STATE OF MIND

Back in the ‘70s, he labeled them “the scum of the earth.” On various visits to Los Angeles, former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had declared his loathing of the city’s Israeli emigres, branding anyone who had forsaken the Promised Land for the Land of Promise a deserter. But two months ago, when Rabin returned to Los Angeles for a brief visit, it seemed to the city’s estimated 160,000 Israeli emigres that he had chilled out.

Rabin even granted his first interview ever to an Israeli-emigre newspaper, the Sherman Oaks-based weekly Hadshot L.A. In it, Rabin said he was recanting his condemnations after learning of the emigre community’s steadfast support for the Jewish state during the Gulf War. “I learned that Israelis abroad, particularly those in America, assist their homeland, encourage their children to return to Israel to serve in the army, and contribute to the Jewish community. I learned that Israelis abroad remain Israelis. “

And all it took was a war.