Los Angeles Times Interview : Leah Rabin : Finding the Right Path After the Assassination

Two-and-a-half months have passed since Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down at a Tel Aviv peace rally by a 25-year-old Jewish extremist opposed to the Israeli prime minister’s land-for-peace agreement with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

As usual in their 47-year marriage, Rabin’s wife, Leah, was at her husband’s side during the rally, and scurrying to keep up as the prime minister left the stage with security guards. A friendly voice off to the side shouted at her to take good care of Rabin. “I am doing my best,” she answered. But Yigal Amir, the confessed assassin, reached her husband before she did.

At the prime minister’s state funeral, Leah Rabin received the condolences of Israel’s many friends and former enemies with grace, drawing comparisons to the young Jacqueline Kennedy. But the widow also sharply criticized the political opposition for having created a “climate of hatred” with violent language and rowdy demonstrations that she felt contributed to his murder. And, while thanking the millions of Israelis who turned out to pay their last respects to Rabin, she chastised them for having kept silent in the face of prolonged right-wing attacks on Rabin’s peace policy.

Before the assassination, Leah Rabin was the consummate political wife and hostess, dedicated to her husband’s career and a few charities. She raised their two children, spent time with grandchildren and seemed content to live in the long shadow of Yitzhak Rabin.

Since his death, Leah Rabin has devoted herself to her husband’s memory. She attended memorial services in Tel Aviv, New York and Paris and, with Jordan’s King Hussein, dedicated a trauma center in Rabin’s name at Ichilov Hospital, where he died.

To answer the mounds of mail and requests for appearances that have come her way since the assassination, Rabin took a government-financed office in Tel Aviv. Calling her a crusader for her husband’s peace process--an issue of public controversy--the Likud opposed granting her the office at public expense, but eventually gave up the fight.

On her office walls, as in the home she shared with Rabin, hang pictures and collages of the slain prime minister that were gifts to the widow. She lives alone in the apartment now, but does not stay by herself; one of her children or grandchildren keeps her company each night, and a housekeeper is there most days.

A security guard accompanied Rabin to the office one morning last week on the eve of a trip to Los Angeles, where she will receive the first Rabin Award at the Sheba Medical Center Humanitarian Awards dinner on Saturday. Wearing an elegant black pantsuit, a yellow cashmere sweater and a sad smile, she sat and talked about her life since Rabin’s death.

*

Question: How does it feel to have such a high profile after so many years behind the scenes?

Answer: He deserves that, if he is lost, all of us, his family, will some way or other carry the burden of this thing in a dignified way. I can only say I think this is the way he would like it to be. Mr. [French President Jacques] Chirac put it in a very beautiful way, saying that his handling of the peace process was beyond ordinary political doing. There was a halo, there was a torch he was carrying. “The way I see you,” he [Chirac] said to me, “you should carry the torch.” I really am carrying no torch--that to me sounds very pretentious. But I am trying to live up, first of all, to his reputation, to his standards. Trying. I will never be able to. I am here now to, first of all, receive all the people’s pain, sorrow, all those letters, all those words. Who would do it if I wasn’t here? Who would they bring it to? . . . What I am is, I am just doing my best. And out of instincts and feelings rather than any kind of an agenda.

Q: After the assassination, you said many times that you felt the country had been united by this tragedy. Is this still the case?

A: What I feel today, when some of the dust has come down, it’s not that the country was united but definitely something good, positive happened out of this horrible shock and trauma that followed my husband’s death. That is, in terms of “we shall be silent no more.” And so many people, thousands of people, feel guilty that they were silent. They think they could have prevented it if they weren’t so silent. If there would have been an answer to all this yelling, to all this ugly language, to all these ugly posters, to all the ugly demonstrations. There was no answer. They trusted that he would do it, he can do it without us. Then they realized that, without them, he couldn’t do it. He needed them . . . .

This sense of guilt is today translated into deeds. You see them already on street corners and, in a short time, you will see more of them, and more stickers and posters . . . . I think the masses who came out to mourn for my husband and went to the cemetery and went to the Kikar Rabin and went to our house, and all those millions of candles that were lit and flowers that were left, expressed that the silent majority is really a very big majority. There is a big majority of young people--and not necessarily the young--who really support the peace process.

Q: Since your husband’s death, Israeli troops have redeployed in the West Bank with relatively little protest from Israelis, and now the Palestinian elections are taking place. Would he have been satisfied with the progress of the peace agreement?

A: If you want to look for consolation, he died a happy man. He saw it happening in front of his eyes. But, my God, it wasn’t so easy. There were 2 1/2 difficult years of working it all out, all the details. Every detail had to be discussed and fought for. These things don’t happen overnight. I think he would have been very, very happy. If I feel sorry, I feel sorry first of all for him. He’s missing all this.

Q: Would it have been this quiet if he were still alive?

A: You have a point. It is easier now . . . . But my husband wasn’t putting attention to the loudness. He was just going ahead with this plan, this program. And being absolutely convinced that this is the one way that we should walk. And when I said, “Aren’t you disturbed by all these curses of ‘traitor,’ ” he said, “Well, let them yell.” Unfortunately, he didn’t put enough attention. Would it have helped? I don’t know.

