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COMMENTARY Jeffrey Gillespie: Remembering Yitzak Rabin Comment DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Oct. 23, 2015 at 12:01 AM Posted Oct. 23, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Social News Next month will mark the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel during the Clinton administration and a key player in the signing of the Oslo Accords, a historic series of agreements that many believe were the last great hope in the Israel-Palestine peace process. Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize for the effort, along with his political rival Shimon Perez and then-PLO leader Yassar Arafat. Arafat died in 2004. Perez has retired from politics and lives in Israel. Rabin was the only one of the three martyred by an assassins bullet. He was gunned down after a rally in support of the accords at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv on Nov. 4, 1995, by a radical Israeli gunman named Yigal Amir. Amir was a right-wing radical Jewish nationalist. His complaint was that a withdrawal from the West Bank would be against the biblical prophesy that gave Jews the right to settle there. Amir had also claimed to possess a "rodef" — an effective "license to kill" under traditional Jewish law, which states that if any person sees someone pursuing another in order to kill them, that person has the right to intervene and kill the pursuer. Amir had seen Rabin’s sacrifice of territory as an implied decision to “kill” the Israeli people by means of territorial concession, and this is how he justified his act of vengeance. Interestingly, Rabin’s supposedly Chamberlain-esque posture during the negotiations added fuel and fervor to the platform of the Likud Party, the far-right party to which current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu owes allegiance. This past week, under mounting acts of violence between Israelis and Palestinians (stabbings in the streets of Tel-Aviv by Palestinians, a crackdown by the Israeli military and the usual cycle of escalation that is all too familiar in the region), Netanyahu has continued with his bellicose management style and ultra-conservative agenda; the latest moral outrage is an alleged statement by the Israeli leader that the Holocaust was somehow orchestrated by a Palestinian mufti who apparently gave Hitler the idea for the Final Solution. Statements like this should give people some idea of how unhinged Netanyahu has become under the current conditions facing his country. But there has long been a school of thought among conservative and Orthodox Jews that the Israel/Palestine conflict has its roots in Arab antisemitism. The idea here is that there is not mutual responsibility for acts of violence from both sides, but rather that the Israeli Jews are a put-upon group of innocent settlers being bombarded from all sides by radical Islamic influences. While aspects of this idea may carry weight, there is no doubt that the violence we are seeing now is as a result of a galvanized radicalism on both sides of the conflict; Netanyahu and his right-wing support structure on one side, Hamas and other aspects of radicalized Islamic thought on the other. The point here is that radicalism breeds irrationality and violence; many were astounded when the bullet that felled Rabin was discovered to have exited the gun of a fellow Jew, as opposed to some presumptive radical Arab. That same irony is on display when the leader of Israel is voicing opinions that contribute to the re-writing of Holocaust history; in fact, Netanyahu could be seen, in some aspects, as a kind of Holocaust denier when his posture becomes this radical. The Holy Land has long been a place where unholy acts are justified under the auspices of faith or destiny, as "authorized" by God. Logical progressions toward lasting peace are stymied in a congealed swamp of preconceptions about the character and nature of the opposing sides. Until some trust can be established, and some semblance of a new reality can be built on that trust, a two-state solution will never be found, and good men like Yitzak Rabin will continue to die for a cause that has no final solution — outside of one that is drenched in the blood of innocents. Jeffrey Gillespie's writing has appeared in the Santa Fean and Art Collector magazines, the Portland Mercury and Willamette Week. He lives in Ashland. DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Oct. 23, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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