening he renewed his close relationship with Peres, which did not escape anyone’s notice. To close the demonstration, which took place in Kings of Israel Square on the esplanade of City Hall, the audience was invited to sing along with the Prime Minister, before the national anthem, the pacifist anthem of the peace camp written after the Six-Day War: Shir la-Shalom (A Song for Peace): “Don’t say, ‘One day it will come.’ Make that day come.”

Yigal Amir wanted to eliminate the man he believed was the only leader who could bring about peace. He was determined to stop the catastrophe in time and turn back the tide of history.

Rabin, who rarely engaged in this type of exercise, was visibly moved by the tangible affection of his fellow citizens. He descended the outdoor staircase with Shimon Peres to his vehicle, then changed his mind to thank Jean Frydman. He came back down alone a few minutes later, followed by his bodyguard and his wife Lea. He had only a few meters to go to get into the official car that was to take them back to their home. That’s when the assassin appeared. Yigal Amir fired three bullets into the Prime Minister’s back. Seriously wounded, Yitzhak Rabin was rushed to the hospital; Yigal Amir was arrested. Two hours later, his chief of staff, Eytan Haber, read the official statement confirming the death of Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin in front of hundreds of shocked Israelis who had gathered at the gates of Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.

The evening, which everyone present experienced as a moment of political renewal, turned into a nightmare. November 4, 1995. For Yitzhak Rabin, the time of history was over. The time and work of his memory began. (…)

Yitzhak Rabin, peace: thirty years later

Every year, as November approaches, a ghost haunts us, a revenant stalks us: Yitzhak Rabin never stops turning in his grave, and his memory, which fades with each passing year, strips us of our last hopes. After his tragic death, he left behind a commitment in the form of a testament to peace, always peace, above all peace. The hope of imminent peace, to ward off the assassin’s premeditated intent, counterbalanced the grief of his loss. Today, that hope is dying, even among those who proudly claimed their commitment to this cause thirty years ago.

That is why we should reflect on more than one thing every November 4: because Rabin is dead, democracy is threatened, and the hope for peace is dying; because the Israeli government has waged an abominable war, which surpasses all others in horror, including those in which Rabin participated: the massive destruction of homes, a terrifying number of civilians killed, widespread famine, and a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. The government will have to answer to Israeli citizens and to humanity for these serial catastrophes, which had only a limited impact on the objectives of the war legitimately launched after the mass massacre of October 7, 2023, and which it is indecent and shameful to try to classify as collateral damage of urban warfare.

How do we commemorate failure? How do we celebrate dashed hopes? How do we explain that this was his plan, but that his successors, especially the last of them, Benjamin Netanyahu, decided otherwise?

Unlike the Petit-Clamart attack, which was designed to eliminate General de Gaulle after the irreversible had been committed by evacuating France from Algeria, Yigal Amir wanted to eliminate the man he believed, rightly or wrongly, to be the only leader who could achieve peace. He was determined to stop the catastrophe in time and turn back the tide of history. He succeeded. Yigal Amir rejoices every day from his prison cell and certainly believes that the sacrifice of his freedom is small compared to the situation he wanted to bring about: peace at a standstill, the West Bank more than ever in the hands of Israel, and Gaza in ruins.

But does this mean that once Rabin was eliminated, the peace process was doomed to failure? We must remain cautious: just as World War I did not break out because of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not resolved because Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot dead at 9:45 p.m. on November 4, 1995. History does not progress or regress because of a single event. Let us remember that although Netanyahu came to power in May 1996, he lost it three years later, on May 21, 1999, to Ehud Barak of the Labor Party. In January 2000, Barak ordered the Israeli army to withdraw unilaterally from southern Lebanon after 18 years of occupation, and in July of the same year, he proposed a tripartite meeting with Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton. It was at this summit that a comprehensive Israeli peace offer was presented to Yasser Arafat. Rabin had taken the decisive step of breaking the taboo of negotiating with the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, but it fell to Barak to propose a plan that provided for the creation of a Palestinian state and the division of Jerusalem into two capitals.

