Noam
This episode is sponsored by Jewish Lives, a prize-winning series of biographies from Yale University Press. To learn more about Yitzhak Rabin’s life, identity, and legacy, check out Yitzhak Rabin, Soldier Leader Statesman by Itamar Rabinovich at www.jewishlives.org. Use promo code RabinPod for 30% off. That’s R-A-B-I-N-P-O-D.
Hey! I’m Noam Weissman and you’re listening to Unpacking Israeli History, the podcast that takes a deep dive into some of the most intense, historically fascinating, and often misunderstood events and stories linked to Israeli history.
Today we’re doing something a little different. I joined our friends at Jewish History Nerds, hosted by the amazing Yael Steiner and Jonathan Schwab, for a special collaboration brought to you by Yale University’s Jewish Lives Series.
Now, if you’ve been following for a while, you know there are a handful of figures who seem to appear at every major crossroads in Israel’s story. For me, there are three who seem to really pop up over and over. David Ben-Gurion. Menachem Begin. And… Yitzhak Rabin.
Rabin’s life is, in many ways, the story of Israel itself. He was born before the state existed. He fought in the Palmach during the struggle for independence. He served as IDF Chief of Staff during the Six-Day War. He became prime minister. He helped shape the Oslo Accords. And then, in one of the most shocking moments in modern Jewish history, he was assassinated by a fellow Jew.
For some Israelis, Rabin represents courage, pragmatism, and the pursuit of peace. For others, he represents a path they believed endangered Israel’s future. Decades after his death, debates about Rabin are still really debates about Israel itself: security and diplomacy, hope and fear, unity and division, and the question of what kind of country Israel should be.
This conversation comesthrough the lens of Itamar Rabinovich’s biography in the Jewish Lives series. But what I love about the discussion is that it isn’t really just about Rabin the politician. It’s about Rabin the person. The reluctant leader. The soldier. The symbol. The complicated human being behind the history.
So if you’ve ever wondered how one individual became so central to Israel’s story, and why people are still arguing about him nearly thirty years after his assassination, I think you’re going to enjoy this one.
So here I am joining Yael and Schwab in this special edition of Jewish History Nerds.
Schwab
From Unpacked, this is Jewish History Nerds, the podcast where we nerd out on awesome stories in Jewish history. I’m Jonathan Schwab.
Yael
And I’m Yael Steiner and today we have a very special episode.
Yael
We are going to go deep on one of the most fascinating and complicated figures in Israeli history — Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Schwab
And for this very special episode, have a very special guest with us, our first ever guest on the show, the host of Unpacking Israeli History, Noam Weissman. Noam, welcome to Jewish History Nerds.
Noam
Love it, love having you guys in our Unpacked suite. Jewish History Nerds is one of the coolest and nerdiest shows at the same time ever. So it’s awesome to be on your show and to also have you guys in our Unpacked suite.
Yael
I’m really excited. This is a brand new format for us. First of all, we’ve never had a guest. Not that Noam is really a guest because he’s actually our fearless leader. So we’re sort of his guests, but we’re welcoming him into the nerd nation officially. And Noam has done a lot of reading, speaking, studying of Yitzhak Rabin and his life. And that is why he’s here, to speak with us about Rabin in general, in particular about the Rabinovitch Jewish Lives book. That all being said, before we turn to Noam, because his depth of knowledge is so vast.
I first want to pose a question to Schwab. To the extent that you’re capable of being a layperson, because we all know you’re obviously not just a layperson, when you think of Rabin, what comes to mind?
Schwab
So the first and foremost that he was the prime minister of Israel who was assassinated and assassinated by a fellow Jew. And this being like a real world shaking moment in our sphere.
But as I got older, I think I learned more about him, learned that he was actually prime minister twice, quite some time apart.
He was assassinated, I want to say in 95, is that right? Yeah, so I was eight. But I don’t think I was aware of the peace process prior to hearing about his assassination.
Yael
November 4th, 1995.
but very precocious.
Yael
Nor I. Noam has spoken about his memory of that night on Unpacking Israeli History. Do you want to give us just a tiny bit of that so we can see how a Rabinophile reflects on it as compared to Schwab?
Noam
I’ve never been called a Rabinophile before. I have to think about, maybe at the end of this episode we’ll decide if I actually am a Rabinophile or not. I’ve been called lots of things. I’ve been a Rabinophile, a Beginophile, and they’re very different from each other.
Yael
I don’t, when I say Rabinophile, I don’t necessarily mean that you are a lover of him as a person and his policy, but maybe you have a great appreciation of the lore, the legend, and the history of Rabin.
Noam
Yeah, maybe I’ll say a little bit about that. If I recall correctly, I recorded an episode about Rabin’s life legacy assassination many years ago, and I still remember the specifics of the experience — on a Saturday night, my older brother, Hanan, and I were watching Walker Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris. And we were watching that. That’s what we did on Saturday nights back in the day.
And Chuck Norris is an icon. Like Rabin. So in a different way. So of the 90s, 90s icons include Chuck Norris, Michael Jordan, and Yitzhak Rabin. I just vividly recall my parents walking down the stairs to our basement with us watching Chuck Norris and just like —
Yael
the late great Chuck Norris. Exactly. Of the 90s.
Noam
tears streaming down their faces like they couldn’t believe it. Like something historic had happened and I was 10 and my brother was 12 at the time. But you know, it was this unbelievably tragic moment because not before, I didn’t know this at the time, but not before, this happened in 95, before this 1933 when Chaim Arlozorov was killed by fellow Jews walking on the streets of Tel Aviv. You know, before that, you know, it’s been centuries that I could think of a major Jewish leader, Gedalia Ben Achikam being killed. And we still have a fast day for that, right? It’s one of the very few fast days that exists in the Jewish world. And we still have that when he was assassinated and killed by a fellow Jew named Yishmael Ben Netanyah. And that is such a tragic moment in Jewish history that we have to go back thousands of years besides the Chaim Arlazarov example, maybe Yaakov Yisrael Dehan is another example right before Arlazarov.
