politics to go: jeff dunetz

Rabin wasn’t a blind peacemaker

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In his speech at a Tel Aviv ceremony on the 20th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, former President Bill Clinton praised Rabin and took some not so subtle slams at the present Israeli government. He presented Rabin as a blind peacemaker, not as the man he really was.

Clinton said that Rabin had been steadfast in pursuing peace and that his mantra when a terrorist attack was staged was, “We will fight terrorism as if there are no negotiations, and negotiate as if there is no terrorism.”

Clinton asked the crowd, “What does this all amount to? That is up to you. … The next step is deciding that Rabin was right, that you must share the future with Palestinian children, and to give peace a chance.”

Obviously the former president forgot that it takes two to tango and that the Palestinians have shown little desire to make peace. The other thing he’s forgotten was this: When he was assassinated two decades ago, Yitzhak Rabin had been thinking of tossing out the Oslo deal.

Since his death, the myth of Rabin’s peacemaking expanded. While it is true that he was the prime minister who began the “Oslo Process,” it is also true that Rabin’s final vision for the Oslo process was to the right of supposedly “hawkish” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Rabin did not support the creation of a Palestinian State, while Netanyahu does. Both Netanyahu and Rabin held that Jerusalem is the indivisible capital of the Jewish State. Rabin was not the “sacrifice everything for the sake of peace” type as he’s often painted; in fact, Yitzhak Rabin was the last prime minister of Israel who did not support the creation of a Palestinian State.

Nine days before he was assassinated, Rabin delivered a speech to the Knesset that laid out his vision for the future of Israel and the disputed territories, including:

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