Yitzhak Rabin's Assassination and the Dilemmas of Commemoration

3 Times to Remember

53 Times to Remember 3 Times to Remember Introduction A poll published in an Israeli newspaper a year after the assassination reported that fifty-nine percent of Jewish Israelis felt that the day of the assassination should be declared a national memorial day while thirty-nine percent did not think that it was necessary to mark the event formally.1 None, I believe, thought that within a year they would end up with two memorial days for the same event: Yud Beit Heshvan (the twelfth of the Hebrew month of Heshvan)—the state-sanctioned official memorial day which was legislatively enacted by the Israeli parliament (Knesset)—and November 4, the political memorial day generated informally by political movements and parties. In between these times and their constantly shifting mnemonic meanings, we find the emergence of a new annual social ritual: A memorial demonstration. This chapter is about the diversified times in which Rabin and the assassination are recalled. These times are not merely occasions in which Rabin is mentioned and thus remembered (e.g., during the declaration of a new left-wing party in December 2003; or during Israel’s jubilee celebration in 1998) but are official and semiofficial times in which Rabin and/or the assassination are the day’s raison-d’etre. As mentioned, the two major mnemonic times are Heshvan 12 and November 4.2 The discourses heard during the various memorial times are different, as is the kind and size of audience exposed to the content of the days. The presence of different ways through which to mark the same time serves to “separate one people from another” (Friedland and Hecht 1996: 93). The existence of different times in which the same event is commemorated, exacerbates this outcome. In very general terms, the discourse of Heshvan 12 emphasizes Rabin’s relatively consensual biography and evokes emotional reactions to the assassination. The discourse of November 4, on the other hand, offers a sharp political account of a political assassination. As we will shortly see, 53 54 Yitzak Rabin’s Assassination and Dilemmas of Commemoration as time passes, November 4, which has not been institutionalized, comes to be marked by fewer public events. Thus, while individuals place many candles and flowers on and around the monument in Tel Aviv on November 4 every year, the area has remained empty of public events.3 Nonetheless, the “November 4 discourse” is as alive and vibrant as ever. Not only has it not disappeared, it makes its inroads into Rabin Square during the memorial demonstrations that take place there and even into the national memorial day held on Heshvan 12. By analyzing the two memorial days and by following the development of the mass memorial gathering in Rabin Square, this chapter addresses the notion of time on two levels. First, it analyzes how the marking of different commemorative times operates within a fragmented commemorative set of practices. Second, it focuses on how the passage of time has itself affected this fragmented commemoration. Enacting a Memorial Day It seems fairly reasonable to have expected that the State of Israel would establish an official memorial day following the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin. First and foremost, memory is a major organizing principle of Judaism.4 Second, while this was not the first political assassination in Israeli-Jewish society,5 it was the first time in the history of a relatively young state in which an elected prime minister had died in this way. Third, mnemonic practices in general and official memorial days in particular are not unfamiliar to Israeli culture and to its national calendar. And yet, as was the case with the first mourning rituals following the assassination, the initiation to legislate a memorial day for Rabin emerged from below. The legislation was generated by one of Rabin’s mnemonic associations, the “Peace Guards.”6 “In Israel,” as a senior member of the association states, “national memorial days symbolize some form of a trauma or something very essential in the life of the Israelis. We felt that [the assassination] belongs to the kind of things that deserve to have a memorial day” (interview, January 15, 1998). Some of the members of the association presented a draft of the proposed memorial law to two members of parliament: one from the Labor Party (which Rabin had chaired) who did not pursue the initiation and the other from the Meretz Party (the most dovish among the Zionist parties) who...