Governor, Many in L.A. Bid Shalom

Thousands of Los Angeles residents mourned the death of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at an array of tributes Monday, including an afternoon memorial service at the Simon Wiesenthal Center and an evening candlelight vigil in front of the Israeli Consulate.

At the Wiesenthal Center in West Los Angeles, beneath a wall inscribed with the names of Jewish ghettos and Nazi death camps, a weeping Gov. Pete Wilson led religious and political leaders in an afternoon tribute to Rabin. During the hourlong memorial service, the normally stoic governor’s voice quivered with emotion in front of an estimated 2,000 mourners as he spoke of his 20-year friendship with Rabin.

“When I think of Israel, whose great men have bled for peace, anywhere I go I will remember Yitzhak Rabin,” Wilson told the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. “It has been said that blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed, my good friend, you must be. Shalom, my good friend.”

During his remarks at the outdoor service, where candles were placed by an 18-foot-tall menorah, Wilson declared Monday an official day of mourning in California and ordered flags on public buildings flown at half-staff. Fighting tears, Wilson compared the assassinated Israeli leader to American Presidents Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

“Rabin risked his life in war, and then risked, and gave, his life for peace,” said Wilson. “Even in a land of passionate patriots, Yitzhak Rabin stands out.”

Rabin, 73, was shot at a peace rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. The confessed killer, Yigal Amir, 25, a law student with links to the Jewish extremist fringe, told authorities he wanted to derail Rabin’s peace policies.

Across the state on Monday, Rabin, the man who once fought as a soldier, was honored as a peacemaker by Jews and non-Jews alike.

More than 1,000 mourners attended the candlelight vigil in front of the Israeli Consulate on Wilshire Boulevard. Police closed off a section of Wilshire from Fairfax Avenue to San Vicente Boulevard, as mourners cried and held candles, sang and waived Israeli flags.

A number of politicians attended the vigil, including Wilson, State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and City Council members Laura Chick and Michael Feuer.

“Yitzhak Rabin was a warrior for all people,” Riordan said. “It took great strength to fight for peace and to follow what’s right, even if it’s not popular.”

Hayden told those gathered: “Rabin meant a lot to the people of West Los Angeles because his life spread like an ark over the lives of the people living on the West Side.”

Bzalel Nutovits, who emigrated to the United States from Israel in 1979, said outside the consulate that he served in the Israeli army with Rabin.

“I was with him in the Army in 1948,” Nutovits said. “We talked together. He inspired us all to fight. Since I heard the news yesterday, I can’t eat or sleep.”

Earlier outside the Consulate, several hundred people, many of them weeping, gathered to write their thoughts and prayers in a book of condolences to be delivered to Rabin’s wife, Leah.

“The peace process will be stronger for this,” said Marti Ahern, 45, a psychotherapist trainee who lives in Hollywood.

As the subdued mourners patiently awaited their turns to write, some waxed philosophical, weighing the future of a nation whose birth was so turbulent. To them, this was not the slaying of a remote world leader but the death of a family member.

Jordan Susman, a USC film graduate student who lived in Israel for three years, said he hopes Rabin’s death will crystallize the former soldier’s efforts to bring peace to Israel.

“I will tell my children that this was part of the convulsive birth pangs of a new era,” he said, clutching his canvas book bag and offering a sad smile. “This is part of the trials of the Jewish people learning to live in their homeland.”

In the San Fernando Valley, congregations from several Synagogues joined at half a dozen services.

Nearly 3,000 people turned out at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, where Rabbi Harold Schulweis appeared with Monir Deeb, president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Deeb expressed his condolences, saying “God is peace,” and the crowd erupted in applause when he and Schulweis embraced.

“Yitzhak did not die because of the sole lunacy of a lone madman,” Schulweis said. “The assassin breathes poison air. . . . Yitzhak died because when people burned his effigy, when people dressed him in a Nazi uniform, when people in high places called him ‘traitor’ and ‘murderer,’ too few raised their voice, too few were moved by moral outrage to cry out to everyone. We are fragile human beings and we are killed by words.”

Times staff writers Erin Texeira, Antonio Olivo and Miles Corwin and correspondent Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.