Skipping Rabin Day, Days Before the Election?
Remembering Rabin, Five Days Before We Vote
Today Israeli schools are required to stop and talk about democracy and political violence. Not all of them will. This year, that matters more than usual.
Thirty-one years ago, on a Saturday night in Tel Aviv, a Jewish Israeli shot Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the end of a rally for peace. Two years later, the Knesset turned the shock into law. Since then, every 12 Cheshvan the flag flies at half-mast, a state ceremony is held at Mount Herzl, and every school in the country is meant to set aside time for Rabin’s legacy, for the value of democracy and for the danger violence poses to a society. This year the Hebrew date falls on a Friday, so the observance moves to today, Thursday.
The law is clear, but the classroom is a different story. In some schools today there will be a candle, a song, a discussion and a teacher who prepared for it. In others the day will get a five-minute mention over the loudspeaker. Entire networks of schools, most visibly in the Haredi sector, have long chosen not to mark it at all. In many places it has become a “left-wing day” or “someone else’s day,” something to get through quietly instead of to learn from. A national memorial day that only part of the nation observes says something about us, and what it says is not comfortable.
This year the calendar raises the stakes. On Tuesday, October 27, Israelis go to the polls. The campaign is loud and bitter, and much of it is shouted rather than argued. In that atmosphere, Rabin Day is not a history lesson. It is a warning label. It reminds us that the murder in Kings of Israel Square did not come out of nowhere. Before the shots came the posters, the chants and the language that turned a political rival into a traitor. Words prepared the ground. Children who hear adults talk about “enemies” and “traitors” at the dinner table this week deserve at least one hour in school where someone shows them where that road can lead.
So what is worth remembering today, of all days?
First, that disagreement is the point of democracy, not a threat to it. Rabin’s opponents had every right to oppose the Oslo process, to protest and to vote against him. The line was crossed when the opinion became more important than democracy and human life.
Second, that democracy is a set of habits, not just a set of institutions. it starts in a classroom where a student can say an unpopular thing and still be heard, and in a family group chat where people argue without dehumanizing each other.
Third, that responsibility belongs to everyone who holds a microphone, whether a politician, a broadcaster, an influencer or a teacher. The words we use in a campaign don’t disappear on election night.
There is also a larger lesson about time. Israeli life rushes from one emergency to the next. The news cycle lasts hours and memory lasts days. We are very good at being present and not always as good at keeping perspective. Holding on to the past isn’t nostalgia, and it isn’t an argument for one party or another. It is a way of seeing the present clearly.
This is exactly where education earns its place. A school that marks Rabin Day seriously, without turning it into partisan propaganda and without hiding from the hard questions, gives its students a tool they will need far beyond Tuesday’s vote: the ability to hold strong opinions and still treat the other side as fellow citizens.
If you are a teacher, a parent or a youth counselor, today is a good day to ask young people one simple question: what is the difference between fighting for your beliefs and fighting the people who disagree with you? Their answers may be the most important civics lesson of this election.
On Tuesday, vote. Today, remember why that vote is worth protecting.