Schwab
Mm-hmm.
Noam
But beyond those moments, this is not something that the Jewish world is used to experiencing at all. And so this was a tragic moment, not just because he was a prime minister that was dealing with a peace process that was tragically difficult, but because he was a fellow Jew killed by another Jew and using violence to engage in disagreement.
Yael
So what I think is really interesting about where Schwab led us in this initial opening is that it is very hard to think about the life of Yitzhak Rabin without it being overshadowed by the death of Yitzhak Rabin. And as someone of peer age to both you and Schwab, I have very similar recollections.
I think I knew it was a tragedy. Don’t know how much thought I actually gave it beyond that. I did have a teacher in high school who was a fairly proud Israeli leftist who had turned her classroom into somewhat of a shrine to Yitzhak Rabin. And so I learned about him from her through that lens. But again, it was it was on November 4th that we would talk about him because his death had become such a major factor in his legacy as opposed to what he accomplished or did not accomplish during his life.
And I have a few questions for Noam about that. But before we get there, because this is Jewish History Nerds, and I just want to give a teeny bit of background about Rabin. He was born in 1922 in Jerusalem. One of the things that makes him really notable and that people often say color his policy and his practice as prime minister is that he is the first Sabra, first Israeli born prime minister, not European born, not an immigrant, someone who grew up in Israel very culturally differently probably than his forebears.
His parents were Rosa Cohen and Nehemia Rubachev. Rubachev ultimately changed to Rabin. His parents were born in Europe.
Schwab
Hmm.
Yael
His mother was a fairly well-known socialist labor activist who started out as an anti-Zionist and was later turned on to the cause of Zionism. And he joined the Palmach in 1941 as a 19-year-old and had risen to a position of leadership in the Palmach by 1948 and was, you know, very much involved in the War of Independence, leading to a very successful career in the Israeli military, a stint as the chief of staff, a stint then as Israel’s ambassador to Washington, a really interesting part of his career that I’m hoping Noam can shed some light on.
His first stint as prime minister, then another stint as defense minister, then a second stint as prime minister, and then obviously ultimately his assassination and now maybe probably looms larger than he even ever did in his life as some might say a murder to the Israeli peace process to the extent that that even still exists today.
Noam, I guess my first question for you, maybe this is a hard question. You host a podcast called Unpacking Israeli History. We host a podcast called Jewish History Nerds. Where does Israeli history fall in the grand scope of Jewish history for you?
Noam
Israeli history, there is a big question around Israeli history. Should Israeli history be viewed as, in some ways, a departure from Jewish history? Or is it like this continuation or this culmination of Jewish history? And there are two totally different ways to view Israeli history, therefore, as a result of that.
So one way is to say, well, Israeli history is just part of world Jewish history and the Jewish story has been going on for a few thousand years. And as part of the Jewish story, there’s been a lot of ups and downs. Oftentimes people teach about Jewish history in a very lachrymose way, in a negative way, in a way that’s been depressing and that Jews have been objects of derision throughout world history.
And you guys do a great job shedding positive lights. I know that’s actually not totally true. There’s a lot of exciting things that happen in the Jewish world, a lot of production, not just reactions to persecution or oppression. Israel in this telling of the story is this, it sidesteps that and says, well, for 1900 years without sovereignty, let’s basically take a beat, let’s basically take a pause from the Second Temple period, which ended around the year, in the end of the first century. And then between those two, and then not much really happened, and there’s a writer named Chaim Hazaz who actually writes about this, he calls it the sermon. He says, oppose Jewish history. Why? I don’t even want to engage in the story of Jewish history because it’s not ours, it’s theirs.
It’s not our story. We’re objects in someone else’s story and Israel’s this great departure from it. And then from that telling of the story, this new departure is this radically different experience that really deserves its own subject area, its own field of study, its own relationship.
Noam
And for a lot of Jews and lot of non-Jews, that’s really the story of Israel. It’s this — there was an 1800 year break. And in the Israeli curricular experience, they call this — use your example from, well, basically study Tanakh and then we’ll study Palmach. But everything in between the two is like, okay, it’s all good. Like, we’ll move on from that. And the other way of telling the story of Israeli history is not that it’s a departure from, but it’s a combination of. And we’ve always been building towards this.
And there’s now the Jewish story can be told and can be experienced in a way that couldn’t be done beforehand, but we’ve always been building towards that. And that’s like the story of the Vilna Gaon bringing his students in the 18th century to Israel and the story before that of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi and making his trek and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, he said basically like every single thing that like the way he thought about the entire world was based on his trips to Israel, his one-trip trek to Israel, which is a crazy, crazy story. And you know, it’s this crazy culmination of Jewish history.
But it’s not a departure from, it’s something that’s always been building towards that. And then in that line, then it’s part of Jewish history and you should understand Jewish history to that point as well. So the way I view Israeli history is more along the lines of the second telling of the story than the first telling of the story. And so I don’t know if that answers the specific question about how I view it in the broader context, but I think it’s, broadly speaking, impossible to understand Jewish history without understanding Israeli history and it’s impossible to understand Israeli history without understanding broad Jewish history.
Schwab
Yeah, I think that’s a great, first of all, it’s a great question. and I love that because the way you, the way you set it up, though, I think we all know the story like Rabin is a fully Israeli figure, right? Thinking about the types of stories we usually do. A lot of people like start their journey somewhere else, but he lives his whole life, it sounds like, in Israel, other than when he went to the US to be the Israeli ambassador to the US.
Like lives an Israeli, dies as an Israeli political figure. Like, does he, I don’t know, does he belong to Israeli history or to Jewish history is like a good question because I think that the instinct is to say the former, or before getting to like Noam’s point of like they’re so interconnected.
And that’s why I love Noam that you started by saying like this assassination, we have to go back to Gedalia Ben Ahikam, about that. Like we have to like put this in the larger context of like Jews killing other Jews in a political setting. Like what does that mean? Not just in Israel, but like for all of Jewish history.
