Eitan Haber/The man who killed Rabin killed peace

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The man who killed Rabin killed peace
Eitan Haber/Published: 11.02.14 / Israel Opinion /Ynetnews

Op-ed: The three shots fired at Israel’s prime minister 19 years ago completely changed the direction in which the state was headed and on which it was building its future.
No matter how we twist things, and say what is said and do what is done, we must admit that the murderer of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin accomplished his mission, for now. And I would like to stress the words “for now.” What has been happening to the State of Israel recently is just the preview of the introduction to the introduction. With all due respect to seekers of good, and we would like things to be good for all of us, right and left, religious and secular, all signs point to a major deterioration of the State of Israel. I hope I am proven wrong, but the coming years are expected to be very bad for us.
Here’s a small but important example: The country’s economic growth may reach 2% this year or maybe a bit more. Economic growth is the foundation of our existence and life here. It’s going down, and we’re going down with it. Does anyone remember that the economic growth in the mid 1990s, in the days of Yitzhak Rabin’s government, was 7.4-7.8% – a global miracle?
The murderer – may he be damned – succeeded because his three shots completely changed the direction in which the state was heading and on which it was constructing its future.
Dozens of states recognized Israel those days; Israeli flags were raised in envoys’ offices in seven Arab states (including Egypt, where Menachem Begin led us to peace); dozens of kings, presidents and prime ministers arrived for state visits to Israel for the very first time; an Israeli prime minister set foot, also for the first time since the state’s establishment, in countries such as China, Oman and Indonesia, which had refused to welcome such visits until then; the unemployment rate dropped, interchanges were built on Israel’s roads, construction began on a massive new terminal at Ben-Gurion Airport, as well on as the Trans-Israel Highway. What more could we have asked for? It’s very true that the terror activities increased. Dozens of Israelis were murdered. And what has happened since the prime minister’s murder? Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, have been murdered through no fault of their own. The terror, unfortunately, will continue to increase, because 1.2 billion Muslims are the source of an abundance of manpower against about eight million Jews.
Did Rabin’s agreements with the Palestinians bring about the terror against us? That’s nonsense from a political school that knows how to sell slogans. Terror has increased and will likely increase further because Moses led us to a troubled address, and we must make every effort to live in peace with our neighbors.
There are indeed 1.2 billion Muslims lurking, and we are singlehandedly adding the Europeans to our list of enemies; recently – thanks to our own foolishness – we have also added the Americans, who are the sole reason (except for God, of course) that we are living on this land. In the eyes of the current government and its supporters, the worst disaster that could strike us is the evacuation of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. We have been paying for that stance for years with the blood of pure and decent people. And who evacuated Jews from their homes? Dozens of Jewish communities were evacuated over the years, some by the Begin government and some by the Aile Sharon government. Not one single Jew was uprooted from his land by the Rabin government. Not one.
The murderer succeeded. There is no peace, and there will likely be no peace in the foreseeable future. He is the one who fired the shots, he is the one who hit, he is the one who led us to the place we are all in today – diplomatically, economically, socially and in terms of security. And why am I stressing the “for now” in the murderer’s success? Because all of us, rightists and leftists, secular and God-fearing Jews, want to believe that our situation will not get worse. And as I already wrote, I hope I am proven wrong, but our situation will become much much worse.
P.S. This is of course a completely non-objective article. Does anyone expect me to be objective?
**Eitan Haber served as the head of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s bureau.