Thousands expected at annual Rabin rally, with new emphasis on unity

The annual rally marking the assassination of the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin will be held Saturday evening in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square.

The rally, held for the 22nd year under the slogan “We are one people,” will include speakers from across the political spectrum, including former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit and local municipality leaders alongside representatives of the ultra-Orthodox and settler communities.

“On the 22nd anniversary of the Rabin assassination, it’s time to look ahead,” organizers said. “To the Israel we all want to see and live in. One that, despite differences, advances that which unites over that which divides. One that strives to realize the spirit of the declaration of independence” and to bring about “a model society. One that can come about, if we choose it.”

Tens of thousands have regularly attended the rally in past years and police were expected to show a heavy presence to provide security.

The rally will begin at 7:30 p.m. Streets in the vicinity of Rabin Square will be closed from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. These will include sections of Ibn Gabirol St., King David Blvd., Gordon St. and Arlozorov St.

Organizers’ message of unity, rather than the more traditional call for peace and denunciation of extremism, has angered some on the left.

This year’s rally, scheduled for Saturday night in Rabin Square, has been organized by the Darkenu movement and Commanders for Israel’s Security, two centrist advocacy groups that support “separation” from the Palestinians as part of a two-state solution.

The new organizers have shifted the emphasis to promoting national unity. While many Israelis have welcomed the change, some on the political left have condemned it as an attempt to gloss over the assassination.

One of the rally’s organizers, Nimrod Dweck, the chief strategist and co-founder of Darkenu, or “Our Path,” told JTA it was time to end the finger-pointing over Rabin’s death and instead look to the Israelis’ shared future.

“There was a sense that we need to reinvent what makes us a nation,” he said. “It’s very different from past years because we don’t play the blame game or talk about peace. We talk about who we are as a people.”

Unlike in the past, no Israeli political parties or lawmakers were invited to speak at the rally. The six living former chiefs of staff of the Israel Defense Forces received invitations. But after all initially expressing interest, they declined one by one. Israel’s Channel 10 TV station reported that they may have feared being tagged as leftists for their association with the organizers.

Dweck said he could not explain the chiefs of staff decision. But he said the organizers’ nonpartisan approach to the rally has drawn in right-wing Israelis who would have felt unwelcome in the past. Among those who will speak this year is Esther Brot, who abandoned her home in the West Bank settlement of Ofra out of respect for the High Court of Justice’s ruling that it must be demolished because it was built on private Palestinian land.

Yehudah Glick, an Orthodox Jewish lawmaker in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, will be in the crowd. On Monday, he sent a letter encouraging his fellow Knesset members to join him. He said that he was “ashamed” by the politicized atmosphere he saw last year at the event, when speakers scorned the right and demonstrators heckled the left. But he averred confidence the rally would be different under Darkenu and Commanders for Israel’s Security.

“I personally spoke to the organizers of the rally and was convinced they were going above and beyond to preserve a dignified and stately atmosphere,” he wrote.

However, the organizer’s welcoming attitude has upset some Israeli leftists, who said Rabin’s assassination was inherently political and should be remembered as such. They also pointed out that the advertisement for the rally did not even mention that Rabin was assassinated.

“A foreigner reading that weird, misleading ad might think that Rabin died peacefully in bed, after retiring, and now the gang is getting together to have a little sing-along and share fond, amusing memories,” lawmaker Shelly Yachimovich of the center-left Zionist Union political alliance wrote on Facebook. “Well, Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered. M-u-r-d-e-r-e-d. It was a political assassination designed to eliminate an elected political leader and to change the path of the nation by that murder.”

She added that the assassination should be taught to everyone, not just those in Rabin’s “political camp,” but that the advertisement did the opposite.

“This ad denies that memory to everyone – erases it, whitewashes it and hides it,” Yachimovich said. “It’s an embarrassing ad that reeks of fear. There’s still time until the rally to recover and remember.”

Many other leftists shared similar criticisms.

“Sickening,” Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York, wrote on Facebook, according to the Haaretz newspaper.

“It’s sad, depressing, insulting. Makes people forget!” responded Shimon Sheves, who was the director general of the Prime Minister’s Office during Rabin’s last term.

Right-wing extremist Yigal Amir shot Rabin to death on Nov. 4, 1995, at the end of an event the then-prime minister held to demonstrate public support for his efforts to make peace with the Palestinians. In the following days, and every year since on the Saturday nearest to the anniversary date, thousands of Israelis have gathered in Rabin Square, as it was renamed, to pay their respects.

The rally, which has become the main commemoration event for Rabin, was long organized by an alliance of youth groups and social organizations. But last year, the alliance opted to instead hold round-table discussions in the country’s major cities. The Labor Party, in which Rabin spent his political career, stepped in at the last minute to save the rally from cancellation. This year, Darkenu and Commanders for Israel’s Security took over.

Dweck said it was an “honest mistake” not to explicitly refer to Rabin’s assassination in advertising the rally, and on Tuesday he made sure the language was changed to say, “A mass rally in memory of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin marking 22 years since his murder.”

But he accused members of the Israeli left of nursing anger at the settlement movement, some of whose leaders incited against Rabin and helped inspire Amir. Since Rabin’s death, the Israeli public’s faith in peace with the Palestinians has dwindled and settlers have helped push Israeli politics rightward. But Dweck said he still expects leftists to show up at the rally.

“Everyone here wants peace and security and better lives,” he said. “We just have to respect one another and understand each other’s challenges.”