At the time, the evening of November 4, 1999, seemed a singularly hopeful moment in recent Israeli history. That night I was in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, where tens of thousands of Israelis had assembled to pay tribute to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Though it was the fourth anniversary of his assassination, it was the first to occur with a pro-peace Labor government back in power. During the week leading up to the rally, there had been controversy in the Israeli press as to whether Rabin's protege, newly elected Prime Minister Ehud Barak, would speak; his presidential security service had apparently advised him it could not guarantee his safety at such a large event.
But in the end, Barak appeared -- a defiant stump of a man on what was, from where I stood, a distant stage. He was joined that night by Shimon Peres and Leah Rabin, among others. Barak had set an ambitious timetable of 15 months for concluding peace talks, with the Palestinians and the Syrians as well. Following his speech, the crowd dispersed into the Tel Aviv night singing "Shir Ha-Shalom" -- the song of peace that had become Labor's unofficial anthem in the years since Rabin's death. Leaving the plaza, I picked up a poster, which I have to this day. A friend who speaks Hebrew would later translate it for me: "Israel," the sign reads, "is following in the footsteps of Rabin."
That was my first Israel rally. My second was this week on Capitol Hill, though it might as well have been Tel Aviv for a few short hours. The crowd featured that incongruous mix of overtly religious and just-as-overtly secular Jews standard to Israeli life, yet always jarring to American Jews (who, unless they have the misfortune of being secular and living in Crown Heights or Hasidic and living in Scarsdale, do a decent job of avoiding those who offend their notion of what it means to be Jewish). Black-clad Hasidim, sweating profusely in the penetrating sun, moved briskly among groups of secular Jewish frat boys wearing Israeli flags instead of shirts; there was a fairly even ratio of the non-yarmulked to the yarmulked; and throngs of teenage girls from Jewish youth groups shuffled among wig-clad women only a few years their elders but with several children already in tow.
The posters were equally diverse. They ran the gamut from the standard ("America, Remember Who Cheered on 9-11") to the humorous ("Arafat, Don't Keep Your 72 Virgins Waiting"); from the right wing ("Kahane Was Right") to the left wing ("Pro-Israel Does Not Equal Pro-Sharon"); from the imaginative ("Oscar to Arafat! Best Murderer Playing a Role of a Peacemaker") to the historical ("Why was the Mufti in Berlin in 1941-45?"); from the personal ("Sharon You're Not Alone") to the global ("France Protect Your Jews").
Like its signs, the crowd was not always in agreement. Near the reflecting pool that separates Capitol Hill from the Mall, a scruffy-looking man -- presumably a passerby -- leaned leisurely against his bike as he engaged a group of bemused-looking 13-year old Jewish boys. "I disapprove of all bombs," he said as the boys tried politely to explain to him why he was a moron. When Dick Armey rose to speak, there were boos; two men in front of me conferred quickly then left in disgust. And when Hillary Clinton was introduced, there were boos as well. It was, after all -- in the best sense of the old joke about the high opinion-to-Jew ratio in any given room -- a Jewish rally.
And yet, despite this discord -- or perhaps, because of it -- there could be no doubt that the rally pinpointed where the new political center is for American Jews, and for Israelis as well. On November 4, 1999, the center was a peace rally in Rabin Square; this week it was here in Washington.
Barak himself is the best testament to how much this center has moved. He was cheered wildly as the peace movement's conquering hero at the 1999 rally; today, there isn't much political daylight between him and Benjamin Netanyahu, who spoke on Capitol Hill to cheers of his own. And in the wake of Yasir Arafat's rejection of peace at Camp David, many if not most of Barak's political supporters in Israel and the United States have found themselves making the rightward journey with him.
Yes, Barak and Netanyahu still differ as to how this will all end. Yes, Barak still favors the creation of a fairly generous Palestinian state on the West Bank. But on the questions of the moment -- Israel's move into Jenin, the need for the ultimate creation of "fences" to separate Israelis from Palestinians -- there isn't much difference between the two old rivals or, for that matter, most of their supporters. If this week's rally is any indication, those are the questions that seem to matter most. And for the moment, there seems to be remarkably little disagreement about what Israel needs to be doing.
This is the very natural response -- the right response -- for supporters of a country at war. It is, to be sure, not the way anyone in Rabin Square on November 4, 1999, wanted it to be. But nobody knew better than Rabin that the path toward achieving peace may, by necessity, also involve conflict. I did not bring my poster from Tel Aviv to this week's rally, but I do not believe it would have been out of place. It has been seven years since Rabin died and two years since his dream of peace appeared near, but in defending itself -- with an eye toward an eventual peace that brings security for its citizens and dignity for its adversaries -- Israel is still very much in his footsteps.
