The In-Between Time from the Rabin Assassination to the 1996 Elections—On Emotions and Their Impact on the Public Sphere

STUPEFACTION

On 4 November 1995, some two hours after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot at the end of a mass rally in support of his political program, his bureau chief Eitan Haber stood outside Ichilov Hospital in Tel-Aviv and read a brief statement. "The government of Israel announces, with stupefaction, great sorrow, and profound grief, the death of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered by an assailant tonight in Tel-Aviv. May his memory be blessed." The television cameras showed large numbers of citizens and representatives of the press crowding around Haber. The announcement was met with cries of disbelief. "No, no!" shouted those who could not accept the news. Some screamed wordlessly. One person standing next to Haber placed his hand on his cheek and then on his mouth, a graphic gesture of stupefaction. Another man covered his mouth with his hand. Another placed his hand over his eyes and wept.

Not far away, in the public square where the rally had taken place, a television camera showed two women, one covering her face with her hands and the second placing her hands in comfort on the shoulders of the first. Two men in shirts emblazoned with the name of the Meretz party swayed with what was clearly physical discomfort, and an older man embraced a younger one. A man in a print shirt placed his hands on his temples and turned this way and that.¹ The emotional turmoil felt by those who had participated in the rally, and by those who stood vigil at the hospital after the shooting, was clear to see. They expressed stupefaction, sorrow, and grief. Their bodies could barely contain their emotions and they moved without direction or purpose, bodies moving because they could not contain their emotions.²

I sketch a portrait of the period between Rabin's assassination and Israel's 1996 elections using the emotions of contemporary Israelis as my pencil.³ I discuss the political space between the Zionist right and left. Although the Israeli public's reaction to the murder has been analyzed widely in the academic research literature, as have been the circumstances that led to the Likud's return to power, the history of the display of emotions in the Israeli public space has not yet been written.⁴ I demonstrate the salient presence of a range of emotions in the public space and public discourse to propose some preliminary explanations for this phenomenon, and consider its implications for the public space and democratic process.

Haber's statement specified three distinct emotions that the members of Israel's Cabinet sought to share with the Israeli public: stupefaction, sorrow, and grief. As a sovereign, democratic society (one with fundamental values based on standards of respectability and the rule of law), revenge was not an option.⁵ At that fateful moment, Haber and the government he represented seem to have felt that the law was on their side; while the assassination meant that the government had for a moment lost control of events, the message Haber conveyed was that the leadership was in command of the situation. This was demonstrated, in part, by Haber's control of his own emotions.⁶ Furthermore, his final words, "may his memory be blessed", transformed the assassination from an ongoing process into an event in the past. The murder had its origin in legitimate political opposition to Rabin's policies that turned into unrestrained incitement and then ended in murder. Haber's initial words pointed the way for Israeli society. It is as if he were saying: the dead man lies before us, the violence his over—let us turn to mourning and memory. Haber thus turned public attention from the rising tide of hostility, intimidation, and open and clandestine violence that had preceded the assassination to a different discourse, one of memory.

ANGER, BLAME, HATRED, AND CONTEMPT

Emma Hutchison and Roland Bleiker, who studied American reactions to the 9/11 terror attacks of 2001, claim that a...