Originally I intended to write this piece solely about Yitzhak Rabin, but the lengthy amount of time I’ve had to reflect on this post before finishing it has changed my mind.
This past Sunday I found myself back in Rabin Square, standing where I had been 3 weeks earlier to remember Rabin’s murder at the massive memorial rally they hold annually on the anniversary according to the Roman calendar. (The official memorial date is based on the Jewish calendar). I found the memorial interesting as a first-timer, especially as most of the crowd, Haaretz critically observed, “was, as always, the same: self-described Ashkenazi, secular, leftist and peace-loving. How good and pleasant it is to stand in the square once a year and feel a part of this warm family…” They called out the event organizers for producing a parade of “pop stars and empty clichés,” and I wasn’t terribly surprised by it. Last year’s memorial, Haaretz wrote, was highlighted by a very stirring speech by Israeli writer David Grossman who had just lost his son in the war with Lebanon. In it, he cried out to Olmert:
“Mister Prime Minister, I am not saying these words out of feelings of rage or revenge. I have waited long enough to avoid responding on impulse. You will not be able to dismiss my words tonight by saying a grieving man cannot be judged. Certainly I am grieving, but I am more pained than angry. This country and what you and your friends are doing to it pains me.
Trust me, your success is important to me, because the future of all of us depends on our ability to act. Yitzhak Rabin took the road of peace with the Palestinians, not because he possessed great affection for them or their leaders. Even then, as you recall, common belief was that we had no partner and we had nothing to discuss with them.
Rabin decided to act, because he discerned very wisely that Israeli society would not be able to sustain itself endlessly in a state of an unresolved conflict. He realized long before many others that life in a climate of violence, occupation, terror, anxiety and hopelessness, extracts a price Israel cannot afford…
By our sword we shall live and by our sword we shall die and the sword shall devour forever. Maybe this would explain the indifference with which we accept the utter failure of the peace process, a failure that has lasted for years and claims more and more victims.”
Two years ago, I wrote an essay for a writing workshop about my birthright trip, framed by a discussion of Israeli politics and the emotional impact of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. For those who don’t know, Rabin rose from the ranks of the Palmach (the regular fighting force of the Hagganah) to become one of Israel’s most important generals, and was appointed Chief of Staff of the IDF in the 1960s. He served as Prime Minister after Golda Meir in the 1970s, and then was elected to a second term in 1992. He won the Nobel Peace Price with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat for creating the Oslo Accords, which recognized the PLO and gave it some governing authority over Gaza and the West Bank.
Yitzhak Rabin’s politics were controversial, but most Israelis believed him to be a man free from the corruptions of power that authority confers, and that his devotion to and passion for Israel transcended politics. In the current American debate over the 2008 election, many of those supporting Obama do so because his leadership style makes people hope, care, and believe in the power of government to make a meaningful impact upon people’s lives. This is how people felt about Rabin. They looked up to him as one of their own, a man who rose from nothing, who did not go to university, who spent his life fighting for the Israeli people.
Unfortunately, however, there is an element of Israeli society that has yet to emerge into adult political discourse from the playground of infantile egocentrism: the religious right. The Haredim, as they are called in Hebrew, are an ultra-Orthodox sect that makes up about 10-15% of the population. For the most part, the men live to study, and the women live to make babies. Most men don’t work and thus their families live below the poverty line, expecting (and, infuriatingly, receiving) tax dollars from the secular Jews they decry. They largely don’t serve in the army, but expect those who do to protect them from the violence resulting from their presence in settlements along and in the Palestinian territories. They do not believe in compromise with the Palestinians, because they believe that Palestinians are incapable of honest agreement, and because they believe that the entirety of this land belongs to the Jewish people as promised to Abraham in Genesis 12-17, or parshat Lech Lecha (much more on this on part 3).
These ‘holy’ people attack those marching in the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade and the police who protect them. They spit on women who walk the streets with their knees, elbows, and collarbones proudly bare. A month ago they attacked a woman and a soldier on a bus. They asked the woman to move to the back so they could sit near the front and not be in the presence of a woman, and she refused, and asked the soldier to come to her aid. He did, and the Haredim beat them both until the police intervened. At least in Montgomery they were decent enough to arrest Rosa Parks, instead of assaulting her. You know you’re pretty despicable when you make Southern racism look good.
On November 4, 1995, Rabin attended a rally for peace in what was then known as Malchei Yisrael Square in Tel Aviv, and sang the standard “Shir LaShalom” (song for peace) with famous Israeli singer Miri Aloni. As he exited the stage, a law student and right wing extremist named Yigal Amir emerged from steps and shot him to death. They found the song lyrics in Rabin’s pocket, stained with blood.
It is assumed that Amir was counseled that his actions were not murder, but killing in the name of G-d, but no conspirators were ever convicted. Amir was sentenced to life in prison for Rabin’s murder, and a law was passed seven years ago supposedly making it impossible for an Israeli president to pardon anyone convicted of killing a prime minister for the expressed purpose of keeping Amir in jail. However, the movement to free him is gaining ground.
After his incarceration Amir married a woman named Larissa Trembovoler and after long drawn-out legal battles won the right to a 10-hour conjugal visit so that they could conceive a child, whose due-date was October 24, the official day of mourning for Rabin (it is observed on the anniversary in the Hebrew calender, which is the 12th of Heshvan, rather than the 4th of November). The baby was actually born on the 28th, but still managed to generate controversy because the bris, which must occur 8 days after the birth, was held on the anniversary of Rabin’s death according to the Roman calendar. Of course, Amir won permission to have the bris conducted in prison so he could be there.
