Do you remember where you were when you heard that Yitzhak Rabin had been killed? I do. It was a dark evening in November, 25 years ago next month. My father was driving our family home along Kingsley Way in north London when the news came on the radio. Visibly shaken, he had to stop the car. I was only eight at the time, but the memory remains visceral. It was one of those rare moments in life when you know instantly that something vital has been lost.
Was Rabin a saint? Far from it. He played a key role in every Arab catastrophe of his lifetime, from the expulsions of 1948 to the decimation of 1967. He authorised brutal IDF forays into Lebanon, cooperated with the apartheid regime in South Africa and became known as the “bone breaker” during the first Palestinian intifada. It was not a compliment.
All this Rabin did. And yet without him, who knows what might have befallen Israel? He kept the Jews of the holy city alive during the 1948 siege of Jerusalem and guided Israel to victory in 1967, when defeat would have meant annihilation. He paved the way for peace with Egypt, ordered the Entebbe raid, signed the Oslo accords and made peace with Jordan.
Rabin was a villain. Rabin was a hero. Ultimately, Rabin was a great man of his times who had the tenacity, grit and fortitude required to mould a nation from the driest of desert clay.
It’s a complex but extraordinary legacy. I was pleased then when I heard that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the young congresswoman from New York who has been hailed as the future of the Democratic party, chose to acknowledge Rabin’s life by agreeing to attend an Americans for Peace Now event being held in his honour later this month.
Until she changed her mind that is. Under pressure from pro-Palestinian groups, last week “AOC” withdrew from the event. It was a small schedule change but an important symbolic moment. AOC is the leading leftist of her generation, a cohort that is leading a hard shift against Israel inside the Democratic party that is reshaping relations between two formerly close institutions. This cancellation is a far cry from the tearful farewell that Democratic president Bill Clinton said to his “chaver” at Rabin’s 1993 funeral on Mount Herzl.
My understanding of AOC’s justification is as follows: Ultimately Rabin represents an Israeli establishment that stole Palestinian land, occupied the West Bank and set in motion the wheels of injustice that continue to crush Palestinian lives to this day. For too long, Palestinian voices have been silenced in American politics. It’s about time leftist Democrats stood up for them.
Fair enough. Yet while this latest affront to the Zionist oppressors no doubt warms the hearts of AOC’s activist base, it is also self-defeating, myopic and unworthy of a politician whose oratory and ambition have elevated her to global fame in just two years.
AOC’s stance is reminiscent of those taken by another great friend of the Palestinians, one Jeremy Corbyn. Our former Labour party leader made a great show of talking to his friends in Hamas and Hezbollah but did not engage with Israel or its friends. He valued moral satisfaction over concrete achievement and as a result delivered nothing in his long twilight struggle on behalf of the Palestinians. Because as Moshe Dayan famously said: “if you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”
By refusing to engage with liberal Zionists and commemorate the life of one of Israel’s founding fathers, a man who died trying to make peace, AOC does the Palestinian cause no favours. This kind of juvenile feel-good partisanship is unworthy of a politician who is already hailed as a potential president. Leaders show breadth and nuance. They understand that history is dark and demanding and that men like Rabin struggled to do what was best for their people in truly desperate circumstances.
How can the American left maintain any meaningful links with what remains of Israel’s own left if they boycott its leading martyr? Who will AOC talk to in Israel if she ever wants to bring the two sides to the able? Who does this performative sanctimony help except the likes of Bibi Netanyahu, who is busy dismantling the dreams of his old rival Rabin? Israel has only grown stronger and more right-wing in the face of such rejections.
Leftist Democrats like AOC are right to give the Palestinians a voice in Washington. But they are wrong if they think snubbing the legacy of Rabin will help achieve anything except strengthen the forces that destroyed him on that dark November night, 25 years ago.
Josh Glancy is Washington bureau chief for the Sunday Times