Yael
And maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but I hadn’t, I never heard that Tanakh to Palmach trajectory before, which I think is really interesting. And what it evoked for me when you were speaking is this parallel between Rabin being killed by Yigal Amir and all of the brothers in Tanakh who were killed by their own siblings, by their own brothers. I can’t even begin to express to you how much it pains me that Rabin was assassinated at that moment in time, especially now looking back on it.
But it is interesting to see the Tanakh parallels. Like Jewish history has these themes that come up over and over and over again. And Rabin seems to be another entry into that legacy.
Noam
Yeah, and the sadness of brother killing brother, I mean, this is what John Steinbeck describes as the primordial sin, the original sin is brother killing brother, the story of Cain and Abel, as opposed to the actual original sin that people tend to think of eating from the fruit of the tree.
And I like your point. So even though John Steinbeck says that this is like the original curse and it follows us everywhere, it is hopefully a reminder that we don’t actually have to engage in fratricide in order to be part of the Jewish story. It’s a horrific part of the Jewish story and thank God it does not happen too often. As you guys know, as Jewish history nerds, you know very well that this happened at the end of the first century with brothers killing brothers non-stop and we see what that led to.
And I view the story of 1995 as of the, I know that we said we don’t want to focus on the assassination, but it’s impossible to talk about Abraham Lincoln without talking about the assassinations. It’s possible to talk about JFK without talking about the assassinations. It’s possible to talk about Sadat without talking about the assassination. It’s going to be impossible to talk about Rabin and his life without talking about the impact of his assassination. And one thing that I kind of do want to shed light on, just in the midst of our storytelling around Rabin, is I want to situate all of us and the listeners, just thinking about this from the context of you and I starting our conversation from the mid-90s to what we’re talking about now. If you think about the story of Israel, the story of, which is intertwined with the Jewish story, it is intertwined with the Jewish story no matter what anyone says about that,
Noam
There’s a great story, for those who know about it, it’s not like a well-known story. I think in late 78, 79, where in Haaretz, where somebody wrote an article, and in the article, the Israeli talks about how excited he is when he goes to Europe that no one even knows he’s Jewish. He gets so excited about that. And it’s like we made it, Israel made it. We’re one of the nations. And that’s the grand goal of Zionism is to be nationalism like anyone else.
The irony of that, however many years later, 40, 50 years later, is that Israel has become the Jew of the nations in many ways, right? Which is something that a lot of people have spoken about. But the story of Israel and the story of Judaism, they always go hand in hand. But if you look at, and so whether we like it or not, the reality is that Bibi Netanyahu represents Israel and therefore represents Judaism for so many people.
Now, I think about that in the context of when you called me a Rabinophile, because when I think of my upbringing, and when I think of the Jewish story and the Israeli story in the 90s and the early aughts also, is what I think many people associated Israel with was Rabin. Now, when you think of Israel and Judaism, you think of Bibi. And the reason for that, and this is a remarkably insane statistic,
Bibi Netanyahu has been the Prime Minister of Israel for a quarter of the time that Israel has existed. That is an insane statistic, 24% of the time, essentially. I did the math, it’s like 18.7 years out of like whatever, 78 years of existing. You’re nerdier than me, so you could check it out and tell me probably off the top of your head whether I’m right or wrong about that. Not all nerds are math people. Okay, bye.
Schwab
Mm-hmm.
Yael
It’s crazy. Not a math person. That’s crazy. Because I often think about how long he’s been around, and I didn’t realize it was really a quarter of the nation’s history at this point.
Schwab
Yeah.
Noam
Yeah, it’s a quarter of the nation’s history and and for people to assume that I can’t stand when people say well, you know, if Bibi just went away then people would love Israel like the naivete in that comment is also historically just anachronistic and and just it’s it’s incorrect. It’s insufficient. It’s it’s It doesn’t really understand, you know, you could like
hey, listen, 25% of Israeli history has been Bibi at the helm. So therefore people are going to identify and associate Israel with Bibi and Bibi with Israel, whether that’s good or bad, that’s the reality. I’m just laying that out in terms of, again, how
Schwab
Mm-hmm.
Noam
If it’s true that Bibi, Israel, Jewish goes together, there was a point in time in which Rabin, Israel, Jewish went together. Not because Rabin had the same length of time leading Israel. He only led it, I think, from like seven, you could check with me on this, but something like, what is it, 74 to 77 or something like that, and 92 to 95. But he was the defense minister, I think, from like 84 to 90, and he held all of these other illustrious positions. You mentioned a few of them. He was a leader in the Palmach in 1948. He was a leader, he was a young leader in the Palmach in 1948, which was the elite force of the Haganah, which became the IDF. And then he was the chief of staff in 67. And chief of staff doesn’t mean like chief of staff in a business context. It means the Ramatkal, which means the head of the army that like reports into their parliament, into the Knesset. Essentially, it’s like, he was in many ways a hero of the Six Day War, having that role. Like he very much so embodied what it meant to connect to Israel. Connecting to Rabin, connecting to Israel, connecting to Jewish went together. Now that’s Bibi and that story of Netanyahu versus Rabin to answer your original question is very much so I think 300 years from now going to be a story that we explore, a story that we tell of this, whether it’s right or wrong, you know, like in the Talmud it’s like Abaye speaking to whomever in Rabbi Yehuda they’re not actually speaking.
So it’s a similar sort of thing with this story.
