Yitzhak Rabin (; , ; 1 March 1922 – 4 November 1995) was an Israeli statesman and general who was the prime minister of Israel, having served from 1974 to 1977 and again from 1992 until his assassination in 1995. He was the first prime minister to have been born in the region of Palestine, at the time under British control.
Rabin was born in Jerusalem to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and was raised in a Labor Zionist household. He learned agriculture in school and excelled as a student. As a teenager, he joined the Palmach, the commando force of the Yishuv. He eventually rose through its ranks to become its chief of operations during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In late 1948, he joined the newly formed Israel Defense Forces and continued to rise as a promising officer, with a 27-year career as a professional soldier. He ultimately attained the rank of Rav Aluf, the most senior rank in the Israeli Defense Force (often translated as lieutenant general). In the 1950s, Rabin helped shape the training doctrine of the IDF and he led its Operations Directorate from 1959 to 1963. He was appointed chief of the general staff in 1964 and oversaw Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Rabin served as Israel's ambassador to the United States from 1968 to 1973, during a period of deepening U.S.–Israel ties. He was appointed Prime Minister of Israel in 1974 after the resignation of Golda Meir. In his first term, Rabin signed the Sinai Interim Agreement and ordered the Entebbe raid. He resigned in 1977 in the wake of a financial scandal. Rabin was Israel's minister of defense for much of the 1980s, including during the outbreak of the First Intifada.
In 1992, Rabin was re-elected as prime minister on a platform embracing the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. He signed several historic agreements with the Palestinian leadership as part of the Oslo Accords. In 1994, Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize together with long-time political rival Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Rabin also signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994. In November 1995, he was assassinated by Yigal Amir, an extremist who opposed the terms of the Oslo Accords. Amir was convicted of Rabin's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Rabin 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. Rabin has become a symbol of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process.
Personal life Family background
Rabin was born at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine, on 1 March 1922, to Nehemiah (1886 – 1 December 1971) and Rosa (née Cohen; 1890 – 12 November 1937) Rabin, immigrants of the Third Aliyah, the third wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine from Europe. Nehemiah was born Nehemiah Rubitzov in the shtetl Sydorovychi near Ivankiv in the southern Pale of Settlement (present-day Ukraine). His father Menachem died when he was a boy, and Nehemiah worked to support his family from an early age. At the age of 18, he emigrated to the United States, settling initially in Chicago and then St. Louis. He joined the Poale Zion party and changed his surname to Rabin. In 1917, Nehemiah Rabin went to Palestine with a group of volunteers from the Jewish Legion during World War I.Twenty years without Rabin
Yitzhak's mother, Rosa Cohen, was born in 1890 in Mogilev in Belarus. Her father, a rabbi, opposed the Zionist movement and sent Rosa to a Christian high school for girls in Gomel, which gave her a broad general education. Early on, Rosa took an interest in political and social causes. In 1919, she traveled to Palestine on the steamship Ruslan. After working on a kibbutz on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, she moved to Jerusalem.Yitzhak Rabin – from soldier to Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dadalos
Rabin's parents met in Jerusalem during the 1920 Nebi Musa riots. They moved to Tel Aviv in 1923, settling on Chlenov Street near Jaffa. Nehemiah became a worker for the Palestine Electric Corporation and Rosa was an accountant and local activist. She became a member of the Tel Aviv City Council.Slater, pp. 27–28 The family moved again in 1931 to a two-room apartment on Hamagid Street in Tel Aviv.Slater, p. 34
Rabin had a younger sister, Rachel Rabin (1925-2026). She was among the pioneers of kibbutz Manara from its founding in 1943, and worked as an educator for decades.Rachel Rabin, sister of slain PM Yitzhak Rabin and prominent kibbutz educator, dies at 101
Early life and education Yitzhak (Isaac) Rabin grew up in Tel Aviv, where the family relocated when he was one year old. He enrolled in the Tel Aviv Beit Hinuch Leyaldei Ovdim (בית חינוך לילדי עובדים, "School House for Workers' Children") in 1928 and completed his studies there in 1935. The school taught the children agriculture as well as Zionism.Slater, pp. 28–29 Rabin mostly received good marks in school, but he was so shy that few people knew he was intelligent.Slater, p. 31
In 1935, Rabin enrolled at an agricultural school on kibbutz Givat Hashlosha that his mother founded. It was here in 1936 at the age of 14 that Rabin joined the Haganah and received his first military training, learning how to use a pistol and stand guard. He joined a socialist-Zionist youth movement, HaNoar HaOved.Slater, pp. 37, 39–40
In 1937, he enrolled at the two-year Kadoorie Agricultural High School. He excelled in a number of agriculture-related subjects but disliked studying English language—the language of the British "enemy".Slater, p. 41 He originally aspired to be an irrigation engineer, but his interest in military affairs intensified in 1938, when the ongoing Arab revolt worsened. A young Haganah sergeant named Yigal Allon, later a general in the IDF and prominent politician, trained Rabin and others at Kadoorie. Rabin finished at Kadoorie in August 1940.Slater, pp. 42–43 For part of 1939, the British closed Kadoorie, and Rabin joined Allon as a security guard at Kibbutz Ginosar until the school re-opened.Kurzman, p. 80 When he finished school, Rabin considered studying irrigation engineering on scholarship at the University of California, Berkeley, although he ultimately decided to stay and fight in Palestine.Kurzman, p. 81
