Speech at the Funeral of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin
(November 6, 1995)
Leah, to the Rabin children and grandchildren and other
family members, President Weizman, Acting Prime Minister Peres, members
of the Israeli Government and the Knesset, distinguished leaders from
the Middle East and around the world, especially His Majesty King Hussein
for those remarkable and wonderful comments and President Mubarak for
taking this historic trip here, and to all the people of Israel.
The American people mourn with you in the loss of your
leader. And I mourn with you, for he was my partner and friend. Every
moment we shared was a joy because he was a good man and an inspiration
because he was also a great man.
Leah, I know that too many times in the life of this
country you were called upon to comfort and console the mothers and
the fathers, the husbands and the wives, the sons and the daughters
who lost their loved ones to violence and vengeance. You gave them strength.
Now, we here and millions of people all around the world, in all humility
and honor, offer you our strength. May God comfort you among all the
mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
Yitzhak Rabin lived the history of Israel. Through
every trial and triumph, the struggle for independence, the wars for
survival, the pursuit of peace, and all he served on the front lines,
this son of David and of Solomon took up arms to defend Israel's freedom
and laid down his life to secure Israel's future.
He was a man completely without pretense, as all of
his friends knew. I read that in 1949, after the War of Independence,
David Ben-Gurion sent him to represent Israel at the armistice talks
at Rhodes, and he had never before worn a necktie and did not know how
to tie the knot. So the problem was solved by a friend who tied it for
him before he left and showed him how to preserve the knot simply by
loosening the tie and pulling it over his head. Well, the last time
we were together, not 2 weeks ago, he showed up for a black-tie event
on time but without the black tie. And so he borrowed a tie, and I was
privileged to straighten it for him. It is a moment I will cherish as
long as I live.
To him, ceremonies and words were less important than
actions and deeds. Six weeks ago, the King and President Mubarak will
remember, we were at the White House for signing the Israel-Palestinian
agreement. And a lot of people spoke. I spoke; the King spoke; Chairman
Arafat spoke; President Mubarak spoke; our Foreign Ministers all spoke.
And finally Prime Minister Rabin got up to speak, and he said, "First,
the good news: I am the last speaker." But he also understood the
power of words and symbolism. "Take a look at the stage,"
he said in Washington, "the King of Jordan, the President of Egypt,
Chairman Arafat, and us, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of
Israel, on one platform. Please take a good, hard look. The sight you
see before you was impossible, was unthinkable just 3 years ago. Only
poets dreamt of it. And to our great pain, soldier and civilian went
to their deaths to make this moment possible." Those were his words.
Today, my fellow citizens of the world, I ask all of
you to take a good, hard look at this picture. Look at the leaders from
all over the Middle East and around the world who have journeyed here
today for Yitzhak Rabin and for peace. Though we no longer hear his
deep and booming voice, it is he who has brought us together again here
in word and deed for peace.
Now, it falls to all of us who love peace and all of
us who loved him to carry on the struggle to which he gave life and
for which he gave his life. He cleared the path, and his spirit continues
to light the way. His spirit lives on in the growing peace between Israel
and her neighbors. It lives in the eyes of the children, the Jewish
and the Arab children who are leaving behind a past of fear for a future
of hope. It lives on in the promise of true security.
So let me say to the people of Israel, even in your
hour of darkness, his spirit lives on, and so you must not lose your
spirit. Look at what you have accomplished: making a once barren desert
bloom, building a thriving democracy in a hostile terrain, winning battles
and wars and now winning the peace, which is the only enduring victory.
Your Prime Minister was a martyr for peace, but he
was a victim of hate. Surely we must learn from his martyrdom that if
people cannot let go of the hatred of their enemies, they risk sowing
the seeds of hatred among themselves.
I ask you, the people of Israel, on behalf of my Nation
that knows its own long litany of loss, from Abraham Lincoln to President
Kennedy to Martin Luther King, do not let that happen to you.
In the Knesset, in your homes, in your places of worship,
stay the righteous course. As Moses said to the children of Israel when
he knew he would not cross over into the Promised Land, "Be strong
and of good courage, fear not for God will go with you. He will not
fail you. He will not forsake you." President Weizman, Acting Prime
Minister Peres, to all the people of Israel, as you stay the course
of peace, I make this pledge: Neither will America forsake you.
Legend has it that in every generation of Jews from
time immemorial, a just leader emerged to protect his people and show
them the way to safety. Prime Minister Rabin was such a leader. He knew
as he declared to the world on the White House lawn 2 years ago that
the time had come, in his words, "to begin a new reckoning in the
relations between people, between parents tired of war, between children
who will not know war." Here in Jerusalem, I believe with perfect
faiths that he was leading his people to that promised land.
This week, Jews all around the world are studying the
Torah portion in which God tests the faith of Abraham, patriarch of
the Jews and the Arabs. He commands Abraham to sacrifice Yitzhak. "Take
your son, the one you love, Yitzhak." As we all know, as Abraham
in loyalty to God was about to kill his son, God spared Yitzhak. Now,
God tests our faith even more terribly, for he has taken our Yitzhak.
But Israel's covenant with God, for freedom, for tolerance,
for security, for peace, that covenant must hold. That covenant was
Prime Minister Rabin's life's work. Now, we must make it his lasting
legacy. His spirit must live on in us.
The Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for mourning, never
speaks of death but often speaks of peace. In its closing words, "May
our hearts find a measure of comfort and our souls the eternal touch
of hope." "Oseh shalom bimromov hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu ve'al
kol Yisrael, ve'imru amen." And shalom, chaver.
Sources: Public Papers of the President |