Yael
glad you brought up 67 and his stint as chief of staff because I first of all I agree with you. Rabin was never off the scene in the in from 1948 even predating 1948 until the moment of his assassination even when he was not prime minister he was a face if not the face of Israel to many people and one thing that this book and I’m a little bit embarrassed by this because One thing that this book, which was written by Itamar Rabinovich, who had a very close personal relationship to Rabin and served as Israel’s ambassador to Washington,
Yael
And so one of the things that made this book different to me than some other Jewish Lives books that I’ve read is that because of its author, and I think this is a very good lesson for history in general, because of its authorship, it has a very particular view and a very particular focus. So less of a traditional biography and more of a political analysis of Rabin’s work and worldview, and very in the weeds on diplomatic conversations and diplomatic incidents that happened over the course of Rabin’s career. So I got to learn a lot of things that I didn’t know. I don’t even think I really knew that Rabin had been the ambassador. Don’t tell my 11th grade teacher because she’ll be really annoyed that I didn’t absorb.
Noam
Why would you know he was the ambassador?
Yael
I guess, I don’t know. I feel like I should know more about this really major player in both Israeli and Jewish history.
Yael
Rabin is not who I thought he was. This book really turned my perception of Rabin on its head. I know this is something you’ve talked about before, because I was nine years old when Rabin was assassinated and his assassination is,
a lot of anger among certain camps, mostly the religious Zionist camp in Israel over various plans. I, so I see him on one side of the spectrum and the
Schwab
The three-way handshake.
Noam
yeah. yeah.
Yael
religious Zionist camp on the other side of the spectrum. And, you know, I see him portrayed as a peacenik. And what I learned from this book is not that he didn’t want peace, he very, very much did want peace, but that he was much more of a hawk than a dove. And I learned that because I learned about his military career, his heroism in 67, which then catapulted, well,
Noam
Yeah, well.
Yael
or is more behind the scenes heroism than his 48 heroism, but that catapulted him into this political career where he went from the military to the ambassadorship to the premiership. And all of a sudden his concern for Israel’s security went from the battlefield to the, you want to call it, the boardroom, the, the long mahogany table somewhere in Washington or Oslo or Camp David where these conversations are being held and how he didn’t view those two things as opposites even though his legacy has now cast them as opposites.
Noam
Yes.
Schwab
like his military experience, he’s chief of staff in 67, right? Like in a war that famously Israel wins with lightning speed, very famously because of preemptive strikes, which is like not then like a person who is at the head of an army that takes out an air force before a war starts, like is not the same person that you would imagine that is like making
Yael
bright.
Schwab
peace deals later in his life. And you’re saying that’s not like a softening of as he got older, he became more interested in peace, but that’s like the same guy. is, I don’t know, land for peace is the like a different type of preemptive strike
Yael
I was just going to read a quote from the book. It’s the beginning of a chapter called Fall and Rise, 1977 to 1992. So the years between his two stints as prime minister.
Yael
this first paragraph on page 141, I’ll start from the beginning because it’s not that long. Failed leaders are rarely given a second chance. Rabin was to be an exception. By responding to adversity with tenacity, taking full advantage of his skills and acquiring the political toolbox he had so glaringly lacked during his first term as prime minister.
Noam
Yeah, give it to me.
Yael
Rabin would first reestablish a leadership position for himself in the Labor Party and then go on to build a strong persona in the Israeli public mind as Mr. Security.
That was really interesting to me because as a child of the 90s who only knows post-assassination Rabin and the criticism of pre-assassination Rabin, I did not know that he was
Noam
Yep. Yep.
Yael
Mr. Security, that was very surprising to me.
Noam
So let’s go through this. Let’s go through this. Okay. If I say the name of Menachim Begin to you, what’s your immediate reaction? Give me a word. You said you associate Peacenik with Rabin. What’s your association word game with Begin?
Yael
a tank. A tank. I see a tank. I see military.
Noam
Yeah, what do you see, Schwab?
Schwab
He’s the right wing, like the opposite of the like peacenik.
Noam
Yeah. Yeah, the opposite of peacenik. Well, the guy who’s the opposite of the peacenik did a few things. Number one is he ended martial law for Arabs in, within Israel because he and Jabotinsky deeply believed that every single citizen of your country should be given equal rights. And he fought against the left in terms of that. Number two is he’s the one that did the most successful land for peace moment in the history of modern Israel. And so, and he…
Schwab
Mm-hmm.
Noam
created more peace with Arab countries. Talk about the Abraham Accords. He’s the one who started all of that with Egypt. The most powerful Arab country in the world, that’s Menachem Begin. So this association that we have of Rabin as leftist and Menachem Begin as rightist is in some ways just taking a snapshot of their life and then making a whole narrative out of that. If I say the name Ariel Sharon to you,
Schwab
Mm-hmm.
Noam
The word I think of is bulldozer. Well, Ariel Sharon is the person who led the hitnadkut, the disengagement from Gaza, but he was, my lord, he was the most, like, the most intense and bulldoze-y of any of these leaders. I mean, the story of what he did in Unit 101 in the early 1950s in Qibya, the story of what he did when he was allowed to happen under his watch in the early 1980s, Sabra and Shatila, and many other examples. The examples abound. And you associate these people with one word, but Whitman had it right. People contain multitudes. We contain multitudes. All of us contain multitudes. Rabin was not a wallflower. He was not just like a child of the 60s. That’s not what he was. He’s actually not even somebody who believed in the thing that is most associated with him, which is the two-state solution. He was actually crystal clear about this. He has a line, it’s in the book somewhere. He says, see the permanent solution in the framework of the State of Israel that will retain most of the territory of the Land of Israel as it was under the British mandate. And alongside it, a Palestinian entity that will be home to most of the Palestinian inhabitants who live in the Gaza Strip and in the area of the West Bank.
Want this entity to be less than a state that will manage independently the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel at the time of the permanent solution will be beyond the lines that existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the lines of June 4th, 1967. This is Yitzhak Rabin. And I’m so fascinated. And let me go even earlier. We could talk about this more separately. 1948. What did Rabin do? Rabin was part of the Tochnit Dalit, Plan D, of getting Palestinian Arabs out of certain areas, which was part of the expulsion of the Arabs. This wolf, this little flower was moving Palestinian Arabs from Ramle, from Lydda or Lod into outside of mainland Israel in order to create this demographic that was primarily Jewish. So there could be a Jewish state and these people, many of them were unwilling to support that and be okay with that.