There were many reasons for the failure of the Camp David summit in July-August 2000, and responsibility was shared. In 2009, it was the turn of Ehud Olmert, a member of the Likud party, to take over from Barak. In both cases, there was reluctance on the Palestinian side, while on the Israeli side, Barak was defeated in the elections and Olmert was forced to resign after being indicted for corruption. That said, the major impact of Rabin’s assassination lies in its perception as a self-fulfilling prophecy: an eloquent symbol, like a sword of Damocles hanging over the head of every head of government. It is not so much a new political assassination that is to be feared. Barak and Olmert continued negotiations without fearing for their physical safety. It seems that between peace and civil war, an internal referendum dictates that everyone should choose to avoid the latter even if it means giving up the former. To this must be added the deep-seated conviction that animates most Jews and thanks to which Netanyahu has been winning every election since 2009: the Palestinians want to destroy Israel and have not given up on this goal. Why would they think otherwise if Israel is nothing more than a combination of colonialism, apartheid, and genocide?

After thirty years of commemorations, we can hope that no more prime ministers will be shot, but if it were to happen again, if a new Rabin were to emerge, how many would believe, against all odds, that he would be, like his predecessor, a man to be killed?

Rabin’s assassination, coupled with the wave of Hamas attacks, had a paralyzing effect. Even if 90% of Palestinians recognized the existence of the State of Israel, if not its legitimacy, there would still be 10% who remained unyielding, which secretly pleases all those who do not want to hear about an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. This Israeli ambivalence explains why the commemoration of Yitzhak Rabin is ultimately a defeat for the peace camp.

The problem posed by these official events is indeed the peace policy of the assassinated prime minister. How do you commemorate a failure? How do you celebrate a lost hope? How do we explain that this was his plan, but that his successors decided otherwise, especially the last of them, Benjamin Netanyahu? So, unable to talk about it openly, we drown ourselves in grand statements about Rabin the great man, Rabin the hero, Rabin the chief of staff; we recount previously unheard anecdotes from his driver, his aide-de-camp, a comrade-in-arms, or a neighbor to capture the truth of this extraordinary character, while simultaneously concealing the void, the abyss, the aporia, and repressing what is uncomfortable.

Yitzhak Rabin therefore remains a pioneer without a successor, a master without a disciple, a king without an heir, a rich man whose cumbersome legacy is rejected, a musical genius whose ultimate masterpiece would be an unfinished symphony. Those who deny this retort that it is the enemy, always the enemy and nothing but the enemy who did not want peace and still does not want it.

The failure of the commemoration was predictable: his assassination was a necessary condition for establishing a memorial law in his name; it remains an insufficient condition for it to have any relevant meaning for the entire Israeli population. After thirty years of commemorations, we can hope that no more prime ministers will be shot, but if it were to happen again, if a new Rabin were to emerge, how many would believe, against all odds, that he would be, like his predecessor, a man to be killed? If, in order to achieve peace, Israel is required to withdraw from the territories it has occupied since 1967, it is therefore an existential threat to a state with limited territory, and Rabin or anyone who follows in his footsteps is a public danger, if not a traitor. Not everyone who thought this in 1995 considered killing him, but it is impossible to commemorate the death of a man who was believed to be bringing misfortune and disaster upon Israel, and whose merits and virtues collapsed when he paved the way for negotiations with a Palestinian leader.

Rabin and his cause cannot unify an entire society. His name can only divide, and it still does. His death remains heartbreaking for his supporters and a cowardly relief for his opponents.

Could it have been any other way? On the night of November 4, all the ingredients were there for the myth to take hold and endure: Rabin’s career also lends itself to mythification because of the twist he embraced until his last breath. What could be more eloquent than the destiny of a man who had his hands in the Nakba and the repression of the Intifada, who was the victor of the Six-Day War, and who, at the end of his career, became the hero of peace?

The children with candles, whose instinctive reaction moved many, were also an integral part of the myth in the making: what could be more touching and reassuring after the bloodshed than to see the future generation take on the mission of being, literally, the guardians of peace? Nevertheless, Rabin was part of a generation that, having lost so many comrades in battle, repressed its emotions. Rabin rejected any display of pathos, any excess of logos, and built his personality solely on ethos. “Death depoliticizes, or more accurately, ‘de-partisanizes’… The dead belong to everyone. ” And yet, in this case, despite his exemplary career, Rabin did not become a model for the right through these annual commemorations, nor for the Ashkenazi or Sephardic, Zionist or Orthodox religious communities. Rabin and his cause cannot unify an entire society. His name can only divide, and it still does. His death remains heartbreaking for his supporters and a cowardly relief for his opponents.

Since the commemoration did not focus on peace, due to a lack of consensus on his political legacy, it fell back on respect for democratic rules and political tolerance, and on the preservation of national unity. Between peace and national unity, Israeli society has lost on both counts. It does not have peace, and as for consensus, Israelis have never been so divided.

