Yitzhak Rabin
Was he a visionary statesman or a devious politician?
The tragic assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister, led to a flood of accolades in which he was immortalized as “a great statesman” and “a martyr for peace.” In the eulogies that followed, Rabin was characterized as a tough realist, and his opponents were castigated as “war mongers,” “right-wing extremists,” and “religious fanatics.”
Dare we put the emotion aside for a moment and consider the truth? The truth of the matter is that Rabin was no hero of peace. Instead, Rabin was a terribly deceived man who ruled his country through lies and deceit.
Election Promises
When Rabin led the Labor Party to victory in 1992, he did so on a hard-line foreign policy platform that promised the voters there would never be negotiations with the PLO and there would never be a surrender of the West Bank, the Golan Heights, or any part of Jerusalem. The 1992 election was not about foreign policy or the “peace process.” It focused on domestic issues, primarily who would give the most assistance to the Russian refugees.
The point is that the 1992 election did not provide any mandate for the Labor party to give away the land of Israel to its sworn enemies. Rabin was viewed as a tough army general who would stand firm against the Arabs. The most memorable statement that came out of that campaign regarding foreign policy was Rabin’s observation that “He who considers withdrawing from the Golan Heights forsakes the security of Israel.”
Promises Forsaken
The electorate spoke. Labor was elected. And what happened? Rabin immediately started violating every campaign promise he had made. He reached out to the PLO, surrendered Gaza and Jericho, made plans for the surrender of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”), offered to give the Golan Heights to Syria, and secretly began negotiating away the capital city of Jerusalem. In short, he violated all his campaign promises by adopting a policy of trading land for “peace,” with the hope that such a naive policy would appease the enemies of Israel.
As he proceeded to callously throw all his campaign promises aside, he created a climate of distrust, dismay, and despair. He polarized his nation to the brink of civil war. And in the process, he did more than anyone else to create the poisonous atmosphere of hatred that led to his assassination.
He even poured salt in the wounds when he steadfastly refused to hold a national referendum on his appeasement process. When a vote was finally forced in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), he won the vote by doing something no other Israeli Prime Minister had ever done — he relied on the five Arab members to secure a one vote majority.
Meanwhile, he added fuel to the fire with his tough, uncompromising rhetoric. He called his opponents traitors. He seemed to relish mocking those who were religious. As an atheist he had no understanding of God’s purposes in regathering the Jews to the land. How could God be involved when there is no God?
Misplaced Idealism
He liked to portray himself as a tough realist. But in reality, he was a deluded idealist. One of his favorite sayings in defense of his peace process was, “The only person you can make peace with is your enemy.” He was wrong. In reality, the only person you can make peace with is an enemy who wants peace. You cannot make peace with an enemy who is determined to destroy you. Rabin was as deceived in his dealings with Arafat as Chamberlain was with Hitler. Rabin was no realist.
The irony of the assassination is that it delivered the government of Israel into the hands of a man who is even more deceived — Shimon Peres. He is the ultimate Humanist who believes that if he will treat Arafat with civility, Arafat will reciprocate. Arafat is laughing all the way to Jerusalem.
Peres will move quickly to mobilize public grief and sympathy in order to accelerate the process of creating a Palestinian state in the heart of Israel. Once the state is established, Peres will proclaim that Israel has finally achieved “peace and safety.”
An Illusory Peace
But the peace and safety will prove to be illusory. At that point Israel will only be 9 miles wide at a point directly above Tel Aviv! The nation will have surrendered all the strategic high ground in the central highlands and the Golan area on the east of the Sea of Galilee. Israel will be so weakened strategically that there will be only one way to save the nation when a war breaks out — and that is through the use of nuclear weapons. In other words, the current “peace” process is really a road to nuclear war.
But keep in mind that God is in control. He is not going to sit idly by and allow a group of unbelieving and scheming politicians to give His land to His enemies. He has not gone to the trouble of regathering the Jews from the four corners of the earth so that they can sell their birthright for an empty promise of “peace.”
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