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Hirsh Goodman: Amir's Curse

A shadow fell on Israel on November 4, 1995, the day Yigal Amir shot and killed prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. It is a shadow from which the country has not emerged. Everything changed that day, which will go down in history as the start of a dark age for this country, a period that will last until new leadership emerges that can deliver us from the morass in which we now find ourselves.

How long that will take, in the increasingly corrupt political arena where only flotsam seems to make it to the top, is hard to tell. But there is, unfortunately, no shining light on the horizon at present -- in any party.

If Israel were to take a long look at itself in the mirror on this eighth anniversary of the assassination, I am not sure it would like what it would see. Settlers and the right drive around with stickers calling for the "Criminals of Oslo" to be brought to justice, rather than condemning the killer of the man who signed the Oslo Accords and was murdered because he was becoming too successful at implementing them. Instead of contrition over having created the hateful atmosphere that allowed Amir to believe he was doing the right thing, the settlers and their supporters continue to call those who advocate conciliation with the Palestinians "traitors," without fear of retribution or prosecution.

When Amir killed Rabin, he set into motion a series of events that began with the decision to kill Hamas bomb expert Yihya al-Ayyash, which, in turn, led to a series of bus bombs in February-March 1996 that shattered Israelis� faith in Oslo, paved the way for Benjamin Netanyahu�s election victory that May, and began the dynamic that has led us to where we are now. Since Rabin�s death, the most consistent factor in Israeli politics has been failed leadership, culminating in the disastrous reign of the Sharon dynasty, notable for its ever-expanding assets and the ever-more effective wall of silence surrounding them. If Ariel Sharon looks like a balloon, it is because he is full of hot air, unable to deliver on a single promise. Not one. From being a consensus figure he has become a pathetic one, manipulated by those around him, allowing Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz to run wild, while pursuing no diplomatic initiative to change the course of mutual destruction we and the Palestinians are following. What a total lack of leadership to have a policy based on Yasser Arafat's life expectancy, to have no initiative, no ideas and no gumption, but to survive by allowing Efi Eitam, the housing minister, to add another 333 homes to the already empty houses on West Bank settlements and Tommy Lapid, of the radically secular Shinui, to become responsible for the rabbinic courts.

Chances are that, had Rabin been allowed to live, he would have seen the Oslo process through to a point where it became irreversible. It is difficult to say whether that viper Arafat would have turned on him, as he turned on Ehud Barak when he realized that a two-state solution was about to be imple-mented. But one can assume that Rabin would have been able to deal with the problem differently. For Arafat to start a war against Barak, a new, insecure and inept prime minister who was fast losing his power base back home, was one thing. To start one with Rabin, a co-signatory with him of the Oslo Accords, would have been another.

It is doubtful Rabin would ever have made Arafat the offer Barak did -- and it is just as doubtful that he would have demanded that the sides reach an end-of-conflict agreement or nothing at all. Rabin liked Oslo because it gave the sides time to nurture the relationship, a framework for moving forward where timetables were not holy. He did not have high expectations and therefore there would have been no great disappointments. And while the process may have temporarily broken down here and there, and while there may even have been isolated acts of terror and violence, it is doubtful if full-scale war would have broken out -- and, if it did, that it would have been handled as haplessly as it has been.

Getting Israel extricated from the territories is the biggest challenge facing an Israeli politician. The delusion that Israel can remain a democracy and an occupier is long over. Democracy is eroding fast, as is the country's humanity. To destroy three high-rise buildings in response to an attack on the army at Netzarim is heartless, cruel, counterproductive and indicative of frustration and panic, not leadership.

That night in November, when an assassin�s bullets fired from behind released the blood which drenched the words of the peace song Rabin had folded away in his breast pocket, Israel lost its soul. In the manic weeks prior to the killing, the country had already lost its sanity. And now it has lost its direction.

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin left Israel rudderless at a critical point of its voyage. Today, in consequence, the shore of the Promised Land has never seemed farther away. For that, may Amir be forever cursed.