"Do you take your tea with sugar? Honey?" Noa Rothman asks me in her kitchen in Ramat Hasharon.
"We don't use sweetener during the week of the Rabin yahrtzeit," I blurt out. Noa bursts out laughing, and I heave a sigh of relief.
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I ask her why she laughed.
"When it's obvious it wasn't meant to offend, I laugh," she says.
Q: And when they refer to the days before the memorial ceremony as the 'Rabin festival'?
"Once it hurt me, at the beginning. Not anymore."
Q: What does hurt you, 25 years after the assassination?
"My wound is the cries of 'Traitor.' One of the hardest nights my grandfather had was the night of the [failed] mission to rescue [kidnapped IDF soldier] Nachshon Waxman, when Nir Poraz was killed, and the meetings that were hardest for my grandfather were the ones with Batia Arad [the wife of MIA navigator Ron Arad]. But he never avoided responsibility. Ideologically, there's no problem with debating a move, but to take it to places of terrorist attacks and talk against my grandfather with people screaming 'Rabin is a traitor!' in the background, is infuriating. And to think that's where our current leadership came from is a real slap in the face. People didn't realize how hurtful calling him a 'traitor' was.
"In our family, because my grandfather was murdered in a political context, we needed to represent him. But we weren't representing or admiring a living leader, we were upholding the name of someone who was dead … Our experience was life in a political home, and in a certain sense, the murder didn't change how we had behaved before it. It changed the way I looked at things and the desire to get justice for Grandpa. To get justice every time he was insulted."
Q: After his death?
"Yes. For example, when Bibi stood with [former PLO leader Yasser] Arafat a few years after criticizing Rabin for doing the same, and upheld the Hebron Accord – Oslo III – in a faulty manner, he didn't say, 'Forgive me, Rabin, you're not a traitor,' or 'I'm doing this because I have no choice.' Netanyahu opted for Oslo even though Rabin himself said that part of the Hebron accord would be implemented only if the Palestinian side made guarantees. And no one on the Right stood up and told Netanyahu: 'There are holes in your deal.'
"[Arik] Sharon asked to have the picture of the signing of the Oslo I Accord taken down from the wall of the Prime Minister's Office after he bombed the Muqata during the Second Intifada. That was cynicism. After that, he carried out the disengagement from Gaza, which was considered a left-wing model, the model of the Lebanon security zone. Do we have that model now? No. There is no security."
'Oslo is still in effect'
Q: If we're discussing left-wing models, what do you see as the reasons for the failure of the Left?
"Leaders' egos, atrophied systems, and the fact that there is a constant attempt to disguise themselves as 'Right' rather than being on the Left."
Q: What does the Left have to offer?
"Reality is left-wing. With all the happiness about peace with Khartoum, the PLO's three 'nos' were cancelled in the Oslo Accords: No to recognizing Israel, no to negotiations, and no to peace. There is no Arab boycott."
Q: They were cancelled at a time of terrorism. So maybe the Left's historic role is over.
"Oslo came before the Intifada. There was a blood-soaked reality, terrorist stabbings, and demonstrations all over the country. Oslo didn't come after a time of peace. The moment [Anwar] Sadat got on a plane the terrorism began, as did the realization that we couldn't defeat it militarily. Every attempt to form a Palestinian leadership failed. At the Madrid conference, Yitzhak Shamir and Netanyahu laid down the framework for a state against a state. My grandfather didn't wait to be elected in 1992 to release the doves of peace. He saw that as the jewel in the crown of a life spent serving his people. So for him to end that stage of his life with three bullets in his back and being accused of treason is not something that can be overlooked by anyone who was close to him and knew him. And it hurts."
Q: But he wasn't really accused of treason.
"There was focus on 'din rodef' [pursuing a person for crimes]. These questions were asked and there were rabbis who discussed the issue, and I don't think it will bring him back, but it has to mark the boundaries of discourse for us all. I remember the day when [Yigal Amir's ex-girlfriend] Margalit Har-Shefi was applauded in Beit El, it was a knife to my heart."
Q: Why do you think they applauded? They were happy she was back home.
"No, they were happy about the murder. You can't be that happy when we were so sad."
Q: The same could be said of the Rabin family, who weren't sad when people in Beit El were sitting shiva for those murdered in terrorist attacks.
"Maybe. There is a social gap. You understand it one way, and I in a different way. With us, when you're sad, you can't all of a sudden be happy about something else. I remember the demonstrations, the pictures of him [Rabin] with a keffiyeh. They hurt – not because I have a problem with a keffiyeh, btu because the intent was to insult. The day the peace agreement with Jordan was signed in 1994, I was on TV for the first time in my life. It was me, the daughters of Shaul Mofaz and Ehud Barak, and a boy from Ofra and a boy from the Golan Heights. I remember that the boy from Ofra didn't know me. They were standing next to me and he said, 'Have you seen Rabin's kid?' I shriveled. They were expecting to see someone with a devil's tail. Today, I'd introduce myself. But then? I froze."
Q: It's not certain he was looking for a tail.
"There was incitement."
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Q: Did Bibi call Rabin a traitor?
