Thousands expected at 21st Rabin memorial rally in Tel Aviv

Thousands of Israelis were set to gather in central Tel Aviv on Saturday evening for the 21st anniversary rally marking the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

Crowds were expected to build up from 7 pm in Rabin Square, with the event, featuring numerous Israeli artists and musicians, starting at 8. The Labour Party, which is organizing the event, said Meretz leader Zehava Galon would be among the speakers.

This year’s event was nearly cancelled because of a lack of funding, but Labor agreed this week to step in. “The rally was always the responsibility of private, external bodies,” Labour leader Isaac Herzog said. “But as we are talking about the assassination of our leader, the head of the Labor Party… we insist on holding a rally.”

On Friday, when family members and friends gathered at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl national cemetery to commemorate the 1995 killing, Rabin’s daughter Dalia warned that the schisms that divided Israel at the time are still in evidence in Israel’s public discourse.

“This murder was terrible. It is an open wound for us in the family, but it is also an open wound for our nation,” she said at the ceremony. “The incitement from before has not ended. Parts of the nation are still in denial and find ways to argue that maybe it was good to murder him,” she said.

Several roads surrounding Rabin Square were scheduled to be blocked off ahead of and during the annual rally for Rabin, who was assassinated by right-wing extremist Yigal Amir at the end of a peace rally in the square in 1995.

(Ibn Gabirol Street will blocked to traffic from Shlomo Hamelech Boulevard to Pinkas Street; Frishman Street will be blocked off from Masaryk Square to Ibn Gabirol Street; and David Hamelech Boulevard will be shut to traffic between Weizmann Street and Ibn Gabirol street. Gordon Street will be closed from Shlomo Hamelech Boulevard to Malkhei Israel Street, which itself will be blocked to traffic from Ben Gurion Boulevard to Chen Boulevard. Several other roads around the square will be closed to traffic as well.)

The gathering is held every year in the square where Rabin was gunned down by Amir, an extremist Jew, on November 4, 1995, amid national tensions over peace efforts with the Palestinians.

Rabin served as Israel’s chief of staff during the Six Day War in 1967. He was later ambassador to the US, defense minister and twice prime minister. In 1994, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with then-foreign minister Shimon Peres, who died last month, and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, for his part in signing the Oslo Peace accords a year earlier.

In previous years, Rabin memorial rallies have denounced racism and extremism in Israel, and speakers have publicly called on the Netanyahu government to lead the country into a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Last year, the 20th anniversary of Rabin’s murder, some 100,000 gathered in the heart of Tel Aviv for the commemoration. Addressing the the crowds were a handful of Israeli lawmakers, President Reuven Rivlin, former US president Bill Clinton and current US President Barack Obama (who spoke via video).

Tamar Pileggi contributed to this report.