Friends,
Thirty years ago today, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stepped off a stage in Tel Aviv after a historic peace rally.
In his jacket pocket were the lyrics to Shir LaShalom – “A Song for Peace” – folded neatly.
Only weeks earlier, he had signed the second Oslo agreement with Yasser Arafat. “Enough of blood and tears,” Rabin had said on the White House lawn. Israel and Palestine had started, it seemed, down the path to peace.
That folded paper can now be found in Israel’s State Archives. Its neat Hebrew lettering is soaked in blood.
As Rabin walked to his car, a religious nationalist fired three shots, killing the Prime Minister – and with him, the momentum toward peace.
That was the shooter’s goal.
25-year-old Yigal Amir saw Rabin as a traitor for giving up territory and making concessions to the Palestinians. To him, charting a course toward Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank was a betrayal of the Jewish people’s biblical claim to Judea and Samaria.
It’s important to remember that Rabin earned his reputation as a peacemaker only after a lifetime as a warrior.
He fought over decades in every Israeli war. He led operations that took a horrific toll. Even as he negotiated Oslo, he waged a brief but brutal campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. He vowed “to fight terror as if there were no peace process, and pursue peace as if there were no terror.”
A leader unafraid to use force, Rabin also knew that only peace could deliver true and lasting security.
His assassination was one of the most consequential in modern history.
Benjamin Netanyahu – whose supporters had chanted “death to Rabin” at his rallies – soon won election as Israel’s youngest Prime Minister. Since then, he and his right-wing allies have worked relentlessly to sabotage peace and entrench control over the West Bank.
Now, thirty years later, we face another turning point.
Once again, a path lies open to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: there’s a plan on the table to disarm Hamas, reform Palestinian leadership, rebuild Gaza, withdraw Israeli troops and integrate both Israel and Palestine into a broader regional framework.
For Israel, this is a chance to secure its founding promise - to be a secure, democratic homeland that is safe because it is at peace. A homeland not only for the Jewish people, but for our Jewish values.
This should be a moment of hope. But it is fraught with danger.
If Washington lets Netanyahu drift back to escalation to placate extremists, this window will close. If we fail to act swiftly – to disarm Hamas, empower credible Palestinian leadership, rebuild Gaza and commit to further withdrawals – we will miss a historic opportunity.
But if the United States leads – clearly and boldly – we can build a Gaza free from terror and deliver freedom and self-determination to Palestinians. We can make the dream of an Israel at peace real – embraced by its region, and living up to its founding ideals as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people.
We must pursue this path not out of naivete or certainty of success, but because we know the alternative leads only to grief and devastation.
So today, on this solemn anniversary, let us recommit to the hard work of peace. Let us learn from the past and refuse to repeat it.
The door is open before us. We cannot close it on ourselves.
Yours in determination,
Jeremy Ben-Ami
President, J Street