"He said once that he [Rabin] is not a traitor. I remember Bibi's hysterical cries the night of the murder. He came to the studio and said, 'You're not Likud, I don't want your votes, I'll support Shimon Peres because government is changed in an election, not through murder.' He hasn't said that since. In other words, he knows when to call the extremists to order, but he wakes up too little and too late."
Q: Might violence against Netanyahu be on the way?
"I'm not a prophet of violence. I'm a victim of the last round of it … Rabin was of evil intentions, but his intentions were good. What you have as a public servant are the purity of your intentions. It's a little like modern-day high priests. I'm more biblically-minded that you are, hon," she says with a smile.
"It's the way I was brought up. No home had more pathos than mine. My father wrote the anthem of the Sayeret Matkal unit. For anyone who spent their life in public service, as a teacher or a police officer or as prime minister, the accusation of treason is the worst one there is."
Q: Netanyahu is a public servant, too.
"But there is no faith in him. If I look at the number of Netanyahu's policy decisions and you had to characterize them, they'd fall in the center-left. But the terminology incites against the Left, and spurs on the other side. We are drowning in the gap between reality and the text. As a society, we've fallen into that abyss, because he [Netanyahu] speaks against the Left and implements policy of the Left and then the Left loses out. It's not that the Left has nothing to offer, it's that Netanyahu expects huge praise for every little thing he does. And then the Left is always at fault, even though they're not in power."
Q: So the Left would go along with Bibi, but the terminology prevents them from doing so?
"No, there are two aspects to it. One is the style, the other is like what happened with Oslo III. You can't promote a plan and at the same time complain that it's a bad one."
Q: But it was a long time ago.
"Oslo is still in effect. And the only thing that still works there is them [the Palestinians] threatening to cut off security coordination, and are afraid it will happen … So Oslo still works, even though the Likud denigrates it. Bibi could have cancelled it long ago, but the fact is, he didn't."
After years of being involved in politics from the personal angle, Rothman jumped in and ran for the 22nd Knesset on Ehud Barak's Democratic Camp list, which started off promisingly and wound up as a joint list with the ruins of Meretz and Labor. Rothman was ninth on the list and did not make it into the Knesset.
Q: What did you learn from your experiment with politics?
"I realized that what the right-wing side has and we don't is an elite that they can recruit. With us, there is no high-level education about involvement, so it's very easy to frighten and deter people. Because wealth, power, and elite sound similar to them. They don't realize that it is vital for an elite to enlist. That exists in my parents' generation. The big donors and manufacturers are people who make a contribution to Zionist and combine responsibility for the community and society with their patriotism. In my generation, something in the illusion of universalism and globalism freed us of our obligation. Maybe COVID has shed some light on the part we have to play, because you couldn't escape to the Maldives. For you, everyone is an elite that takes part. Once a year, I do reserve duty at the Yitzhak Rabin Center, but that's it. I'm the daughter of a generation that was abandoned in terms of values."
Q: What you're describing can be seen in politics. The Left is crumbling.
"Right. In the next election, what will they try to do? More Blue and White? Now another line of retired military people who still haven't gone a round? These aren't bad people. It's the lack of personal involvement and the lack of ability to cooperate and accept responsibility."
Q: Will you try politics again?
"If I think I can make a difference, I won't be able to say no. Do I want to? No. I didn't want to last time. I'm also not a victim. There are people who do things that are a lot worse, right? I'm lucky. But no one should rush to change places with me, you don't know what it's like."
Q: Why do you take part in the anti-government protests?
"Because I worry that there is an attempt to change the balance of power, so Israel's liberal character is in danger."
Q: Wouldn't it be better to focus the protest at Balfour? On achieving something?
"I'm against the game of attacking the protests. In 2011 it was a fashion show of activism. I lived on Rothschild Blvd. then and the activists camped out there very soon and that put an end to it. Now we have a solid core, and the groups that have attached themselves are as serious as a bunch of gypsies. They drag them in by their homemade signs. I don't have a US passport – I don't have anywhere else to go, and I can't think of anywhere else. My language is everything I am."
Q: What will happen when Bibi goes."
"There will be faith in the government."
Q: Who would you want to replace him?
"This is the Left's problem – they have no one to offer. If Bibi goes, he will be replaced by a group, and if it can be 50% women, it would be better. Who said we need one person?"
Q: There needs to be one person. Otherwise, it won't work. Polls show that the person running closest to Bibi…"
"Is [Naftali] Bennett."
Q: Right.
"I have a problem with most of Bennett's worldview. But I'm willing to disagree ideologically with the prime minister on the condition that he gets up every morning and works on my behalf. I would prefer Tzipi Livni or Ehud Barak, but they aren't running. Or Yair Lapid. Names aren't my problem. My problem is the discourse."
Q: This year there have been a few initiatives for a Rabin memorial ceremony. Which one do you like?
"I saw a post about a ceremony in Rabin Square, under the slogan 'We argue, but we are brothers,' proposed by the council that runs the pre-military preparatory academies. That's the message: instead of learning songs of brotherhood, learn tolerance. These are things that promote dialogue."
