Subscribe to Print Edition | Sun., November 16, 2008 Cheshvan 18, 5769 | | Israel Time: 01:52 (EST+7)
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My lot is not with yours
By Yossi Sarid
Tags: Israel News

Poor Yitzhak Rabin, whose memory's body was desecrated this week: Who hasn't ripped off one of his limbs, amputated an arm or a leg of his heritage, and scurried off to his lair to gnaw on it. Suddenly, they were all his sons; all of them are the heirs to his way.

Everything is already prepared for the 14th memorial day. The infrastructure has already been laid for wall-to-wall national agreement: There has been a re-ratification of the biblical commandment "Thou shalt not kill" in general, and "Thou shalt not kill a prime minister" in particular - this is absolutely forbidden. And it is also forbidden to harm the soldiers of Israel - we shall not condone this on any account - and Jewish settlers in the West Bank will just have to content themselves with harassing Palestinians. There has never been such a broad consensus here, based on such unique, profound and daring insights. The day will yet come when we shall be a light unto the nations, despite everything.

The least of speakers is also ready: After the elections and after the big reconciliation, Benjamin Netanyahu will be invited to the podium and the microphone. The darkness of forgetting descends: The balcony in Zion Square in Jerusalem from which Netanyahu and others incited right-wing protesters against Rabin is forgotten, and the black mock coffin in the streets of Ra'anana is forgotten, and the rabbis who ruled that shedding his blood would be permissible and those who stood in that blood before it was spilled are forgotten.
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The time for reconciliation is here, and the nation is aflutter with anticipation. The president of the state has already raised his voice in prayer - next year in the reunited square, at a rally for e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e, save the date. Like a high priest he wafted intoxicating fragrances over the altar of the staircase.

And two decent people presented themselves for duty this week, to polish the king for the day - Benny Begin scrubbing the candidate's back and Dan Meridor washing his belly, or the other way around. Belly-back, belly-back, and who will shampoo his head?

For the head has not changed, nor has the hat that is burning on it. Indeed, "we have all matured," as the old-new Likud hopefuls have said, but the man is the same man and his philosophy is the same philosophy. It is not only about the past - what has happened here during the past 13 years - that we are weeping and reckoning. The weeping is for generations and the reckoning is for the future: There will be no negotiations with the Palestinians, because there will be no negotiations about Jerusalem; and there will be no negotiations with Syria, because Rabin's "deposit" is null and void, invalid and nonexistent; we will be forever screwed. Begin can live with this, with "an economic peace," and how will Meridor live, and how will we?

Say what you will about me, it doesn't bother me. Say that I am sick - afflicted with incurable hostility and bitterness; say that I am irredeemably quarrelsome and cantankerous; call me a fossil, an obsolete dinosaur; go and make up with the person who will perpetuate the occupation for you, who will bestialize your country, where little enough that is human remains; my lot is not with yours.

When the spirit of the God of reconciliation wafted from the stage and hovered over the face of the square, when even the son, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, spoke in the renewed spirit, I nevertheless identified there one, orphaned slogan - We shall not forget and we shall not forgive - which until recently everyone carried, and which has disappeared. And it really doesn't bother me - in the name of the past and for the sake of the future - to be one of the last of the non-forgivers and the non-forgetters.
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