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In New Orleans, 25 years ago, when he was the new Ambassador to the United States and I was with the San Francisco Chronicle, I spent an early morning hour with him, one-on-one.
I remember him as dour, but courteous; not given to humor (as every other Israeli I have ever known), but seriously thoughtful.
I was enormously impressed with this extraordinary soldier whose photograph I had seen, with Moshe Dayan and the Israeli paratroopers, just after they liberated the Western Wall, only days before I arrived on assignment from San Francisco.
That scene is etched forever in my memory and in the history of the State of Israel, which these two soldiers did so much to help establish and defend.
This picture will always be his memorial and most signal honor.
We talked of many things, there in that deserted ballroom of a New Orleans hotel, where he had come to make an award to a convention president whose support for Israel had been significant. I mentioned Britain's Gen. Orde
Wingate, master of guerilla warfare who instructed the Jewish Night Squads in the art of successful combat against the Arab pogromist infiltrators of Jewish settlements; this singularly devout Christian and devotee of Holy Scripture, who took Abyssinia back from Mussolini, accompanied by his Jewish chief of staff, who I once interviewed in Haifa. Rabin's face lit up at the name of Wingate: "He was my great teacher."
General and Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin was similarly enthusiastic when I mentioned a friend of my father at West Point, killed in action fighting for Israel on the road to Jerusalem: Col. David (Mickey) Marcus. I mentioned that I had visited Mickey's monument, but I could not read the Hebrew on the memorial. He said that he would look into that, and when I returned to Israel four years later, I saw that the memorial was in English as well as Hebrew.
I also recall mentioning the use of napalm in Israel's retaliatory raids. I noted that whenever that happened, every TV correspondent in Amman and Beirut was invited to hospitals, where every available burn victim was exhibited--and televised--as a victim of Israel--whether or not that was true. He said that he would look into this as well, although he noted that
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napalm is without peer in knocking out artillery and missile batteries.
In my joining with so much of the civilized world in mourning this leader with whose prime ministerial policies I so strongly disagreed, I pray for his soul. Just as I pray for this Holiest Land on earth--which has become one of earth's bloodiest.
I wonder if the 27 year-old suspect, a law student from Herzliya, is at all aware of the terrible consequence of this assassination with which he is charged.
Is he, there in the closest possible custody, aware that those Jew-hating creatures in Beirut began their obscene celebrations--even as Prime Minister Rabin's strongest political critics and opponents in the Knesset were joining the world's decent people in
mourning?
Is this assassin aware that his gunning down a Prime Minister may well lead to the continuance of the policies which he and other Israelis--especially the 160,000 residents of Judea and Samaria--so desperately oppose?
Has he heard news reports that there were even some young Israeli overreactors who told reporters that opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party is a murderer? This brother of the commanding officer who died leading the raid on Entebbe --under Rabin's watch--would not dignify that extremism with a response. Instead, he called upon the nation to unite, and noted:
"Even in the United States there are loonies. But it would be inappropriate to try to stigmatize parties and debate in Israel. We debate; we shout, but we don't shoot. It's an elected government. Bring it down in the polls."
Perhaps this law student suspect reached his conclusion as a result of so many, many unavenged murders of Israelis (and two Americans) since the first handshake with Arafat at the White House.
Once more, as we have heard incessantly, "The peace movement will not be stopped!" Acting Prime Minister Shimon Peres ought to think very, very carefully about this. He must surely remember another horribly harrowing part of the history of modern Israel
(Continued on p.8)
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