The great difficulty for the left has been to define who is to blame: the right, the religious, the settlers? Peres believed that the circle of those responsible should be narrowed down. He was challenged within his party by those who believed that the people of memory cannot, for political reasons, avoid naming the culprits, running the risk of essentializing all religious people, the entire right wing, and all Jews originating from the Arab world. In this regard, criticism from within is always better than criticism from outside. A political movement that emerged after the Lebanon War was reconstituted with religious and humanist figures, such as Rabbis Amital and Melchior, placing peace above the control of the West Bank by force, despite the fact that this land is the cradle of the Patriarchs. This trend has remained a minority one.

Commemorations continue out of inertia, but they have become a time for lying, a time for boredom, a role-playing game, where, out of respect for form, Rabin’s opponents, who have been in power for nearly thirty years, have “a moral duty to commemorate him and a political duty to forget him.”

The leaders of the Israeli far right, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, are not a mutation of Judaism. As suggested by Levinas’ Hebrew translator, Rabbi Daniel Esptein, it is the controversy surrounding messianism that is resurfacing: while the diaspora had extinguished the activist impulse eager to anticipate the end of time, the reconquest of political sovereignty had the effect of marginalizing the tendency shared by those who await the Messiah with melancholic patience without desperately seeking to identify the signs of his coming. This haste that drives the two leaders and their troops is the source of all fanaticism.

Rabin’s death and his troubling legacy show that with each trial, the fate of Jewish identity is at stake: the ever-complex relationship between universalism and particularism, normality and exceptionalism. A cultural war has reignited and shows no signs of abating. Rabin’s assassination and the turn taken by the war in Gaza in 2025 give pause for thought: are Jews ready for national sovereignty? The state no longer protects, just as Rabin was not protected in his time.

The commemorations continue out of inertia, but they have become a time for lying, a time for boredom, a role-playing game, where, out of respect for form, Rabin’s opponents, who have been in power for nearly thirty years, have “a moral duty to commemorate him and a political duty to forget him,” as denounced by former Minister of Education Yuli Tamir, on the twentieth anniversary of the Israeli leader’s death. Some feel nostalgia, others find it difficult to say out loud that the murder was worth it.

In the conclusion of their report, the judicial inquiry commission solemnly wrote: “After the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (may his memory be blessed), the State of Israel will never be the same again.” The authors of the report were referring to a democratic culture that had developed over the years and of which Israel could be proud: despite the ongoing conflict and bitter controversies, political pluralism had prevailed, ruling out the use of violence.

Such is the bitter, tragic, frustrating conclusion: those who paved the way for Oslo have been pushed to the margins and find themselves off the beaten track. And what has become of those who did not want it? They are strutting, they are boasting, they are triumphant.

The age of innocence is over. Israel will never be the same again. Despite the pessimism, there was a hint of hope that Israel would not forget what happened that night. The supporters of Little Israel have not forgotten. The worshippers of Greater Israel have learned nothing.

Yigal Amir is still serving a life sentence, but it is not unlikely that a handful of ministers and a few members of the current coalition will call for a presidential pardon for him and, in the immediate future, ask to visit him. For them, this martyr of Greater Israel, Yigal Amir, is better than the martyr of peace, Yitzhak Rabin. What will they say to justify the infamous? That by killing Rabin, Yigal Amir set in motion a process that, thirty years later, not only froze Oslo, but also, with the support of Donald Trump and Hamas, destroyed any hope of appeasement and reconciliation.

Such is the bitter, tragic, frustrating reality: those who paved the way for Oslo have been pushed to the margins and find themselves off track. And what has become of those who did not want it? They strut, they boast, they triumph: they are in power in Israel, and their Palestinian counterparts continue to monopolize the cause. That is why the primary mission is to remove those who have plunged Israelis and Palestinians into a tunnel. Israelis are in a better position to do so because they are still among the peoples called upon to elect their representatives at the ballot box, and thus to keep them in power or remove them from office. The election scheduled in Israel in 2026 will be crucial. It will count for much more than the 25 elections that have taken place since 1949. If Netanyahu and his allies are pushed into opposition, it will, in a sense, be Rabin’s revenge on the man who assassinated him. The beginning of peace would do justice to the Palestinian nation, allowing it to live freely in part of Palestine, side by side with the State of Israel, while waiting to live in a confederal framework, if both parties so decide.

---

Denis Charbit

 

Yitzhak Rabin, la paix assassinée ? Une mémoire fragmentée by Denis Charbit will be released on October 29, 2025, by Edition Jean-Claude Lattès.