The Last Kiss: A Memoir of Lia Labine

Author: Yitzhak Rabin
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2000-01-01
Features: Excerpt: Around 10 p.m. on a June night in 1933, a couple was walking on the beach in Tel Aviv. I was still a young girl, having just arrived in Palestine. Two men approached the couple. One of them raised a torch. The other aimed a gun and shot the man, leaving the woman terrified by the scene. The attackers fled in a panic. The man was rushed to the hospital but died from excessive bleeding. Hayim Arlozorov was a 34-year-old labor movement leader, hated by right-wing Revisionists. They accused him of associating with Nazis. This young politician, who was also responsible for the political work of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, had recently traveled to Germany to mobilize Jews to leave the country with their assets. Although the killers were never identified, three extreme nationalist Revisionists were charged. Two were acquitted, and another, Abraham Stavsky, was convicted but later his conviction was overturned.① Yitzhak and I had discussed Arlozorov many times. He believed Arlozorov was a rising star who would likely play a significant role in the struggle for independence. He was completely convinced that Stavsky was the killer. This was a reasonable assumption; we had ample reason to believe it. Although the case remained unsolved, we had sufficient reason to believe it was true. Whoever killed Arlozorov, the Revisionists had created an atmosphere that led to his death. They spread malicious rumors and wrote numerous articles calling him a Nazi sympathizer. The image of Arlozorov that came clearly to my mind that night was perhaps him. My friends told me I was sitting in my usual chair. I knew people around me were carefully considering how to arrange the funeral. It was impossible to think clearly about what to do. Such a thing had never happened before—a murder of an Israeli prime minister. Yitzhak was in the hospital. The coffin would be taken to Jerusalem the next morning. Yitzhak’s trusted military aide, Danny Ayalon, said the funeral would be postponed① until next Monday, to be held after President Clinton and other world leaders arrived. People were talking, and I said, “Okay.” Buried in Herzl Hill, I said, “Okay.” But why did this happen? We left the coffin parked in front of the Knesset to await the state funeral. “Okay.” But I still couldn’t understand. It seemed impossible to sleep, but around 4 p.m., the doctor gave me something that tasted like weak alcohol. Finally, I felt exhausted. Dalia, Noa, and I collapsed on the same bed—one night, it felt like I wasn’t sleeping but rather in a state of numb consciousness. The first thing I said when I woke up was, “Something incredibly terrible happened last night, right?” At first, I thought it might have been Dalia, because she had recently been seriously ill. Then I remembered: Yitzhak.
Afterword: Afterword: We came to you, Yitzhak, to report for duty. We came to you, like a big family, one after another. You are our commander, destined for great achievements. You were not just our commander but also a comrade, an older brother. In the stables, in the stuffy small rooms, in the damp tents—these camps—we marched through the desert, with only one canteen. “Little immigrant ship, captain, see you on the water.” On the nights when Dan in the explosion① lit up the sky, on the days when we ate bread with jam, in shorts and sandals, the oaths of our brothers remain in our memories. Unwritten, unsaid, wonderful—true oaths connect us, you, my living comrade, to your grave. Because you were our loyal brother, the true brother, never pretending. We sing, “Where, oh where, is someone like that?” At a memorial ceremony on Herzl Hill, Ha?m Hefetz, a comrade who had fought alongside Yitzhak since the Palmach days, spoke these words. In the past few months, the painful question raised in the song of our youth has become even more apparent. What made Yitzhak so special—so widely revered, so trusted, so mourned, so deeply missed? I can begin to realize how lucky I was to meet him when I was just 16, and since then, I have known how unique he was. I spent my life with a great man—sharing his joys and sorrows, his ups and downs, his good and bad. It would have been such an honor to fight alongside him at every turning point in our nation’s brief history. Our people are persevering with a great sense of mission. We will overcome the challenges. We will keep fighting, not giving up, not relaxing. We will survive. After the War of Independence, Yitzhak declared in an interview, “I will devote all my energy, all my life, so that we will never again find ourselves in such a vulnerable position defending Israel.” From then on, he took upon himself the responsibility of building the Israel Defense Forces into the world’s most powerful and well-equipped army. He tirelessly