Yitzhak Rabin; Hero, Traitor, or Dupe

What I have to say about the late Yitzhak Rabin will be shocking to many readers, so be warned. If you are unwilling to hear any unfavorable judgment of Rabin, stop right here. The reason for shock is that Rabin has become, in the eyes and minds of Jews and non-Jews alike, the equivalent of a Christian saint. You cannot say anything negative about Yitzhak Rabin. Not a word of criticism is permissible. Actually, there's only capacity for adulation.

I believe that it was the unspeakable, evil act of his assassination that stimulated the beatification of Rabin. At his funeral, President Clinton named him a "martyr for peace", King Hussein of Jordan called him a "soldier of peace", and Madeleine Albright wrote in 2003 that "the space that Rabin filled remains empty", by which I take her to mean that one so exceptional is hard if not impossible to replace. Bob Rae apparently would agree, noting that "Yitzhak Rabin's courage will have to find its successors in our own time". Rabin's sad, untimely death and its origin has elevated him to martyrdom. Had he lived and contested his policies through the then forthcoming election, it is most likely that he and the Labour Party would have been defeated. I believe that would have been the outcome because Shimon Peres lost that election, even with the political advantage of an outpouring of public anger and sympathy following the assassination of Rabin.

Yigal Amir, the man who murdered Yitzhak Rabin, had no remorse for his terrible deed. That is because he believed that Rabin was a traitor and that therefore he, Amir, had spared Israel from catastrophe. That is utter rubbish. Anyone who knows what Rabin had done over the course of his career knows that Amir's view (and those of his ilk) is preposterous. On more than one occasion Rabin's military acumen was instrumental is staving off disaster for Israel. No, he was not a traitor, but neither was he a hero. In fact, it is my belief that he can best be described as a dupe.

What do I mean by a dupe? A dupe is defined as a victim of deception. Yes, he was to some extent a victim of deception by Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin. But he was a willing victim, a helpful dupe. This aspect of willingness can be demonstrated by his role in bringing to Israel the devastation of Oslo, by which Arafat and thousands of his thugs were brought into the heart of Israel and, amazingly, were actually armed by Israel.

It was a sign of willing deception, or self-deception, that Rabin went along with Peres and Beilin, who had begun secret talks in Oslo without his prior approval and before even informing Rabin. Peres' deputy, Yossi Beilin, and Arafat's man, Ahmad Qurei, sent a couple of Israeli academics to Oslo to secretly negotiate on behalf of the Israeli government and Arafat. Peres only told Rabin about these talks after they had taken place in Oslo. Efraim Karsh, in his book Arafat's War, reports that Rabin was shocked when Peres argued as follows; "Why should we keep [Arafat] in Tunisia, making trouble from there? Let him be on the spot in Gaza." Rabin's initial reaction to this proposition was that "it was like bringing your enemy as a guest to a party". Nevertheless, although taken aback, Rabin gave his cautious approval. The appropriate action for a prime minister whose foreign minister had taken measures behind his back should have been dismissal, or at least reprimand, not "cautious approval". A co-operative dupe? Of course.

Rabin justified his reason for going along with the Oslo plan and saving Arafat -- remember, Arafat was at his lowest ebb politically and financially after backing Saddam Hussein's attack on Kuwait -- was because he had concluded there was no other Palestinian with whom he could deal or negotiate. Even if that were true, (and there's much room for debate on this claim) the question remains; who exactly was Rabin accepting as a negotiating partner?

Arafat had a history that should have told him all he needed to know about the potential "reliability" of this negotiating partner. Mayhem and destruction was Arafat's legacy wherever he had been. He had betrayed King Hussein of Jordan, who took military means to oust him from that country. Hafez al-Assad, while touting him as the Palestinians' saviour, kicked him out of Syria. He undermined Lebanese sovereignty, and it was Israel that did the job of expulsion for them. As for Tunis, Yitzhak Rabin saved them from following this pattern of good riddance by offering Arafat the Oslo peace deal when he needed it most.

But that was not the sum total of the Arafat record. Arafat had always claimed that the Palestinians' land stretched from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea-- from the river to the sea is a Palestinian slogan -- and this was no secretly-held closet belief. Arafat held himself to be a present-day Saladin, the legendary warrior who defeated the Crusaders, and since Israel is held by many Arabs to be a neocrusader state, the intent was clear. Moreover, the Palestinian National Covenant, which was not denounced as promised at the time of the signing of the Oslo Declaration of Principles, (and is still pretty much intact to this day), includes Article 10 which insists that armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine, and for the Palestinians the meaning of "armed struggle" was always terrorism, ie., attacks directed against the most vulnerable, such as children, athletes, and airline passengers.

Faisal Husseini, one who some nominate to be considered a moderate Palestinian, characterized the program for peace that Arafat had in mind as follows, "When we ask all Palestinian forces and factions to regard the Oslo Accord and other arrangements as temporary measures, or phased goals, this means that we are baiting the Israelis or duping them"(emphasis mine). And clearly, Rabin fell for the deception. One only has to listen to the words Rabin spoke during his very last speech to see the extent of his self-delusion:

I want to say bluntly, that we have found a partner for peace among the Palestinians as well: the PLO, which was an enemy, and has ceased to engage in terrorism. Without partners for peace, there can be no peace. We will demand that they do their part for peace, just as we will do our part for peace....
It was an astonishing assertion in the light of repeated terrorist attacks post-Oslo, which Rabin brushed off as the work of the enemies of peace not that of his partners for peace. Arafat and the PLO he somehow absolved. Since he took that to be the case and since he either was convinced or tried to convince the public that the PLO "ceased to engage in terrorism", he refused to demand that they Ado their part as he had promised. Instead, he would re-iterate after each horrific homicide attack that he would not bow to the enemies of peace, that terror would not inhibit the peace process, and that "for Israel, there is no path that is without pain" (to quote his last speech once more). I must concede that Husseini was right; the Palestinians were successfully duping the Israelis, specifically its leader at the helm, the prime minister of Israel.

