Editorial

Religious Assasination

Yitzhak Rabin, although a secular leader, quoted Ecclesiastes, that most secular of Biblical books, on the occasion of the signing of the agreement between Palestinians and Jews: ‘To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace.’ And, alas, a time of assassination.

Yigal Amir, the twenty-five-year-old student of religion said after he had shot the Prime minister that God had told him to do it. Once again religious fanaticism strikes a secular idealist. Rabin and Amir came from different backgrounds: Rabin was a man of war (freedom fighter to found the state of Israel, military leader in the 1967 war) turned man of peace. He was given the Nobel prize for peace for working to bring about a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. The irony was that it was at a rally for peace that he was shot. He had joined in a peace song, and the white piece of paper on which the words were written which he had returned to his pocket, was splattered with blood.

The assassin did not spring newborn from God’s arms, he came from a specific right wing fundamentalist culture - a culture in which protest posters showed Rabin in Nazi SS uniform. The joining of ethnic and religious cultures is particularly dangerous in the world today – as we can see in many parts of the world. Nevertheless the Israeli nation may be shaken, but it does not look as if it will be shaken from its resolve for peace.