Holland's reflections on Rabin: irony of assassination immense
By Brian Holland

Editor's note: Brian Holland, Buffalo Center, Iowa, senior, participated in the Great Lakes Colleges Association Jerusalem Program during the fall 1995 semester. He is currently writing an honors thesis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yitzhak Rabin, the first Israeli-born Prime Minister of Israel, demonstrated the innate human ability to change.

Often labeled "The Pragmatist" by the media, he was committed to whatever he believed would work. Although his means changed drastically over his nearly 50 years of service to the state of Israel, his method remained one of pragmatism.

Rabin began service in the Palmach, a pre-state guerrilla army that terrorized British forces in order to force them out of Palestine and make way for a Jewish State. In 1948 and 1967 he fought for Israel against invading Arab armies. The 1967 Six-Day War led to Israel's current borders and Jerusalem's capture and reunification.

In his political capacity, Rabin held ministerial posts as well as a 4-year stint as ambassador to the U.S. He became Prime Minister in 1974.

In 1977, he resigned out of embarrassment of a suspicious financial transaction, but this setback didn't keep him from and serving as defense minister from 1984-90 in a coalition government.

Rabin's pragmatism often entailed illegalities ranging from terrorism in the Palmach to severe international human rights violations during the Six-Day War. That war witnessed the creation of 1 million Palestinian refugees - many of whom today still live in abhorrent refugee camps.

Rabin ardently supported Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories captured in the Six-Day War. Palestinians continue to suffer from the often-militant settlers and the Israeli Army responsible for defending them.

Rabin was also the architect of "Break Their Bones," a response to the Palestinian intifada. It had Israeli Defense Forces break an additional bone each time a Palestinian was suspected of insurrection.

In the 1992 elections, Rabin's Labor party, running on a peace platform, won 12 more Knesset seats than its nearest competitor - signaling that Israelis were ready to proceed with the peace process. Rabin, it appeared, knew this was to be his final opportunity to secure the future of Israel. This time it was done through peace.

Pragmatism now told Rabin that peace might achieve what 50 years of fighting had not: Arab acceptance of the State of Israel and subsequent non-belligerency with Israel's neighbors.

Rabin achieved an unprecedented level of progress. The Oslo Accords, the Declaration of Principles, moving control to the Palestinian Authority, and regular dialogue with Egypt, Jordan, and, to a lesser extent, Syria, are remarkable achievements. Rabin continued to advocate irreversible peace, up to the minute he was assassinated.

The ironies surrounding his assassination are immense: that he would die from an Israeli after fighting Arabs most of his life, that he would die immediately after noting the immense public support for the peace process, and finally, that he would perish from a demagogy he so abhorred.

This, I believe, is one fundamental lesson to be remembered from Rabin's life and death: the importance of recognizing ideological extremes as just that - interesting theories to study, but never to be applied in practical life. They only breed hatred and intolerance.

Although Rabin's pragmatism may not adequately address all of our society's ills, I believe it can take us much further than dogmatic ideology.