Last night I sat among 850 supporters of Israel and its Israel Defense Forces at the annual Friends of the IDF dinner here in Metro Detroit, Michigan. I attend this event each year and last night was not much different than past events. I was moved to tears watching the video screens and hearing about young Israelis who had to overcome difficult personal challenges while serving in the Israeli Army to defend the Jewish state. I listened as one young man, now an attorney in Israel, thanked a local Detroit family that sponsored him so he could attend law school after the army despite both of his parents being unemployed due to serious medical problems. He, like so many Israeli professionals, had to leave his job over the summer when he was called up from reserves to serve in Gaza.
There wasn’t a single person in the large synagogue social hall last night who wouldn’t identify as a strong supporter of Israel. There were hundreds of Israelis in that room last night who had served in the IDF and emigrated to Detroit. There were also many Americans who had volunteered to serve in the IDF or who are related to Israelis who had served. There were families who contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Friends of the IDF to build army bases and classrooms and fitness centers throughout Israel. Like me, I’m sure, all 850 of the men and women in that room remember precisely what had happened in Tel Aviv nineteen years earlier. It was on November 4, 1995 that the Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated by a Jewish religious extremist. And yet there was no mention of that day.
Rabin’s assassination was my generation’s JFK assassination. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. It was a beautiful, sunny Shabbat afternoon. My girlfriend (now my wife) and I were standing outside my AEPi fraternity house when someone told us that there was a rumor that Yitzhak Rabin had been shot dead. CNN was already showing video footage of the peace rally in Tel Aviv where Rabin’s life was taken. As my fraternity brothers began returning from the afternoon’s football game (I hadn’t attended), I told them the news. We were all shocked. As a leader at my university’s Hillel, I was asked to speak at several community vigils the next day. I was called by newspaper reporters asking for my opinion on the assassination and whether it would end any hope for an Israeli-Palestinian peace. It was my first experience being interviewed at a TV news studio. I had always been a Zionist, but November 4, 1995 made me, and so many of my peers, feel closer to Israel than ever before. I began researching ways to return to Israel that summer.
So much has happened in the 19 years since that horrible day. Israel has endured more terrorism, fought more wars and has yet to mend its internal fractures. As Americans went to the polls yesterday in our midterm elections, so many of us refused to check our concerns about Israel at the door. We take them with us into the voting booth. We discuss the candidates’ positions on Israel and the Middle East.
I’d like to think that last night’s omission of the anniversary of the Rabin assassination was just an oversight. We memorialized all of the victims of terrorism and all of those men and women who lost their lives while serving for the IDF. Yitzhak Rabin was an IDF general long before he was a politician or a statesman. For me, I will never forget November 4, 1995. I pray that we continue to honor the memory of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. To forget his contributions to the State of Israel would be an assassination to his legacy.
Shabbat
Pronounced: shuh-BAHT or shah-BAHT, Origin: Hebrew, the Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.
Yitzhak
Pronounced: eetz-KHAHK, Origin: Hebrew, Hebrew name for Isaac.
