“Rabin in his Own Words” a Martyr for Peace
By Skip Sheffield
Learn everything you might want to know about the late
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the documentary “Rabin: In His Own
Words.” You will also learn about the formative years of the State of Israel in
this award-winning film by Erez Laufer.
“There is nothing harder than defining oneself,” Rabin muses
at the start of this compilation of home movies, videos and interviews. Rabin
was born in 1922 in Israel. He had intended to be a simple farmer after
studying agriculture in college. He did his mandatory military service from 1936-1939,
and in 1940 he met Moshe Dayan, who saw something in Rabin Yitzhak could not
see himself. So began a 27-year military career in which Rabin rose through the
ranks to become commander of the Israeli Defense Force. Like American Gen.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Rabin was a military man who hated war. He became
Israel’s first native-born Prime Minister in 1974 after having served as
Israel’s Ambassador to the USA. He was re-elected in 1992, during which time he
engineered his greatest achievement: a peace treaty with the Palestine
Liberation Organization. It won Rabin the Nobel Peace Prize but it also cost
him his life. He was assassinated in 1995 by one of his own; a zealous Jew who
could not tolerate the idea of peaceful coexistence with Palestinians.
“Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of
God,” it says in Matthew 5:9. Rabin was not a religious man, but surely he was
a son of God.
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