How Did ‘Peace’ Become a Dirty Word in Israel?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/opinion/yitzhak-rabin-israel-peace.html

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On Saturday night, tens of thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s main public square, as they do every Nov. 4, to remember the man who was murdered in that spot in 1995 and whose name the square carries: Yitzhak Rabin.

But even though more than two decades have passed since the Saturday when Mr. Rabin, who was then the prime minister, was shot and killed, Israelis have still not recovered from the trauma.

In the weeks before this year’s rally in Mr. Rabin’s memory, there was a debate over the former prime minister’s true legacy and the proper way to commemorate his assassination. (In fact, this debate has become something of annual Israeli tradition.)

Mr. Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish fanatic who opposed his government’s peace policy with the Palestinians. In the early 1990s, Mr. Rabin began a process of negotiations with the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat that resulted in the Palestinian Authority taking over some of the West Bank.

For that reason, there are many Israelis — supporters of the peace process on the left — who expect Mr. Rabin’s annual memorials to reflect his quest for peace. On the other hand, Mr. Rabin was the prime minister of all Israelis, including the many who opposed his policies. These Israelis expect a memorial to Mr. Rabin to be sober and unified, a call for civility and a denunciation of political extremism — not a political event in support of the policies they still oppose.

The debate was especially fierce this year because the organizers of the event — the Commanders for Israel’s Security and the Darkenu movement, both of which call for separation of Israel from the Palestinians — decided to hold the event under the theme “We Remember: We are One People.” In promoting the rally, they initially avoided the words “murder” and “peace” — and the list of speakers included Israelis who were fierce opponents of Mr. Rabin’s policies.

The left was furious, accusing the organizers — as one member of the Knesset from the Labor Party put it — of presenting the rally as if Mr. Rabin had “died peacefully in his bed” rather than been killed by a right-wing extremist.

Why would the organizers want to take “peace” out of the rally? Their reasoning was solid: The more the commemoration was about Mr. Rabin’s controversial policies, the less it would unify Israelis. So they made a choice: eliminate the “peace” to gain the participation of the right wing, which opposes the peace process prescribed by Mr. Rabin and his followers on the left who want to see Israel’s settlements in the West Bank withdrawn.

It was the right choice. It was also a troubling one.

Most Israelis haven’t believed in peace for a long time. And by “peace” in this context, I mean what Mr. Rabin wanted: a concrete and stable peace with their Palestinian neighbors. Most Israelis still support negotiations for peace, but only a small minority believes that negotiations will lead to peace “in the coming years.” As a realistic goal, peace is out of fashion, and for good reasons: Both Israelis and Palestinians refuse to make the compromises necessary for a lasting peace.

But it’s one thing to realistically assess that peace is not coming anytime soon, and quite another to forgo the ideal of peace. It is one thing to realize that holding a politically charged rally is not a good way to preserve Mr. Rabin’s memory, and it’s quite another to act as though mentioning a desire for peace in the public square is unacceptable.

How has “peace” become such a politically charged term? Jews include the word “shalom,” or peace, in their daily prayers; they use the word as a greeting regularly. But in the political arena, many Israelis are no longer willing to say that peace is their goal for their country, because they fear that saying so will make them sound fainthearted or deluded or — God forbid! — like leftists.

Israelis have developed two strategies as they shun the politically poisonous word “peace.” The right generally avoids the subject entirely. Since it believes peace is not a realistic goal, there is nothing to talk about. For its part, the left has replaced “peace” with more technical terms, like “separation” or “political settlement.” This is the way for leftist leaders to indicate to their base that peace is still their goal, while not scaring away potential voters who are skeptical.

Both these strategies make sense, and both make Israel a lesser place.

The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel proclaims: “We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness.” Indeed, peace with Israel’s neighbors is an ideal that our leaders have never abandoned. “Israel never ceased to call for a true peace of mutual respect between our neighbors and ourselves,” said Prime Minister Golda Meir of the Labor Party in 1969. In 1978, upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for Israel’s peace accords with Egypt, Prime Minister Menachem Begin of the Likud Party said that there is “no mission in life more sacred” than working for peace.

Our leaders should go back to this habit of reminding Israel and the world that Israel’s goal is peace. “Peace” should be a usable, mainstream word, and an aspiration that everyone shares.

That won’t be easy. The left has gotten used to using “peace” — whether by this name or by other uninspiring euphemisms — as a weapon against the right. The right has gotten used to using “peace” as weapon against the left, which, they say, chases a pipe dream. But peace shouldn’t be a political weapon for either side. It should be an ideal and a goal dear to all Israelis who remember Mr. Rabin’s murder with horror and sorrow.