150,000 mourn Rabin 30 years after murder
A massive crowd filled the centre of Tel Aviv to mark the 30th anniversary of Rabin's assassination.
(TIMES OF ISRAEL) It began with footage of Yitzhak Rabin heralding “a chance for peace” and ended with a crowd of tens of thousands singing
A Song for Peace, the song the prime minister sang shortly before he was gunned down in 1995.
During those moments and in between, a massive crowd filled the centre of Tel Aviv to mark the 30th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination by a right-wing extremist.
At the memorial rally, where attendees held signs calling for peace and reading “Rabin was right,” a roster of politicians ascended the stage to warn that the forces behind the left-wing leader’s murder were still present in Israeli society today – and were even gaining force.
“A man was murdered; it’s our job to make sure the idea is still alive,” said Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, head of the centre-left Yesh Atid party, who warned that far-right forces were “distorting what the very idea of Judaism is. They are again turning Judaism into violence, murderousness, internal hatred, a thing that tears us apart”.
Lapid decried those “who distort Judaism and turn it into politics of hate and violence,” adding that “these people are sitting today also in the government”.
Rallies marking the anniversary of the November 4, 1995 assassination were once an annual event at the Tel Aviv square where Rabin was murdered and which now bears his name.
Organisers estimated that more than 80,000 people were in attendance when the rally began, stretching far beyond the confines of the plaza, with later estimates putting the number at 150,000 as more people arrived. Speakers used the stage to call for a range of goals, from peace to national unity to an ongoing fight for the return of the deceased hostages in Gaza to a state inquiry into the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack.
“If Yitzhak Rabin were prime minister today, no one would have been left behind,” said Gadi Mozes, who was held hostage in Gaza for more than a year, in an emotional address. “He would not have given up on us, the hostages, for two years … He would not have slept until everyone was brought home.”
Rabin, an iconic military leader who was part of Israel’s founding generation, served as prime minister from 1974 to 1977 and from 1992 to his assassination in 1995. A leader of the Labor Party, he signed the Oslo Accords with PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 1993, launching an Israeli-Palestinian peace process that later collapsed.
He was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a Jewish extremist who is serving a life sentence in prison.
On Friday, Rabin’s son Yuval – who has spoken only sparingly over the past decade – said in an interview that the country’s divisions today echo the incitement that led to his father’s murder.
Three decades after his father’s assassination, he said he felt compelled to break his silence amid Israel’s deepening divisions. He reserved some of his sharpest criticism for the political leaders he believes have fuelled those divisions and normalised incitement.
Speaking about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yuval Rabin said, “The man is disconnected, doesn’t listen, doesn’t pay attention. He only thinks about what advantage he can get from the situation.”
He also said Netanyahu was a “Hamas collaborator. That was the strategy”.
“How many times did you promise to eradicate Hamas? Why didn’t you eradicate Hamas?,” he said, apparently addressing the PM.
Recalling the moment his mother, Leah Rabin, hesitated before shaking Netanyahu’s hand at her husband’s memorial service, he said that he would not do the same today.
“It’s no longer personal,” Yuval explained. “I feel I would be betraying hundreds of thousands or millions who fought this struggle.”
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