Yitzhak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin (Hebrew: יִצְחָק רַבִּין ‎, 1 March 1922 – 4 November 1995) was an Israeli politician and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel with two periods in office, from 1974 until 1977 and from 1992 until his assassination in 1995. In 1994 during his second term Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize together with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat, for their efforts towards peace which culminated in the Oslo Accords. He was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a right-wing Israeli radical who had strenuously opposed Rabin's signing of the Oslo Accords. He was the first native-born Prime Minister of Israel, the only Prime Minister to be assassinated and the second to die in office after Levi Eshkol.
Yitzhak Rabin was born in Jerusalem in 1922 to Nehemiah and Rosa, two pioneers of the Third Aliyah. Nehemiah Rubitzov, born in a small Ukrainian town in 1886, lost his father when he was a child and helped to support his family from a young age. At the age of 18, he emigrated to the United States, where he joined the Poalei Zion (Workers of Zion) Party and changed his surname to Rabin. In 1917 he went to Palestine with Hagdud Haivri (Jewish Legion) volunteers, determined to settle in Israel. Yitzhak Rabin's mother, Rosa Cohen, was born in 1890 in Mohilev in Belarus. Her father, a rabbi, opposed the Zionist movement, but sent Rosa to a Christian high school for girls in Homel, enabling her to acquire a broad general education. From a young age, Rosa took an interest in political and social causes. In 1919, she sailed to Palestine on the S.S. Ruslan, the bellwether of the Third Aliyah. After working on a kibbutz on the shores of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), she moved to Jerusalem.[1]
Rabin grew up in Tel Aviv, where the family relocated when he was one year old. In 1940, he graduated with distinction from the Kadoori Agricultural High School and hoped to be an irrigation engineer. However, apart from several courses in military strategy in the United Kingdom later on, he never pursued a degree.
Rabin married in 1948, during the Israeli War of Independence. Leah was working at the time as a reporter for a Palmach newspaper. They had two children, Dahlia and Yuval. After Rabin's assassination, Dahlia Rabin-Pelossof went into politics. In 2001, she was Israel's Deputy Minister of Defense.

In 1992 Rabin was elected as chairman of the Israeli Labor Party. In the elections that same year his party, strongly focusing on the popularity of its leader, managed to win a clear victory over the Likud of incumbent Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. However the Left bloc in the Knesset won an overall narrow majority, facilitated by the disqualification of small nationalist parties that did not manage to pass the electoral threshold. Rabin formed the first Labour led government in fifteen years, supported by a coalition of left wing parties and Shas, a Mizrahi orthodox religious party.
Rabin played a leading role in the signing of the Oslo Accords, which created the Palestinian Authority and granted it partial control over parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Prior to the signing of the accords, Rabin received a letter from PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat renouncing violence and officially recognizing Israel, and on the same day, September 9, 1993, Rabin sent Arafat a letter officially recognizing the PLO on (See: Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization letters of recognition.) During this term of office, Rabin also oversaw the signing of the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace (1994).
For his role in the creation of the Oslo Accords, Rabin was awarded the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres. The Accords greatly divided Israeli society, with some seeing Rabin as a hero for advancing the cause of peace and some seeing him as a traitor for giving away land rightfully belonging to Israel. Many Israelis on the right wing often blame him for Jewish deaths from the sharp increase in terror attacks since the signing of the Oslo accords. Also, Rabin's government was kept in office with the tacit support of Arab-Israeli parties in the Knesset.
Rabin was also awarded the 1994 Ronald Reagan Freedom Award by the late President's wife, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan. The award is only given to "those who have made monumental and lasting contributions to the cause of freedom worldwide," and who "embody President Reagan's lifelong belief that one man or woman truly can make a difference."

Jichak Rabin 1922. március 1-jén Jeruzsálemben született, orosz bevándorlók első gyermekeként, így annak a kevés izraeli vezetőnek az egyike, aki már Izraelben született. Élete kezdetében nem nagyon különbözött attót, amit arrafelé akár átlagos sorsnak is mondható. Később egyre felelősebb posztokat töltött be, először katonai, később diplomata, végül politikai területen. Az ország miniszterelnöke volt, amikor 1955. november 4-én, 73 éves korában merénylet áldozata lett. A világ keveset tudott róla, de az a kevés a XX. század legnagyobb egyéniségei közé emeli: a föld egyik legbékétlenebb régiójában lerakta egy történelmi megbékélés alapköveit...
Az őshaza nyomában
Mint annyian mások, az ő szülei is Oroszországból, illetve a későbbi Szovjetúnió területéről emigráltak. Voltak kivándorlók között olyanok, akik a zsidóellenesség, a cári Oroszországban nem ritka pogromok miatt, mások a cionista eszmék hatására hagyták el szűlővárosukat és mentek Palesztinába. És természetesen akadtak köztük olyanok is, mint Rabin anyja, akiket a véletlen sodort az angol mandátum területére.
Amikor Rabin erről ír, lefestve a jómódú polgárcsalád lányát, akit nagyapja, egy gazdag fakereskedő nevelt Pétervárott, elárulja, hogy anyja valójában az Egyesült Államokba készült és csak Ogyesszában változtatta meg elképzelését, amikor találkozott egy csapatnyi cionista fiatallal, akik éppen behajózni készültek a Palesztinába induló Rosslen hajóra.