Schwab
Mm-hmm.
Noam
Many of them were just children and had nothing to do with that. This is Yitzhak Rabin.
I’ll tell you who else Yitzhak Rabin is. Yitzhak Rabin, by the way in Israel they’re like Rabin, Rabin, Rabin, Rabin. So I can’t even my own pronunciation switches all the time because all my cousins and my family they all call him Rabin. So my head like I can’t like I have to like code switch in my brain. I can’t even remember which one I call him. Anyway, so in 1948 he’s the guy who was very involved in or was at least somewhat involved in shooting at other Jews.
And talking about that issue, and what am I talking about? The story of the Altalena. And the story of June 1948, when 16 members of Menachem Begin’s Irgun were killed by none other than Rabin and the Palmach, and three of his men were killed. But they did that in order for there to be unity in the government. And what happened, and I just find this fascinating as the way we tell history, initially Ben-Gurion was considered the bad guy in the story.
Yael
Right.
Noam
because Ben-Gurion was really like, Rabin was what, 26 at the time? Right? And it was really Ben-Gurion who said, no, no, no, we are going to have one army, period. But as Begin and Ben-Gurion developed a better relationship towards end of their careers from 67 to 70, then the narrative became that Rabin was the bad guy in the story of the Altalena. And that, even that story of Rabin and the Atalena in 1948 killing Jews in the Irgun in 1948 was then associated with, there’s another really powerful book called Killing a King by Dan Efron. And what he talks about is that even Yigal Amir made a direct association and he said, you did in the Altalena, the payback for what you did in the Altalena is what I’m gonna do to you when I did to you in 1995. And that’s like this one narrative of 48 to 95 coming together from that story.
And then to make it even more complicated, at one point in time, it was Naftali Bennett who’s now considered center-left in Israeli politics, because he’s not part of the Bibi chevra, part of the Bibi crew. Therefore, he’s considered center-left. But Naftali Bennett was considered far right at one point in time. And as an education minister, he was involved in the putting of the Altalena story next to the assassination story in the curriculum. And when you’re making a curricular choice, you’re basically saying that there’s a relationship between the two. There’s a relationship. So, Rabin, what you did in 48, there is a relationship between what happened to you in 95. So, all of this is to say that to say Rabin was this simple flower peacenik, you know, wearing, you know, wearing Birkenstocks and like,
Yael
Right. That is in the book somewhere.
Noam
you know, getting out there with like long hair and like a beard and like smoking some weed. That is not Yitzhak Rabin. It’s just not.
Yael
He didn’t know how to tie a necktie though. We do learn that. He needed a friend for the 1949 conference in Rhodes where I believe he was sent as a delegate by Ben Gurion. He had never worn a tie and someone else tied a tie for him.
Schwab
Mm-hmm.
Noam
and that’s awesome. Yeah.
Schwab
That’s very Israeli.
Yael
and then showed him how to loosen it and retighten it so that he could just take it off already tied from day to day, which is what the boys in my high school used to do. So I find that to be like a very interesting visual.
Yael
I love what you said and I love that you brought in Sharon because I also thought about when I was reading and learning this stuff about Rabin and his concerns for security and, you know, I don’t like to boil it down so simply, but like his hawkishness, I thought about Sharon and his reputation when he all of a sudden made this 180 to decide to disengage from Gaza. And maybe this is too political of a question, but do you think that with hindsight, we will see these contradictions in Netanyahu?
Noam
Listen, Bibi Netanyahu, I’m gonna flex for a second. I once had dinner with Bibi Netanyahu when I was 16 years old. I don’t think I’ve ever told this story. Right, exactly. It was actually one of the few years that he was not prime minister. That’s why he was having dinner with me. But I was 16 at the time and my parents’ best friend in Jerusalem was also best friends with the Netanyahu’s.
Schwab
You
Yael
Cool.
Schwab
He was prime minister at the time.
Noam
And so we had Shabbat dinner together. And was mesmerized by the guy. The charisma was unlike anything I had experienced.
knows no ends. I don’t know, I don’t know what it is from looking at his career that Bibi genuinely cared about one way or the other. I don’t know. I will say that there is a through line. If you talk about Bibi, people like just freak out.
Noam
So when you talk about Bibi, you can’t do it because it’s too emotionally charged. So I’m not gonna do it. What I will say to your other clear question about Rabin versus, versus Bibi, I believe that Sharon was not even close to being a peacenik. And even Rabin, this terminology of peacenik versus, Rabin cared about security. That is what Rabin cared about. And I’ll tell you what the divide might be in a second, but Rabin cared about security. Sharon cared about security. That’s what they cared about. They were trying to protect the Jewish people. You might argue that their methodology wasn’t right, that they got it wrong in multiple times. But what they didn’t care about, and this is where things get complicated, and I’m gonna read to you something in a second that I printed out. What they didn’t care about is the religiosity aspect of it all.
Yael
Isn’t the ultimate goal of security peace? Like they’re not, they’re not contrasting ideas. The, to care about security is to ultimately want peace, to ultimately want resolution.
Noam
Correct.
Noam
Well, kind of, not necessarily. I’ll give you an example. The way security works with liberty is that there’s an inverse relationship between the two. So the more security we all have, to be extreme, let’s say everyone in the United States government knew everything that you, Yael, were doing, well, it’s for security, let’s say. So the more security you have, if you’re extreme on security, you’re gonna often be less on liberty and vice versa.
Right? So there could be surveillance of a community because of security. And when you do that, then you’re reducing individual human rights. You could make that argument. And we all choose to subscribe to that to different degrees. So in Israel, security and peace can go hand in hand, but sometimes what’s happening is you’re reducing a certain liberty that one group has, for security of yourself. So in this instance, it would be saying, I’m trying to, if I’m maximizing security and I’m reducing liberty of Palestinians, let’s say going through checkpoints and going through and being checked and having surveillance around them, that’s where security and peace slash liberty can be at odds with each other.
