Yair Golan: Echoes of shots that killed Rabin ‘still resonate’ in government’s actions

The Democrats chair Yair Golan delivers a forceful address at Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square to roaring applause from a crowd that organizers say numbers 150,000, marking 30 years since the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Golan, whose party is a merger of Rabin’s center-left Labor party and the left-wing Meretz, draws a direct link between Rabin’s murder and what he describes as ongoing “incitement and extremist nationalism” within Israel, warning that “the echoes of those three shots have not faded.”

“They still resonate today in every act of this government that works against its own people,” Golan says. “Every time patriots are called traitors, every time demonstrators fulfilling their civic duty are beaten, every time the media is silenced and the judiciary is trampled — those same shots still echo.”

He praises Rabin as “a man of truth and integrity, who time and again placed the good of the people above political and personal gain,” adding that Rabin “knew that peace is not weakness, but strength and power.”

Calling for a “renewed moral and democratic backbone,” Golan urges Israelis to reject complacency and fear. “True unity is not when we give up our values and unite around a lie,” he says. “It is when we stand together — strong for the truth, with a democratic, moral, and security backbone forged of steel.”

“We will not bow again before violence and hate,” he declares. “We will not flatter bullies or apologize to the corrupt. Our unity is one of shared democratic and liberal values — of a Jewish and democratic Israel.”

Golan concludes by calling for leaders who embody Rabin’s legacy of “clarity, determination, and humanity.”

“If we have the courage, determination, and vision that Rabin had,” he says, “we can complete the task he began — and grant Israel the secure future for which he gave his life.”