One murder, two cultures

As November dawns, we are faced once again with the full force of Israel's culture war, the war for Israel's societal identity. Read a selection of Ynetnews' coverage of the 10th anniversary of the Rabin Assassination Things you never wanted to know Rabbis didn't kill Rabin Amir family: Rabin was a criminal Who remembers Rabin? If the battles focused on Gush Katif in August, in November they move to memorial sites for late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It's been like this for a decade now, and it will continue in the coming years as well. Other societies, too, have had clashes about collective identity. But here, the clash has produced honest-to-goodness victims. There are three reasons for this: One, only our society has no agreed-upon borders. This question goes beyond mere physical borders: Without clearly-defined borders, it is unclear just who is connected to the national collective and who is included. For this reason, a political party is set to run in the next elections on a platform supporting redrawing Israel's border in order to remove a section of central Israel that is home to hundreds-of-thousands of people born here, simply because they were born to Arab mothers. On the other hand, there are many people – not just Palestinians – who feel there is no reason to award Diaspora Jews the right to immigrate here with automatic citizenship. With regard to defining collective identity, not all Jews comprise an inseparable part of the Israeli collective. Secondly, many people turn a blind eye to officialdom, and even assist lawbreakers. Soldiers tear down illegal outpost (Photo: Sharon Katz) Talia Sasson's report about illegal outposts in the "Wild West (Bank)" is just one expression of this. This is the reason Israel has sunk to 28th place on the international corruption chart – a fall of 14 places in just eight years. Thirdly, we suffer greatly from the lack of a constitution. In other words, too many of us are not too happy with the rules of democracy. One look at the special holiday section of the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Yated Ne'eman revealed that in the "only democracy in the Middle East," hundreds of thousands of people would just as soon do away with a "dictatorial" judicial system that "runs the country according to non-Jewish principles." Several months ago, I did some research into "10 Years since the Rabin Assassination." I found 40 percent of Israelis treat rabbinic dictates with equal weight to decisions taken by the Knesset. Fifteen percent say openly they believe it is legitimate to oppose government decisions by using illegal measures. Four percent even justify the use of violence. Metro vs. Retro The Rabin assassination was the direct result of the tough culture war raging here. It wasn't the first and it won't be the last. The murderer may have been right-wing and may have worn a kippa on his head, but those who attributed the murder to Right-Left, or religious-secular, friction have erred badly. The struggle is between two cultures: Those who want Israel to be part of the family of nations, and those who believe in the biblical precept that Israel should be a "nation that dwells alone" (Numbers 23:9). It is a struggle between those who believe the country should run according to humanitarian and universalistic principles, and those who wave the flag of Israel's unique nature. Between those who say "Israeli" includes all Israeli citizens, and those convinced that only Jews have a true place in our complex family. Jews or Israelis? There are many more points that differentiate these two camps, metro-culture vs. retro-culture. The former gives the country a basis for co-existance, while for the latter the Holy Land is preferable to the State of Israel. Those in the "metro" stream usually define themselves as "Israeli", while "retros" view themselves first and foremost as "Jews." The depth of this gap, which is ripping Israeli society into two distinct camps, is precisely what has prevented the hopes of many, that the Rabin killing would bring in its path national unity and a reduction in societal violence. But in actuality, what happened was the opposite: The murder deepened the gap and fanned the flames of the culture war. A clear expression of this can be found surrounding the annual fight regarding the Rabin memorials. One camp uses Rabin as an icon, views him as a prime example of what our society should look like. Therefore, this group wants to remember Rabin's legacy of peace with the Palestinians as his primary contribution. Legacy? What legacy? The other camp, on the other hand, says, "Rabin's legacy? No such thing." This camp tries hard to erase the memory of the late prime minister. This is the reason that one school principle has proposed marking the murders of Rabin and former (right-wing) minister Rehavam Zeevi on the same day. The fact that one was murdered by a Jewish citizen of Israel and the other by a Palestinian enemy means nothing to them. The fact that the first tried hard to create peace with the Palestinians while the second wanted to transfer them out of Israel is irrelevant. In her opinion "both were government ministers, and both were murdered in the same month." Dreams and nightmares In Turkey, there is a clock in every city with its hands frozen to mark the death of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. In Israel, the deep split between the retros and the metros has brought us to a situation to where almost half of all Israelis can't remember the date of the murder, and many feel the memorials to Rabin are "over the top." Everything connected to Rabin, his image, his legacy, the causes of his murder and memorials to him – these all point to a huge gap between these two camps, fighting amongst us about what the future will look like. And because the dreams of one camp are the nightmares of the other, many people are not prepared for any compromise, and would like to decide this war at all cost. Even if it must be done with a gun.

One murder, two cultures

Rabin assassination deepened Israel's culture war