Ruth King

The Bitter Legacy

of Yitzhak Rabin

This week marks the second anniversary of the death of Yitzhak Rabin. His life and his tenure as Prime Minister are still hallowed by the manner of his death, and he reaps affection and idolatry even from those Labor party opponents who used to describe him as taciturn, rude, alcoholic and a poor leader. History undoubtedly will "out" the real Rabin--the man who seduced Israel and world Jewry with the chimera of "peace,"and set them on a disastrous course.

Rabin's first term as Prime Minister ended in disgrace due to his wife's venality. Leah Rabin was widely denounced for her vanity and greed by the grandees of the Labor party. However, after Rabin's death, she won their loyalty when she blamed his death on Likud "rhetoric." In fact, Rabin should have been grateful to the Likud. It was the Likud, under Shamir's direction which brought Rabin back from the political wilderness by appointing him Defense Minister. As Defense Minister, Rabin offended the world's human rights groupies by threatening to "crush the bones" of participants in the Arab riots known as the "intifada." Although this threat enhanced his reputation for toughness, history disclosed that it was Rabin's spirit which was crushed by the riots.

When Rabin campaigned for leadership of the Labor party, he was considered the diametrical opposite of Shimon Peres. Even those who admired Peres, indulged, rather than believed, his utopian musings. His speeches and writing were viewed as hot air, rather than strategy. Rabin, on the other hand was seen as tough and realistic- a general with no frivolous notions about Israel's enemies. It came as a thunderbolt to many, when Peres' "hot-air" theories became national policy under Rabin, culminating with the grand and suicidal hoax known as the "peace process."

Rabin brooked no criticism or opposition. He taunted and insulted those who were skeptical of his policies.He told them to "spin like propellers in the wind" and to "go back where you came from." He insulted victims of terror by calling them casualties for "peace." And, he divided the nation along religious lines--not between the secular and the observant, but between Zionists and the fanatic worshippers of "peace" at any price.

Rabin succeeded in hypnotizing many Israelis, who remain mesmerized by what can only be described as a hallucination of peace. In spite of every evidence to the contrary- unabated terrorism, unrelenting provocation and insult, escalating warlike rhetoric--they remain convinced that "peace" is just around the corner, if only Bibi would get out of the way. In fact, his ghost even hypnotizes Bibi Netanyahu and his advisors and spokesmen, who seem unable to break the spell of Oslo, and

continue along its ruinous path.

Only gifted leaders such as Ataturk, Churchill, Roosevelt and Reagan, through will and conviction, can alter a nation's path. Even if such a leader emerged in Israel, it is doubtful that the population would abandon its infantile delusions. This blindness to impending tragedy is the real and bitter legacy of Rabin. The sorrow and the pity lie in the fact that when Israel and world Jewry finally wake up from their trance, it will simply be too late.

Lessons of

the Iraq Crisis

David Bar-Illan, who is Prime Minister Netanyahu's spokesman, once mused, not long after the Oslo Accords, that one positive byproduct of Oslo, was greater international approval of Israel. How quickly Israel's stature plummeted is simply breathtaking. Thus it is scarcely surprising that when the Iraqi dictator recently rattled sabers, and the so-called "Arab, anti-Saddam coalition" crumbled, in a perverse upending of facts and history, Israel became the culprit. On November 21, in the New York Times, Anthony Lewis, appropriately appearing on the left column of the page, gives a brief, predictable, and fairly accurate account of the crisis and its perils, and ends by wagging his finger at the usual suspect. In summing up he drones, "President Clinton and Secretary Albright well know the price the United States pays for Prime Minister Netanyahu's sabotaging of the Oslo peace accords."

This reflex scolding of Israel does not occur only in the media swamp where Lewis and Thomas Friedman feed at the bottom. On talk shows, press conferences, in newspapers, and in the halls of the State Department, it has become rote to blame Israel's reluctance to proceed with the "peace process" for America's failure to obtain Arab cooperation in a show down with Iraq. On the same date and page of the New York Times, A.M. Rosenthal, appearing equally appropriately on the right column, accuses both the press and the State Department for "spreading the line that Israel's insistence on security and reciprocity as conditions for peace with the Palestinians so upset Arab states that the anti-Saddam coalition broke up."

Now, one may ask, what lessons, if any, have the fans of the "peace process" learned from Israel's fall from international grace? And, what lessons, if any, have been learned by observing Washington's response and retreat from principles and self-interest? After all, those who urge Israel to "take chances for peace", do so by implying that America will not permit Israel to be attacked and possibly destroyed? Furthermore, what lessons are learned by the pseudo-statesmen among America's Jewish "leaders", now that a thug like Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov is a major player in the Middle

(Continued on p.10)