NOVANEWS
Carmi Gillon, Shin Bet head during the time of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, warns that price-tag incidents could lead to assassination attempts on prime ministers • Netanyahu: Rabin took risks, but he never closed his eyes to the dangers.
Israel Hayom
“Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by a Jew, a despicable murderer, whose hands did not tremble as he fired the deadly shot. It is important that we all go back and say again and again — there is no clemency for the murderer and he can never have any,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday during a Knesset ceremony marking 18 years since Rabin’s assassination.
“The terrible shock from the murder serves as a warning sign that we must wave before the entire nation: our sons, daughters, grandchildren and future generations. The murder was not just an assassination of democracy and a severe blow to the heart of the nation, but a great personal tragedy, because Rabin was a special individual: moral and firmly attached to his roots, both shy yet opinionated, an analytical redhead, very Israeli, a Sabra down to the bone — yet also receptive to the changing world around us. Above everything he had a deep concern for the fate of our country, for its well being and its security. When a man like that is killed, something dies within us as well,” Netanyahu said.
“Rabin took risks [in negotiating with the Palestinians] but he never closed his eyes to the dangers. We are working to realize the chance for peace. Rabin worked to achieve peace with our neighbors and we are obligated to reach that goal today. We do not want a binational state. You make peace with your enemies, but with enemies that want peace [not with] enemies who do not want peace and seek to wipe us off the map.”
In her speech at the remembrance ceremony on Mount Herzl on Wednesday, the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s daughter Dalia called on Netanyahu to make bold decisions in the peace talks with the Palestinians.
“The Oslo Accords were ahead of their time, it was an agreement born out of a belief that we must give [peace] a chance. I genuinely hope that we will get a government which does not prefer avoiding responsibility and dealing [with the Palestinians],” she said.
President Shimon Peres warned that the current situation was not sustainable. “You make peace with your enemies and those who delude themselves into thinking the status quo between us and the Palestinians can continue, may become a victim of their own illusion,” Peres said.
“If there is one lesson to be learned, and we would be wise to learn, it is that the political sphere cannot be abandoned to extremist fringes. We must make sure that our leaders act on their promises, but we must also protect those leaders,” Opposition leader MK Shelly Yachimovich said.
Science and Technology Minister Yaakov Peri, who was head of the Shin Bet until six months before the Rabin assassination, said: “Israeli society and the education system faces a serious challenge — to turn the assassination into a warning sign for society as a whole.”
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein said, “18 years have passed and the murder has gone from a personal event to a historic one that is engraved in the national consciousness.”
Meanwhile, the Shin Bet head during the time of Rabin’s assassination, Carmi Gillon, warned on Wednesday that “price-tag ‘incidents’ could lead to assassination attempts on prime ministers in the future.”
Speaking at the Holon Technical Institute, Gillon said: “Today it is called ‘price-tag’ because currently there is no real threat of returning land [to the Palestinians], but this is where the ideals for the next assassin of a prime minister who chooses to return land are formed.”
Gillon criticized the lack of punishment for price-tag assailants.
“When graffiti is scrawled on a monastery in Latrun it upsets the Protestant world, and we cry about anti-Semitism? We bring about our own demise … they say the price-taggers cannot be dealt with because they are children and the law does not allow it. But the Shin Bet is allowed to deter,” Gillon said.
