25 Years Since the Assassination of Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin

YONIT LEVI, ANCHOR, CHANNEL 12 NEWS ISRAEL: And to think of that day — you know, Christiane, we all knew at the time, the months leading up to the assassinations, that the tensions were rising, the atmosphere was charged, the rhetoric used was extreme. But when we thought of an option of a political assassination, to us, it seemed foreign. And I think that’s why the event was so shocking and so profound, and it shook the Israeli psyche to the core. And I think that many Israelis would agree that those divisions that the assassination stemmed from, those divisions are still with us. The wound is very much open, that laceration of the Israeli society hasn’t healed.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And you know, we said, obviously, the anniversary is November 4th, but on the Jewish calendar, it is today, and we’ve seen Vice President Biden stand with Israel and mourn the loss of Yitzhak Rabin, and we’ve seen those messages from around the world. Just in terms of — just the basic thing that he gave his life for, which is peace with the policy of the two state solution. It’s like nowhere to be found right now. And there’s no great effort to even pretend to try to get it together.

LEVI: That is true. You know, the assassin, Yigal Amir, who shot Yitzhak Rabin in the back, shot the heart of democracy. And his aim was, as we all know, his aim was to stop the peace process on its tracks. And we’re sitting here a quarter of a century after, Christiane, and that — and we know that there is no peace and there is no process with the Palestinians and that I think the question that resonates over this day that that question of virtual history would we have peace had been lived? Obviously, the obstacles and the challenges were huge. Obviously Israelis experienced for many years after the Oslo Accords were signed from their perspective, a very dark period of terror attacks. And the more the attacks went on the — more the dwindling of the — of their support for the peace. But I think it’s so important to think of Yitzhak Rabin’s character today. He had that rare combination of being the Israeli found — one of the founding fathers of Israel, the hero of the 1967 war He didn’t come to peace from that perspective, from the liberal perspective, he was a pragmatist. And because of his sort of rough and gruff character, because Israel is trusted, and he was the one who could take them over that threshold and maybe convince them to make take the risks for peace. The left was never — the Israeli left never managed to replace him. I don’t know the answer. I don’t know if Rabin himself could have implemented the Oslo agreements. All of these challenges notwithstanding, what I do know is that with him gone, this became impossible.