{"id":135486,"date":"2025-11-15T23:35:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T23:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/135486\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T23:35:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T23:35:13","slug":"israeli-conference-honoring-yitzhak-rabin-showcased-the-central-role-of-liberal-zionism-in-the-gaza-genocide-mondoweiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/135486\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli conference honoring Yitzhak Rabin showcased the central role of liberal Zionism in the Gaza genocide \u2013 Mondoweiss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Friday, the Israeli \u2018leftist\u2019 party The Democrats (a merger of the Labor and Meretz parties) hosted the yearly conference<\/a> for the commemoration of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin\u2019s death. More than anything, the event demonstrated the deeply genocidal nature of the Israeli left.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It has been 30 years since he was murdered by a right-wing activist on November 4, 1995, and the conference took place at the Kibbutzim Seminary in Tel Aviv, a place signifying Rabin\u2019s labor Zionism. The guest list was a who\u2019s who of those considered the Israeli opposition, and most are deeply implicated in the Gaza genocide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is no better example of this than one of the stars of the event: Giora Eiland<\/a>. The retired general, former head of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), was a featured guest and is probably best known now for calling for the intentional starvation of Gaza in November 2023, including through encouraging the spread of epidemics. However, he is now best known as the author of the \u201cGeneral\u2019s Plan<\/a>,\u201d which became Israel\u2019s blueprint for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza over the past two years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Normally, people would consider Eiland to be a fascist right-winger, but in Israel, he is considered on the left. His affiliation with the Israeli Zionist Labor \u2018left\u2019 comes from his agricultural background on the moshav (agricultural settlement) of Kfar Hess. The most defining aspect of his career has been in security (militarism), which is probably the most defining feature of the Israeli Zionist left. Eiland was a negotiator<\/a> under the so-called \u2018peace process\u2019 led by Shimon Peres in the years 2001-2003, when Peres served under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the Democrats did receive some pushback<\/a> to Golan\u2019s presence at the event, given his role in the genocide. In response, party head Yair Golan just claimed the general had apologized for his various genocidal statements, a claim which cannot be verified, and accused critics of being \u201cpurists.\u201d One activist briefly disrupted the event over Eiland\u2019s participation, but the show quickly resumed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The event included a recorded message by Israel\u2019s President, Isaac Herzog. Herzog is not merely a racist liar<\/a>, who has called \u2018intermarriage\u2019 in the U.S. \u2018a plague\u2019 and then said that people misunderstood him \u2013 he has also incited genocide, by pushing the notion that there were no \u2018uninvolved\u2019<\/a> in Gaza, in October 2023. When it was pushed back against, and also became part of the ICJ genocide case, he again claimed that people misinterpreted him. At least Itamar Ben-Gvir, the more openly fascist National Security Minister, stands by his words.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Herzog is, on the one hand, an \u2018apolitical\u2019 figure, as the President\u2019s position in Israel is officially ceremonial, and yet his legacy is as a left-leader, a former leader of the Labor Party.<\/p>\n

Then we have Ehud Barak. Israel\u2019s \u201cMr. Security\u201d, the most decorated soldier, a former chief of staff, Defense Minister, and Prime Minister. Barak has boasted<\/a> about the occupation of 1967 being a \u201cliberation of these parts of the land\u201d, and bemoaned that \u201cleftists\u201d, including Rabin, were not sufficiently credited for the \u201cachievements of settlement in Judea and Samaria\u201d. A real leftist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Yair Golan, the leader of The Democrats. Golan rose to political power after a not-so-successful stint with Meretz (which didn\u2019t make the electoral threshold in the 2022 elections). Later, following October 7, 2023, he gained popularity both due to his one-man rescue missions on the day, but also due to his open advocacy for genocide<\/a>. Earlier this year, he said<\/a> on a Haaretz podcast<\/a> that \u201cwe\u2019d all like to wake up one spring morning and find that 7 million Palestinians who live between the sea and the river have simply disappeared.\u201d Who are \u201cwe\u201d you ask? The Democrats, of course, and the rest of the Zionist spectrum, one would assume.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And finally, Rabin, the man being honored. Rabin exemplifies the \u201cpeace\u201d that left Zionists are working to create, and it is no peace at all. Although remembered for his role in the Oslo Accords and for promoting a path towards a \u201ctwo-state solution\u201d, just a month before his assassination, Rabin promised<\/a> that the accords would result in a \u201cPalestinian entity\u201d that is \u201cless than a state\u201d. \u201cWe will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines\u201d, he stated firmly, a point that Benjamin Netanyahu has quoted several times. And of course for Palestinians, Rabin is remembered<\/a> rather as a master ethnic-cleanser from 1948, as well as a bone-breaker from the first Intifada (1987-93).\u00a0<\/p>\n

And that really puts this whole conference into its true light. The legacy of ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid, and genocide is central for Israel, even for its \u201cleft.\u201d This is the prism through which to see the more recent accords \u2013 the Abraham Accords<\/a> (first signed in 2020), are about \u2018economic peace\u2019 or the recent \u2018ceasefire<\/a>\u2019 with Gaza, both of which are aimed at cementing the Israeli colonization of Palestine, not ending it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Netanyahu promises<\/a> that Israel that \u201cwe will forever live by the sword,\u201d and this appears to be the case. In another recent Rabin commemoration, Yair Golan claimed<\/a> the opposite: \u201cAnyone who is looking for real security must understand that there is no existence for a state that lives by the sword alone \u2013 and peace is the only way to ensure that young men and women in Israel will no longer have to pay the price of its absence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those are nice words. But the Democrats\u2019 event shows that Israel does live by the sword, and not by its word. And the Israeli \u201cleft\u201d plays a central role in this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last Friday, the Israeli \u2018leftist\u2019 party The Democrats (a merger of the Labor and Meretz parties) hosted the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-135486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}