A recent poll reveals that 20% of those who classify themselves as religious in this country support Amir’s release. His supporters launched a campaign in recent months with the goal of getting him out by his son’s birth. Their argument is that if we’re willing to release Palestinian prisoners for peace, we should be willing to release Amir for protecting the state of Israel from Rabin’s cooperating hands.
The high point of the memorial on the 4th was a speech by Rabin’s son Yuval, who spoke about how the murder was not merely terrible because he lost a father and Israel lost a leader, but because it was an affront to the rule of law. Israel is supposed to be a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, a civilized society unlike the fundamentalist terror of Afghanistan or Iran.
And this brings me to a larger issue that confronts Israel today—a problem that will still plague the State of Israel even if or when peace is achieved. I returned to Rabin Square last Sunday to attend a huge rally held by the teachers’ union that has now been on strike for months, demanding that government listen to them. 100,000 people attended, which compared to the 150,000 who came for Rabin’s memorial is pretty extraordinary. The education system in Israel is so complex that I can’t even really explain it in full. There are many different kinds of schools, often segregated by religion and nationality (Jews and Muslims don’t usually go to school together; Russians have their own schools; the Haredim have carte blanche to teach their children whatever they want, which is usually nothing at all…).
There is no single teachers’ union. The upper school teachers have their unions, and the lower school teachers have theirs. One of the reasons the teachers are striking is that another union successfully negotiated much higher benefits from the government. It’s arbitrary and unfair. Teachers here are paid less than the janitors who clean their classes. They are paid so little that many of them have to work as many as 5 extra jobs just to make end’s meat. They are given classrooms of 40 students, none of whom have been taught to respect them. I see it already at Nofim- the teacher spends at least half the class attempting to create order. Children are violent and cruel, and nobody cares.
A friend mentioned to me a few weeks ago that he thought Israel had lost its soul when it began abandoning its socialism in favor of modern capitalism, and I thought he was being a little overdramatic. But now I am beginning to agree. Free, excellent education was a staple of the socialism Israel was founded upon, and 30 years ago they had one of the best school systems in the world. Today they are at the bottom of the rankings.
The secular poor, the dark skinned, and the non-Jew have been abandoned in this great modern Democracy. I watch it at Nofim, as the teacher to whom I’ve been assigned consistently ignores the two new Ethiopian immigrant children who can recognize English when spoken but cannot read. They need help, and when I try to do it she tells me sit with someone else.
Our madricha works at one of our Tikun Olam volunteer places, an underground kindergarten called Mesila. The children of illegal immigrants have nobody to look after them while their parents desperately struggle to survive, so Mesila tries to help. I went with her once, to see it. It’s in this dilapidated building near the central bus station, in the worst part of town. Walking up the ancient industrial staircase, I thought to myself that it would not be surprising at all if I were to be grabbed and sold to a sweat-shop, or a brothel. When our program director met with the director of Taglit a few weeks ago, he brought up Mesila as an example of the differences between Bina and Taglit that hindered their partnership. He asked her why on earth we were wasting our time helping people who aren’t Jewish.
Grossman spoke of this last year:
“…these are partly the cause of Israel’s quick descent into the heartless, essentially brutal treatment of its poor and suffering. This indifference to the fate of the hungry, the elderly, the sick and the disabled, all those who are weak, this equanimity of the State of Israel in the face of human trafficking or the appalling employment conditions of our foreign workers, which border on slavery, to the deeply ingrained institutionalized racism against the Arab minority.
When this takes place here so naturally, without shock, without protest, as though it were obvious, that we would never be able to get the wheel back on track, when all of this takes place, I begin to fear that even if peace were to arrive tomorrow, and even if we ever regained some normalcy, we may have lost our chance for full recovery.”
Surely there is no defense money to spare, especially as Syria bares its teeth and Iran coyly flashes the promise of its nuclear progress. But the money spent on religious fanatics in this country could be spent on efforts to improve life for people who deserve it. The religious right has a disproportionate amount of influence over the government, and I still have not figured out how a minority of %20 exerts such willpower over a willfully secular culture, other than their control of the diamond trade (you may remember this piece in the Times about how the Chabad* Israeli Lev Leviev broke the DeBeers international diamond cartel).
Honestly, I’ve come to take an even far more negative view of Orthodox Judaism over the last few months than I previously had. The core of Jewish spirituality lies in the ethical commitment we have made to promote social justice in the world; to repair the world (tikun olam). How then, can these people contribute to that mission if the tenets of their observance require them to wholly segregate themselves from the world population? How can they be promoting justice when they abuse people who have chosen different paths from theirs?
A friend reminded me once that those who disagree with me think I’m as crazy as I perceive them to be. Sometimes it’s true that two sides of an argument have equally valid biases that influence their point of view. But this is different. I would never spit on an Orthodox man for growing peyot (side-locks), or an Orthodox woman for covering her body from tip to toe. I believe these are their individual choices to make, choices that should be available in a free and open society. Why, then, do I have to cover my knees to go to the Kotel? I’m a Jew, it’s my wall, too. Why am I prevented from access to public transportation on the Sabbath if I choose to go downtown? Why are my neighbors sitting at home while their teachers beg for enough money to live when settlers are being paid to have larger families than they can afford and do nothing to give back to society? And why does an overwhelmingly secular population allow this stupidity to continue?
Hopefully, in time, I will have some answers. For now, all I can do is call it a balagan and go back to work.
Part 3 to come in a week or two.
*nutty, messainic right wing Orthodox sect