devoted himself to the survival of our nation. Every day, after a busy workday, he would ask himself, “Have I done enough? Is there anything left undone?” On his commemorative medal, it was engraved, “I have dedicated my entire life to security and peace.” Truly! But for him, strong defense was the first step toward peace. A few days after his assassination, Henry Kissinger wrote in The Washington Post, “As a gentle man, Rabin became tough in the face of obvious hardship; as a soldier, he gradually learned the rules of peace.” His funeral was a testament to how he raised the issue of security to a moral level. What made Rabin unique among world leaders? Recently, when someone asked Yasser Arafat for his opinion, Arafat said, “Yitzhak’s courage in seeking political solutions before his people, the world, the Palestinians, and the Arabs was extraordinary—rooted in the multiple forms of courage he demonstrated in war.” “Rabin’s peace is the peace of the brave. He was honest with himself and with his people. He was not a captive of the power of force. For these reasons, Rabin became a great leader in history.” Yitzhak believed that if he was not a happy man, he was at least a lucky one. He rarely allowed himself to indulge in the luxury of happiness. Something always intervened, preventing him from letting go of that feeling. After the Six-Day War, there was no peace. In peacetime, there was no peace. After his second term as prime minister, when his pursuit of peace had succeeded, there was no peace. He was content with the fleeting glory and remained practical. Because there was always work to do, always unfinished tasks on his schedule, waiting for tomorrow. He could not help but be grateful to history for giving him more than one opportunity: the chance to reunite Jerusalem, which had been divided since 1948, in 1967. The chance to ensure the security of the state he had painstakingly built. His second term as prime minister gave him the opportunity to shift the focus of the nation’s work. In three and a half years, he fulfilled his promise—to double the education budget, quadruple foreign investment, implement healthcare reforms, halve unemployment, absorb hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants, manage a new Israeli transportation network, upgrade the power grid, modernize the telecommunications system, and establish “Greenhouses of Industry,” which would place Israel’s industry at the forefront in the future. But history’s greatest gift to him was to lead his nation into an era of peace. It proved that he was not just a warrior but also a fighter for peace. And yet, there is more. The unfinished work he left behind now calls for his wisdom and insight. Jerusalem, Syria, the still fragile and unstable peace, not to mention the divisions within our own country, the arrogant violent forces that took his life—all these, along with other things, require his clear mind, his firm hand, and his pure heart. Now, I cannot help but admit that it was these cherished qualities, in a way, that led to his death, just as flaws in ancient heroes did. Yitzhak was too capable, too strong, too willing to fight alone. Whether he deeply realized this or not, it has been presented to us, his family, his supporters and detractors in the government and among the people. We believed his assurances and thought it was safe to send him there alone. We feel guilty about that. At the memorial service one year after Yitzhak’s death, according to the Jewish calendar, our grandson Yonatan spoke at the grave. “A year has passed,” he said. “Everyone has asked for forgiveness. Great men and ordinary people, sentimental and indifferent, secular and religious—they all came to ask for forgiveness.” Only we are left. Not until today did we come to ask for your forgiveness. So we are here, by your side, asking for your forgiveness. Grandpa, forgive us, forgive us for trusting you, for falling into your web, for being captivated by your charm, for closing our eyes to our pride. For failing to protect you. Understand, we are different, we were wrong. Grandpa, forgive them for taking you away from us.” In the past year, terrible and ironic things have happened—they are painful yet hopeful. They concern our children and the children of Israel. That is what Yonatan revealed when he said, “We are different, we were wrong.” Because our children were different when their fathers and grandfathers were alive. Our children have grown up to be people who dislike discussing personal matters—honest, responsible, uninterested in fame, reluctant to reveal everything. They would rather let their fathers be the center of attention, though he was somewhat shy, but with a sense of responsibility and a soldier’s duty to fulfill his obligations in political life. But now that he is gone, our children must step up, respond to the cause of peace, give interviews, deliver speeches both domestically and