What Rabin wanted to do though was this, and why it’s complicated is this. Rabin didn’t understand what many people call the settler movement, the mitnachlim, but I’ve also heard in Hebrew it’s a preference for people who live in the West Bank or in Judea and Samaria to be called mityashvim, which has a different connotation than mitnachlim, which is not settling a land, but like living within our own land. And what Rabin didn’t care about, and didn’t really understand, his Zionism, didn’t understand this religious Zionism, the settler Zionism.
By the way, had same issues with the Golan. People forget about this. In my room, I had a sign that said, Ha’am Im Ha’Golan. I had a sticker that said, Ha’am Im Ha’Golan. The people are with the Golan. Why did I have a sticker as a child of the 90s and the early aughts? Well, because Rabin was willing to negotiate the Golan. Not because he didn’t care about security, but because he cared about security. And the reason he didn’t end up doing that deal was he didn’t think it was worth it. He didn’t think that he was going to get that security.
Noam
What he didn’t understand with the religious settlers was this. Let me read to you what he said. He said, I see this is in 1976.
I see in Gush Emunim, that’s the early religious Zionist leaders that emerged after the Yom Kippur War of 73. I see in Gush Emunim one of the gravest threats to the State of Israel. It is not a settlement movement, it is a cancer in Israel’s social and democratic fabric, a manifestation of an entity that takes the law into its own hands. Then he said in another moment, I do not believe one can exist over time if one does not want to get to apartheid with a million and a half Arabs on side, a Jewish state. Over this, I’m willing to go to elections.
In a historical perspective, one will think of what Israel dealt with in 1976 with some lousy place that has no significance and a mystical debate around which Israel’s existential problems are now focused. What is a settlement? What kind of struggle is it? So what Rabin is saying there is, I care so much about security.
I care so much about peace. What I don’t care about, what I don’t care about is your Jewish mystical attachment to this land that you have some like religious demand to live in this land and therefore you’re doing it. You are not the successors of our early Zionist formation. Our early Zionist formation was a, to quote Jabotinsky, a Geza, psychologi chadash, a Jew, a new psychological breed of Jews who are going to create this new, this new land and be a Jewish majority in our land in a specific portion and parcel of the land, not this ancient Jewish land that requires that you care about it because it’s a commandment, because it’s bringing you messianic redemption. What are you talking about? That is not who I am. And so this dichotomy is not peace versus security. Peace and security go hand in hand according to Rabin.
Noam
but it is between security and a mystical attachment to a land that he did not identify with. And that is where this tension, this metach, really emerged. And what you could easily see is when, to be a hovesh kippah in Israel, to be someone who wears a kippah, more like your kippah, Schwab, than even what I’m wearing right now. Maybe it’s more like this. Here’s one that’s more like yours. Okay, like a srugi, it’s called, I don’t know how to say that in English, so I’m…
Schwab
You
Yael
knitted, knitted, crocheted.
Noam
knitted kippah, Crocheted kippah, which has an identification with a specific movement, a religious Zionist movement. my aunt and uncle and my cousins who identify as part of the religious Zionist movement, they said that after 95, they were like, imagine this, put yourself in their shoes.
Schwab
You
Noam
They cannot wear a kippah. They did. But imagine living in Israel and saying, I cannot wear a kippah. And not because only of what Yigal Amir did and the association of him, but what they believed, Rabin did, to create a culture of that religious Zionism was weird. It was backwards. It was archaic. It didn’t belong in modern Israel. And what are you guys doing?
And they, my friends, in Baka. They live in West Jerusalem. They don’t live in any sort of Jewish community in the West Bank or Judea Samaria, whatever you want to call it. I don’t play those games, but whatever you want to call it. That is like the story of Rabin’s dichotomy or dialectic. That’s what it is. And it’s not peace versus security. It’s something else. It’s peace and security versus Jewish mysticism.
Yael
So that quote that you read is actually in the book with a slightly different English translation. It has the word tissue instead of fabric, which I think is interesting. But I had highlighted here that it was one of the quotes I was going to ask you about. And a few pages earlier maybe or later somewhere else, it talks about Rabin watching Begin be the one to enter into this agreement with Sadat and arrange or oversee what you said, you know, this big, one of the biggest land for peace deal in the history of the state of Israel. The first peace treaty with an Arab neighbor, one that has become increasingly important, controversial, tested over time. And I think he felt, or at least Rabinowicz thinks he felt, that he had laid the groundwork and, and Begin was the one who took it, you know, over the line into the end zone. Do you think that seeing that and that happening then subsequently laid a second groundwork, laid the groundwork for Oslo because he didn’t get to be the one who signed the treaty with Egypt?
Noam
Well, I’ll tell you, it’s like the greatest thing about Israelis is the chutzpah that they have. Like, meaning like, they… I love Israelis. I really do. Some of my best friends are Israeli. But when you meet Israelis, it’s often like, yeah, I was in charge of this. I was in charge of that. I did that. Actually, that was me in the room. I did that. the beepers?
Schwab
You
Noam
That was me, that was my idea. No one knows about that, but that was me. I’m telling you, Noam. I’m telling you. No one knows, but I’m telling you. Yeah, so on the one hand, that’s true. On the other hand, I’ll give you a great line. Golda Meir, when she saw Menachem Begin win the Nobel Prize, she said he shouldn’t win a Nobel Prize, he should win an Oscar. That’s what he deserves, right?
Schwab
Ha
Noam
Meaning like, are you, like, your play act, you’re acting like you’re one of us. You’re acting like you care so much about peace. And that’s what she said. Listen, that’s internal politics. Golda Meir believed that she deserved a credit for starting the process of the peace deal of what you’re talking about as Camp David in 78. Right? She believes that she started that process. Sadat believes that he deserves almost, by the way, Sadat’s the one who’s right. Sadat deserves, I think, most of the credit. He’s the one who flew to Jerusalem and did something crazy by waging war against Israel in 73, which laid the groundwork to allow for Egypt to have some peace, some dignity, some honor, to get them to a point where they absolutely politically destroyed Israel in 73, though they lost militarily. And so Rabin also felt like he did lay the groundwork, but here’s what I’ll say. Coffee’s for closers. Coffee’s for closers. So Begin’s the one who got it done at the end of the day. He’s the one that closed the deal, made things happen.