Once Rabin had persuaded himself of the rightness of Oslo, he was determined to push it through the Knesset at any cost, even if it meant undemocratic, dishonest practice. The Oslo deal was able to receive a bare one vote majority in the Knesset with the "purchase" of two votes from two opposition members. One received a Volvo and the other got a deputy minister's job. Bad enough! But how does a Jewish state pass a measure of such great risk to the Jewish public without a Jewish majority? Even that corrupted majority was passed only with the inclusion of 5 votes from Arab members of the Knesset, some of whom had openly spoken in favour of the destruction of Israel.

Simple majorities are often not sufficient for critical measures in democratic societies. In its earliest stage of representative government, the province of Canada required a double majority to pass laws, that is a majority of French and a majority of English. And rightly so, because the two societies had distinctly different interests! The US needs a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress for amendments to its constitution, plus 3/4 of the states endorsing the measure, not half of the states. And the US senate must count on 60 votes not 50 (or half) to get important measures through. But for Rabin neither honesty nor justice nor the Jewish components' wishes was his criterion in his overwhelming desire to prove that his alliance with the arch terrorist would stand. It stood. And the more than 1700 lives that have been lost since then by Israeli-armed Palestinian terrorists owe much to that commitment.

Jacque Parizeau's "Jewish" Offspring

October 30 is the tenth anniversary of the Quebec referendum when the NO side won by a hair, only by roughly 1% of the vote. It is also the anniversary of the address by the premier of Quebec, Jacques Parizeau, to the crowd of disappointed separatists—some crying, some fuming, some numb— with his now famous explanation for that loss. “It's true we have been defeated,” he told them, “but basically by what? By money and the ethnic vote”.

That statement was a shock to many people, but more so to Jews in Canada, because it suggested that Parizeau was targeting the Jews of Montreal who voted almost 100% against separation. The combination of money and ethnicity appeared to be a euphemism for Jews.

A couple of years after the referendum had taken place, I accidentally learned that Parizeau himself had a very close personal connection to Jews. In sum, and to my amazement, it turns out that Parizeau’s two children are Jews, if only in accordance with halachic interpretation.

My story begins one evening when my husband and I were invited to meet Irene, the bride of a widower friend of ours named Peter. Irene is a stunningly attractive woman, a very successful business woman, vibrant and full of energy for a woman who had passed the age of seventy. Or so I learned over cocktails at her charming home in Florida.

In the course of our conversations, having learned that my husband and I were Canadians, Irene began to ask me questions about Jacques Parizeau, about the Parti Quebecois, and about the referendum. She wasn’t merely raising questions, she seemed to know a great deal about matters concerning Quebec. So much so, that I was amazed. How come, I wondered, when most Americans know practically nothing about Canadian politics and can rarely name the Prime Minister of Canada, Irene was cognizant of the premier of a Canadian province and much more. I put that question to Irene. It was then that she told me this incredible and interesting story.

Irene and her cousin Alice were young, Jewish Poles when Hitler invaded Poland. Together they averted the horrors of the concentration camps and survived by passing themselves off as Christian girls. That Irene could successfully so disguise herself was not too surprising, at least on the basis of her blond, blue-eyed features. I presumed that her cousin was similarly endowed. When the war was over the two of them made their way to Paris. Irene had expectations to migrate to the United States because her brother had fortunately been stranded there while working on the 1939 New York World’s Fair and was by then an American. Her cousin at that point not was eligible for sponsorship by her brother.

In any case Alice enrolled in the Sorbonne where she flourished and where she met a Canadian who asked her to marry him. He arranged for her to follow him to Canada, which she did. However, she decided not to marry that original admirer, but instead she met and married Jacques Parizeau, a young, bright student of economics.

Having seen and heard Parizeau on that fateful night when he blamed money and ethnics, I had to ask the obvious question. “Did Parizeau know that Alice was Jewish?” Of course, I was assured. And do their son and daughter know that their mother, who had died in 1990, was a Jew? Again, Irene stated positively that they did, because they were in contact with Irene and her own children, their cousins, who definitely identified themselves as Jews. After all, said Irene, we are Alice’s only remaining family. Alice’s family died in Bergen-Belson.

Does Irene’s account check out with official biographies of Alice Parizeau? Not if you look only at French versions which never mention her Jewish origin. One English encyclopedia includes the information that she was a “Jewish writer”. In fact, Alice Parizeau had a brilliant career as civil servant, journalist, novelist, famous in her own right, and was the recipient of many honours, including the Order of Canada.

But there seems to be some confusion in the French bios about her history through the war years. It is claimed in these that she was interred in Bergen-Belson after the Germans invaded Warsaw and that she survived that internment. The English bio says only that her father, a wealthy industrialist, died in Bergen-Belson. There is no mention here that Alice herself was sent to the concentration camp.

Whatever the truth about her whereabouts in those terrible years, there is no doubt that Alice Poznanska Parizeau was born a Jew. I believe that she abandoned her Jewish roots in the course of her life. I say that because I learned that when she died there was a very prominent and public funeral held in Montreal under the auspices of the Catholic church. That suggests to me that her children’s upbringing was in all likelihood in the Catholic tradition. Nevertheless, Jacques Parizeau had enough exposure through Irene and her family to be sensitive that language that reflects hostility to Jews can do harm, and he therefore should have known how his attack on “money and ethnics” might be seen by Jews in Canada.