internationally, quote their father’s words, and carry on his legacy. How tragic, how heartbreaking—Yitzhak cannot see his children now. How proud he would have been. After Yitzhak’s death, every Friday afternoon, a group of people gathered at the scene of the shooting, lit candles, and laid flowers. At first, it was only a small group, about fifty people, paying their respects to Yitzhak before the Sabbath. But within a few months, the number had grown to hundreds. Whenever possible, I feel a sense of responsibility to be with them. These gatherings were not just for mourning but also for reflection, meditation, and ultimately, action. These gatherings indeed sparked a movement. My son Yoval is a member of a youth organization that has been expanding its reach, called “Generation of Peace.” It seeks to build bridges of understanding and tolerance to reduce polarization in our country, involving all aspects of our society, including religious and secular groups. A similar call was heard soon after Yitzhak’s assassination, in an impassioned article by Joseph Larrick in a conservative Chicago newspaper, The News. “A well-educated, knowledgeable, religious Jew killed the Israeli prime minister,” Larrick wrote. “Only when we recognize that we must learn to disagree, that we must revive the spirit of Hillel and Shamai①, that we must debate but not hate each other, and that we must realize that even when your people do not hold power, democracy must be respected, can this stain begin to be erased.” Let us never forget that we are a nation. In 1995, at a speech at the Holocaust Museum, Yitzhak reflected on the adversities our nation has faced in history and why the pursuit of peace and harmony has always held a permanent and dominant place in Jewish tradition. Those words remain worth remembering today. “May the one who creates peace in heaven also create peace for us, for all of Israel.”① Almost since the dawn of our nation’s birth, our prayers have alternated between the Kaddish and “May the one who creates peace in heaven also create peace for us.” The Kaddish is a prayer that honors the Almighty God, expressing the deepest faith of the Jewish soul. Our joy is always tinged with sorrow. Wedding canopies and the shattering of glass under them go hand in hand. Moving into a new home is always accompanied by visible plaster to the destruction of the Temple. The Passover Seder includes bitter herbs. In Israel, the tears of the Day of Remembrance fall on the dancers celebrating Independence Day②. Jews know that their history is filled with difficult years, times of spiritual weakness, moments of helplessness, and near despair. We understand the grief of losing loved ones and the Holocaust—we have overcome these pains. We do this with the strength of faith. People live by faith. People die by faith. We carry the dreams of generations. We should not abandon them now. Today, we share in the joy of victory with the entire free world—but we are not happy. The blow to the Jewish people is too heavy, too unbearable. The spark in our eyes has dimmed—but nothing can extinguish the spark of life and faith. It is faith that guides us toward the future—toward days of memory and mercy, toward days of peace. Let us, Jews, turn this present into days of memory and mercy. Let us begin to practice patience and understanding, to pray that it guides our nation to heal its wounds. In the Israeli cemetery, there are 18,000 graves, holding the remains of young Israelis who have since the founding of the state voluntarily given their lives to defend it at the highest cost. The “Candlelight Generation,” named after the tragedy, quickly understood the pain of losing loved ones. They received Holocaust education in school, hoping to overcome it with victory. They are willing to call for peace and demand the right to build a secure future. We must listen to their voices and support them. We must cherish and protect this generation, just as Yitzhak did. Because they carry the dreams of generations. God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac as a burnt offering: “Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac①.” God tested Abraham. But God showed mercy, allowing Abraham to substitute a ram, and Isaac was saved. This time, there is no ram. Hate has torn my heart, the heart of this nation, apart. Are we willing to offer this burnt offering in vain? We cannot undo what we did for Yitzhak, but we must never betray his lifelong commitment to the people. “He walked a lonely path,” Henry Kissinger said in an interview with CNN. “But if what he did was meaningful, then he could not have done it alone.” Where, oh where, is someone like that? Perhaps this is a great challenge. Our greatest responsibility is to find them, nurture them, support them—those men and women who tirelessly fight for his cause, for his noble legacy. We ourselves must have the courage to pursue the peace of the brave.