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5 Escorting the Mnemonic Narrative
- State University of New York Press
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95 Escorting the Mnemonic Narrative 5 Escorting the Mnemonic Narrative Introduction Disillusioned and in a somewhat bitter voice, Rabin’s daughter, Dalia (the current chair of the Rabin Center) responded to my question as to how she would like people to remember her father, the late prime minister, and the assassination: “I would not like people to forget Rabin’s background or to associate him only within the Oslo Accords, but to make sure people remember all aspects of his life, his military record as well as his social welfare concerns. To this one must add a very difficult period of incitement, a combination of political elements and radical, fundamentalist, religious elements that led eventually to the assassination” (interview, October 11, 2004). The desired narrative of Rabin’s agents of memory is thus a combination of Rabin’s positive image and an understanding that the responsibility for the assassination goes beyond the assassin and well into a wider social, political and religious context. While the narrative provided by the agents of memory is of the utmost importance, it is not the only narrative that escorts commemoration . The memory of Rabin and the assassination enter the public agenda by unexpected collectives who create, challenge, maintain and perhaps even transform the memory. This chapter is thus dedicated to the mnemonic discourse of “other” publics, namely, Israeli Arabs, immigrants from the former Soviet Union, ultra-orthodox Jews and the Nationalist Religious settlers in the occupied territories. But why look at those who oppose the commemoration, who detest the victim, hold a contradictory narrative or may be called agents of forgetting ? First, because these groups of “others” also have a narrative of the event to tell, and although these matters are difficult to estimate, the “other voice” may include major sectors and perhaps even the majority of the commemorating society. Second, the examination of the other voice, which mocks, distorts or disregards the event, may help us understand the boundaries of the narrative provided by the agents of memory and thus to 95 96 Yitzak Rabin’s Assassination and Dilemmas of Commemoration learn something about the limits of commemoration. In other words, a study of commemoration should expand its horizons and boundaries by exploring and including counternarratives, nonnarratives or narratives that are more about forgetting than about remembrance. This chapter is thus not about Israeli Arabs, ultra-orthodox Jews, right-wingers or Russian immigrants. Rather, it is about the voice of the other—which, much as in the case of identity—defines the mnemonic narrative, sets its boundaries, triggers controversies, and perhaps even forces its redefinition. Between the lines, I raise the question of whether the mere mentioning of a subject—without delving into its content—can itself be considered an act of memory. As in other cases of political assassinations, there are those who believe that Rabin was the victim of a conspiracy.1 The overwhelming majority of Israelis, however, believe that the three shots fired at Rabin on November 4, 1995 by Yigal Amir—a young Jewish Orthodox law student—were the sole cause of Rabin’s death. Apart from the act of shooting, the rest of the narrative of the assassination is contested. In very general terms, the narrative of Rabin’s assassination ranges between the Left that links the assassination to the incitement campaign that preceded it, on the one hand, to the Right that presents the assassin as a “wild growth,” an exception, and thus no one’s responsibility, on the other hand. The image of Rabin is not shared either. In very general terms, many Israeli Jews admire and identify with Rabin, whose personal history since childhood parallels the aspirations and heroic struggles of the state (for details see Chapter 1). Following the Oslo Accords, however, he became an extremely controversial figure among major segments of the Jewish population and his famous handshake with Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn in 1993—symbolizing a change in policy—was an anathema for many. On the other hand, for Israeli Arabs, and for the far Jewish Left, Rabin’s militaristic image is not seen as an asset, while his endeavors from 1993 on are highly commended. The idea that the same event (or person) can be interpreted, understood and perceived in different ways is not new. Our daily lives and especially our routine misunderstandings are often generated by the different ways in which we comprehend an event. Now that postmodernism has undermined the very concept...