And so he gets the credit. I don’t think Rabin was driven at all by that. I’m not in his brain. But Rabin was a man, he wasn’t the most charismatic. Or his charisma was his bluntness, I should say. He was blunt, he was principled, he was not merely pragmatic. He couldn’t stand being in conversation with people. Small talk, like you said earlier, really drove him nuts, which is something I love about Robin because I’m much more normal in a real conversation than I am with small talk. can’t stand small talk. I’m like, let’s actually talk about the thing that we wanna talk about. And then I could talk to you for years about that topic. So like Rabin, and that way maybe I am a Rabinophile because I’m like, hey, if you wanna talk about stuff, like let’s talk about stuff. But if you wanna like just like, then I’m not gonna be great. So I like that aspect of Rabin. I identify with it.
And so I don’t think it’s what drove him. I think he really cared deeply as a sabra, as somebody, like you mentioned, who was born in the land of Israel. I do believe that he had a different sort of Jewish identity than other leaders. He was somebody who is the ultimate sabra. He was prickly on the outside and he was sweet on the inside. That’s what it is to be a sabra.
Noam
I think that that’s what drove him. think that he was deeply principled about the matter. And I think it was Adam Grant who said this line, is like the worst form of cynicism is believing people can’t change. And people can change. And maybe it’s when facts on the ground change. changed also. And that’s also true. He wasn’t just like, I’ve spoken about this before, he wasn’t just like a man of paradox. That’s not who Rabin was. It wasn’t a symbol. He’s someone who evolved with the times. And he wasn’t just like a mean guy, he wasn’t who like said like, let’s break their bones, referring to the First Intifada, the Palestinian rioters in the First Intifada from 87 to 90. He was a defense minister then. If he believed that peace was attainable and that Jews could be a majority and have a secure Jewish democratic state, secure Jewish democratic state, well, that’s what he always wanted to make happen. Now you could debate his tactics and say that he was wrong, he was naive, he was incorrect, but that’s what he cared about.
Those were, that’s the only thing he looked at. Secure, Jewish, democratic. That’s all he cared about. And his life ended with the pursuit of that mission.
Yael
One thing that I learned from the book and that I found really poignant, even though it never came to pass, was that during the raid on Entebbe, Rabin prepared a resignation letter that he was prepared to tender if the raid went poorly and that he was willing to take complete responsibility for that, the way in which he was going to put his money where his mouth was, was he was going to resign if the rescue mission failed. Thankfully, the rescue mission did not fail. There obviously were tragic losses, but overall, the hostages were saved, which was a huge boost for Israel. But the fact that he was so intent…
Noam
Amazing.
Yael
on making it known that he would take responsibility that he prepared a resignation letter was really poignant to me. Then subsequently he does end up resigning because of a financial scandal that really wasn’t, it was a financial scandal that wasn’t he.
Schwab
Hmm.
Noam
Stupid.
Schwab
Well, it’s my understanding that that’s a necessary part of being the prime minister of Israel, right? Like, it’s a rite of passage. You can’t not have some sort of scandal and be prime minister of Israel.
Noam
It’s such a, it’s such, such a silly scandal.
Yael
but but here’s the but.
Yael
No, it was such a silly scandal, but what I find fascinating, it was basically for those who aren’t familiar, it was a scandal involving the fact that his wife Leah maintained an American bank account in dollars that was a remnant from their life in Washington when he was ambassador and that she did not give it up when they returned to Israel.
Schwab
Yeah, I’m just like, if, like if you told me, if you told me there was an Israeli prime minister who had a financial scandal where their wife maintained a, a like foreign bank account, which was it, I would say every prime minister other than Golda Meir probably had that exact same scandal.
Noam
I miss scandals like this! What a good scandal!
Yael
But also the fact of the matter is that these things don’t matter anymore. it’s not as though Israel currently has a prime minister whose wife is scandal free. But the fact that he would never consider resigning, forget about over a financial scandal, he hasn’t resigned over what
Schwab
Yeah, now it’s, yeah.
Schwab
Right, no one’s resigning over that now anymore in 2026.
Yael
has been deemed accurately the greatest security failure in the history of the state of Israel. And even though obviously the populace is torn, there are people who say like, we need somebody to be a sacrificial lamb here. And he wouldn’t even be a sacrificial lamb because as you note, he’s been prime minister forever. So if there is somebody responsible, it should be him, presumably, but
Schwab
Mm-hmm.
Yael
We’re not dealing with that kind of personality. we saw in Rabin and others like him.
Schwab
Yeah. That Entebbe story is really interesting. Also, I’ve been listening to a history podcast on the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis there and the failed rescue mission that happened in 1979, which was like an American, like the American Entebbe that was a total flop that like didn’t work at all. Right.
Noam
Well, they tried to copy Entebbe. They actually used Entebbe to try to do 79. And it failed miserably.
Schwab
And like it failed completely. like, and Carter was president, right? Like there was no response. Like there was no, like, if this doesn’t work, I’m going to resign. So it’s very interesting to think like Rabin was like ready to resign and say, Hey, if this doesn’t work, this, you know, I, I need to take that responsibility and step down immediately. And like that did not, when it, when the equivalent thing didn’t work for Americans, nobody resigned or at least not the president.
Yael
It feels very quaint to me. And I took some notes in the book. And actually, I had spent Shabbat with my family. my uncle had picked up this book and was paging through it. And he noticed some of my handwritten annotations. And he commented to me, he said, I never saw anyone make an annotation on the copyright page before.
And the annotation that I have on the copyright page is that this book was written in 2017. And that might as well be a hundred years ago in the course of Israeli history.