Q: The protest you do hear now is that the peace plan is laying the foundation of a Palestinian state. Is it? If so, is that the right direction?

A: I don’t want to express my views on that. This is very strictly political and I avoid giving any political declarations.

Q: Why?

A: Because I don’t belong in that scene. I’m not elected. I’m just his wife. I enjoyed being his wife, I enjoyed being with him all these years. I trusted that he was doing the right thing. I was fully identified with whatever he did. But that doesn’t put me in a position today to express my views, which aren’t his, unfortunately, anymore. I don’t speak in his name now . . . . I am aware of the sense that whatever I say today somehow gets an enormous echo. So I think that I have to be very careful and not say things that are not in my capacity.

Q: Do you want to talk about whether you feel Prime Minister Peres is carrying out the policies your husband would have wanted?

A: Yes, he is. If he does things differently, then also I wouldn’t refer to that. I am not here to criticize him . . . .

Q: Do you feel Jewish extremists have been strengthened or weakened by the assassination?

A: I just met with a group of rabbis from the United States. They say, “You have to rise above your pain and unite the people.” I said, “Me? I will unite the people? It is your task, your commitment, your responsibility to unite the religious people into one camp that makes sense. You have to fight the extremists. You are closer on the scene. I am very far away from this religious scene. I don’t feel that I can reach them in any way. It is your duty to unite the camp and oust people who don’t belong there at all.” I think that a person who thinks that land is more sacred than human life, he doesn’t belong in our faith at all. He should be somewhere else . . . .

I would like to think that [the extremists] are weakened . . . . But when you are talking about fanaticism, there are always those who you never change their minds. These people from Hamas who are ready to commit suicide, you think anybody influences them? They think they are sent by God. And, so the same with our fanatics, our extremists. They think that they have a messianic mission from God, [that] God believes that land is more sacred than human life. Never mind that one of our 10 Commandments is “Thou shalt not kill”--which we were always so proud of and felt that it makes us different people from the others . . . .

Q: Did you watch the video of the assassination that aired on Israeli TV?

A: No. I lived it. I was there. I saw what I will see and will stay with me like you push a button on a video and it stops the video. You keep seeing the same sight, same vision. This is the way I feel about it. I heard the bullets and I saw my husband falling and I saw the boys falling over him and then I was pulled away, told it was not for real and believing that, for a while, and I will always see that picture.

. . . That night at the rally, there was a warning that Hamas might get into the crowd. I was nervous about that, watching the crowd all the time. Imagine, I thought, if something happens in the middle of all this crowd standing together. And when it was over, and we were on our way to the stairs, I said to the security man who was in charge, “Congratulations, it all went well.” And he looked at me and said, “So far.” And two minutes later . . . .

Q: The question everyone is asking: Do you see a political future for yourself?

A: I will give you the answer I gave on TV the other day. I will not be in the position of fighting for anything. I lived with a man who struggled all his life for his country, for the security, for peace, for his own positions, and in politics you don’t get anywhere unless you struggle for it. And after having done that, following him for 47 years of our marriage, I really feel I have done my share of witnessing his struggle, and witnessing his victories and witnessing his achievements--and being there for him and with him all the time. I don’t feel that I deserve to start all over again struggling for anything. And, therefore, I probably will never do that. Because nothing is ever given to you on a silver platter.

Q: What about your children and grandchildren?

A: My children, no. But I have the feeling my granddaughter [Noa Ben-Artzi, who spoke at the funeral] might eventually. She so adored him and she is very much like him. I don’t have any right to speak for her, but I feel that eventually, when she gets a little older, she might. She is bright and compassionate, she loves and is loved by the people and by her family. I feel it will not be a struggle for her.

Q: How did you feel when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat visited you in your home?

A: It was very special . . . . As someone said yesterday, this man is between being a tough leader and hero and a very very soft, warm man. I think what we saw that night was the very, very warm and friendly and kind person, who came in as an old friend. I know he senses a great gratitude for having worked with my husband for peace and coming to this constructive ending and results. So today he finds himself on the location, leader of his people, conducting the elections, and he certainly realizes that it was my husband with whom he did it together .

Receiving Yasser Arafat is the symbol of what my husband was doing and achieving the last 2 1/2 years. That meant a lot to all of us. To me, my children and our friends who were there. We were all delighted to have him. Symbols in history are important. We all know now how much the handshake was a symbol.

Q: How are you holding up two months after the assassination?

A: It’s very difficult and getting worse all the time. It’s really getting worse . . . . I find myself very sad. Missing him a lot, more and more. I think many people miss him more and more and realize the vacuum he left behind. I realize the uniqueness of him, the gigantic person he was. It’s difficult to live with such a loss. It is our private loss, but, at the same time, we don’t detach ourselves from the loss of the nation and, in a way, the world. . . . People tell me they dream of him, and I don’t. I wish I did. I don’t know what it is. Maybe after awhile.*