Marriage and family Rabin married Leah Schlossberg during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Leah Rabin was working at the time as a reporter for a Palmach newspaper. They had two children, Dalia (born 19 March 1950) and Yuval (born 18 June 1955). Similar to the entire Israeli elite of the time, Rabin adhered to a secular-national understanding of Jewish identity, and was non-religious. American diplomat Dennis Ross described him as "the most secular Jew he had met in Israel".Dennis Ross. August 2004. The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. p. 91
Military career Palmach
In 1941, during his practical training at kibbutz Ramat Yohanan, Rabin joined the newly formed Palmach section of the Haganah, under the influence of Yigal Allon. Rabin could not yet operate a machine gun, drive a car, or ride a motorcycle, but Moshe Dayan accepted the new recruit.Kurzman, p. 82 The Palmach was formed as the elite strike force of the Haganah with British assistance as Axis forces approached Palestine. The first operation he participated in was assisting Allied forces in the Syria–Lebanon campaign against Vichy French forces during World War II (the same operation in which Dayan lost his eye) in June–July 1941. Palmach commando units infiltrated Vichy French-held territory and conducted sabotage operations ahead of the main Allied invasion. Rabin was part of a unit that infiltrated Lebanon and conducted telephone sabotage. As the youngest man in the unit, he was selected to climb the telephone poles and cut the wires.Slater, pp. 46–47My Brother Yitzhak
In 1942, Rabin participated in a British-run sabotage and demolition course. However, as Allied fortunes changed with the Second Battle of El Alamein, the British attempted to dismantle the Palmach. As a Palmachnik, Rabin and his men had to lie low to avoid arousing inquiry from the British administration. They spent most of their time farming, training secretly part-time.Kurzman, p. 88 They wore no uniforms and received no public recognition during this time.Slater, p. 50 In 1943, Rabin took command of a platoon at Kfar Giladi. He trained his men in modern tactics and how to conduct lightning attacks.Slater, p. 49
After the end of the war the relationship between the Yishuv and the British authorities became strained, especially with respect to the treatment of Jewish immigration. In October 1945 Rabin planned a Palmach raid on the Atlit detainee camp in which 208 Jewish illegal immigrants who had been interned there were freed. In 1946, he was arrested in Operation Agatha, a massive British operation against the leaders of the Jewish Establishment in the British Mandate of Palestine and the Palmach known as the "Black Sabbath", and detained for five months. After his release he became the commander of the second Palmach battalion and rose to the position of Chief Operations Officer of the Palmach in October 1947.
IDF service
During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Rabin directed Israeli operations in Jerusalem and fought the Egyptian army in the Negev. During the beginning of the war he was the commander of the Harel Brigade, which fought on the road to Jerusalem from the coastal plain, including the Israeli "Burma Road", as well as many battles in Jerusalem, such as securing the southern side of the city by recapturing kibbutz Ramat Rachel.
During the first truce Rabin commanded IDF forces on the beach of Tel Aviv confronting the Irgun during the tragic Altalena Affair. The Altalena ship carried volunteers from abroad coming to fight in War of Independence and large amounts of weapons and ammunition for the war. It was organized by Hillel Kook of the Irgun. The day after much of the contents were offloaded at Kfar Vitkin the ship was attacked at Ben Gurion's orders off the Tel Aviv shore, set on fire, later towed out to sea and sunk. Large number of volunteers were killed on board and after jumping in the sea. Rabin called the gun on shore "The Holy Gun". "Despite the tension and bloodshed, Begin went on the radio calling on members of the Irgun not to fight the IDF: Do not raise a hand against a brother, not even today. It is forbidden for a Hebrew weapon to be used against Hebrew fighters." This probably prevented the likelihood of civil war. Hillel Kook was arrested.
In the following period he was the deputy commander of Operation Danny, the largest scale operation to that point, which involved four IDF brigades. The cities of Ramle and Lydda were captured, as well as the major airport in Lydda, as part of the operation. Following the capture of the two towns there was an expulsion of their Arab population. Rabin signed the expulsion order, which included the following:
... 1. The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age. ... 2. Implement immediately.
Later, Rabin was chief of operations for the Southern Front and participated in the major battles ending the fighting there, including Operation Yoav and Operation Horev.
In the beginning of 1949 he was a member of the Israeli delegation to the armistice talks with Egypt that were held on the island of Rhodes. The result of the negotiations were the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which ended the official hostilities of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Following the demobilization at the end of the war he was the most senior (former) member of the Palmach that remained in the IDF.