My Speech at the Tel Aviv University ceremony in memory of Yitzhak Rabin Nov 5, 2014 I have to be very honest with you. I’m very humbled to be speaking here today. And it was very difficult for me to plan my words, even though I was asked several weeks ago to speak here, and I apologise to the sign language interpreter for not preparing her ahead of time Personally, ceremonies for the memory of Rabin bring up all the shock, and anger, and fear and sense of loss of hope that I felt 19 years ago, and that’s why I’m at a loss of words. Everything I came up with sounded banal. Who am I to give a speech about violence in Israeli society? About incitement? About the yearning for peace? There are poets and historians and activists vastly more qualified than me to speak about these subjects. So I’ll talk about my fears. I’m afraid of the following scenario: Try to imagine the following advertisement on the radio, “Today at Electric Depot – Massive Rabin Day Sale!”. In the United States, where I grew up, Macy’s and The Gap celebrate Martin Luther King Day with gaudy sales. Presidents Day, and Memorial Day are also celebrated with sales. So what’s to stop The Memorial Day for Rabin from becoming a trivial event, celebrated with a sale and some time off from school? For the generation that remembers exactly where they were when they heard that Rabin had been shot, this possibility is outrageous. Rabin’s assassination was a defining moment in our personal and national consciousness, regardless of political leanings. But what’s to maintain the poignancy and relevance of this day for my children’s generation? For those of you too young to have felt the shock and anger of this despicable murder? What needs to happen then for this day to maintain universal value? It has to adopt a universal message, which may be somewhat removed from the original emotion of the day. One of the take-home messages that we must take from Rabin’s life is a message of leadership. Leadership in our age is incredibly lacking. And I’m not just talking political leadership – which clearly is lacking, but other types as well. At times it seems to me that we’ve substituted a dictatorship of “likes” and polls, a bastardized version of public opinion disguised as democracy, for true leadership. Rabin was a leader. Rabin was killed because he was a leader. There were other visionaries of peace. Many people before him had advocated talking to the Palestinians. But they were not targeted because they could not lead the public to a new reality. A true leader sees a better future. He doesn’t do poll to find out what his constituency thinks is a better future. Rather he leads people towards his vision. He convinces people that his vision is their vision, and takes the risks to get there. The fact that both Labor and Likud talk accept the idea of a Palestinian state, which today seems normal, was anything but normal to Rabin, and to public discourse prior to the 1990’s. But he led us to a new reality. His leadership pulled the country along. In the recent words of President Ruby Rivlin, (and if someone had predicted 19 years ago that I’d be quoting him today, I would have thought him crazy), “Rabin was leader who defined”. Growing up in the US, I remember Martin Luther King’s assassination. While any American child today can tell you that King led the civil rights movement, few remember that King was hounded by the FBI as a communist and considered an scandalous traitor by many of his fellow citizens. We need to make sure that Rabin’s example of leadership is a central message in our rewriting of the narrative of today. Leaders take chances. Sometimes leaders put themselves in physical danger. But leaders lead. They dream, and they convince us that their dream is also our dream.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 12:33:49 +0000
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