He says, and Rabin’s success continues today to illustrate a crucial aspect of Israel’s current politics, that an effective peace policy can be waged by a credible centrist leader with security credentials who can persuade an anxious Israeli public to make the concessions and take the risks that progress towards peace requires. That just doesn’t feel possible.
Noam
Well, I think the interesting thing about the Bibi story, the Bibi career, I want to say something, I just want to reflect on something you said about Entebbe first. I thought you were going to go different route there, talking about Entebbe. There’s a great debate in Entebbe of who is the hero of Entebbe. And when I said earlier, there’s like 200, 300 years from now, like the story of Israel is gonna be very intertwined with Rabin and Netanyahu. So one of the major heroes of Entebbe is the origin in many ways of Bibi’s story, Bibi’s big brother, Yoni Netanyahu, who wrote magnificently these beautiful letters that I have, of Yoni that’s just like so, so, so special. And he was a hero who ultimately did sacrifice and there and the sacrifice is the ultimate responsibility. He did that in 76.
I also thought maybe you’d go the route of Peres versus Rabin because Peres versus Rabin is this like unbelievable inner circle political dance of real venom for each other for a long time and also seemingly they figured out ways to behave nicely with each other. If you reach him on Peres’ autobiography, I’m not throwing shade here, but you do tend to think after you read Peres’ autobiography that Perez was the mastermind behind everything in Entebbe and that it’s his and he’s the real hero of Entebbe and I’m sure he did a tremendous amount and there’s also a debate you know like you said leadership like I was just thinking like there are leaders who want to take responsibility and then there are leaders who want to take credit and those are two different types of leaders there’s a responsibility and credit they go hand-in-hand at times but like there’s responsibility versus credit
As it relates to Bibi, I think that Bibi’s story is going to be really interesting. If you told me that Bibi wrote his autobiography and it ended…
Noam
at, you know, I don’t know, let’s say 2007, 2008, then he would be credited with the process of economically shifting Israel from a place that was, you know, socialist, you know, unsuccessful from a GDP perspective, economically, financially, not nearly what it is, and moving it to the high tech. That would be like the, that would be the major chapter about Bibi’s life, along with maybe, you know, the Bibi versus Rabin in 95 and debates about his incitement.
And then if you ended his career, let’s say, know, when Naftali Bennett took over for that brief year with Yair Lapid, then it would be a different biography. And if you ended his biography right after 10/7, it would be radically different. And then even after 10/7, you could make the argument that one could easily make the argument that Bibi’s done a good job neutering, I don’t know that’s the right word, Iran. know, Syria is not nearly what it was. Lebanon, Hezbollah’s mostly decimated. Hamas is in a really bad place right now. You could make the argument that it’s a totally different story that Bibi’s biography will have.
And so I am interested as someone who teaches history and thinks educationally about all this is how we tell each of these stories. Which parts of their lives do we focus on? Which parts of their histories do we focus on with BB? It’s impossible. Right now, let’s see what the next few years tell us and then the biography will look very different depending on that.
Yael
And I think it’s interesting to think about what the country would be like if 10/7 had happened under a Rabin who seemed to have a different approach to his leadership style. Would Rabin have resigned immediately after 10/7 and said, this is on me and therefore the people or person necessary to take us out of it is not me? Because it seems like he had more of that approach And I’m curious, you know, in my mind, I wonder if that would have been his response to such a tragedy during his tenure.
Noam
Yes.
Noam
I have no idea. I’ll just look at historical patterns and consider those. Look at what happened to Menachem Begin after the first Lebanon war. He basically rode it out and ultimately left. Golda Meir, and the defense minister was kicked off, kicked out, that was Ariel Sharon. Golda Meir after the Yom Kippur War, and they had a whole commission on that, and they were just like, you know, we’re not gonna blame you for our losses, technically, but like she was out after that, resigned after that, and she was gone, right?
And those are two major, we teach the way we probably went to Jewish day school and heard about the Yom Kippur Wars, this unbelievable heroic moment, but it was pretty much a tragedy in Israeli history. 25, 2600 Israelis killed, that’s big deal. And I don’t know what Rabin would have done, but I do definitely see Rabin as a person who dealt, who didn’t view himself as larger than life, I view Rabin as somebody who had anxieties like the rest of us do, who stressed out like the rest of us stress out, who had social challenges like the rest of us have social challenges, and who was blunt, and who was focused and like you said, who took responsibility. Many could call him naive, many could call him, know, oppositional to their worldview in many ways, but saying for sure, I have no problem saying that he was a leader who took responsibility, who was always willing to take responsibility, and who is a leader that in many ways represents the older.
Noam
know, Zionism from previous generations that I think many people miss, many people lionize, and some people are trying to fight against. And that is very much so what we’re seeing in the Israeli and Jewish world today.
Yael
Thank you so much. This has been really interesting and such a unique way for Schwab and I to talk about a figure, a book, a character, person, an era.
Noam
Wow, nicely done.
Noam
As we close, let’s hear Rabin in his own words in a conversation with Charlie Rose on PBS, situating his story in a broader context of Jewish history.
I was born in Jerusalem.
I belong to the generation that even though I lived in Palestine, during the period of the Holocaust during the second World War it was the most tragic event in Jewish history since the destruction of the 2nd Temple. I belong to the generation that because of the tragedy what was done by the Jewish people in a limited way in British Mandatory Palestine, the Jewish people had the opportunity to take their fate in their hands.
Therefore I was part of the struggle against the British for the creation of the Jewish state and participated in the war of Independence.
I feel really privileged to be part of the generation of Jewish who can put the fate of the Jewish people in their own hands…
CREDITS
Schwab:
Thanks for listening to Jewish History Nerds, brought to you by Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand
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Jewish History Nerds is hosted by me, Yael Steiner.
Schwab: And by me, Jonathan Schwab.
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Yael: We’re produced by Jenny Falcon. Thanks for listening.