The Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School recently held a student-run 20th anniversary commemoration of the life and legacy of Yitzhak Rabin. The school’s Israel Action Committee ran a very moving ceremony. Through short videos and candle lighting, they were able to give the student body the knowledge of who Rabin was, what he accomplished and why he should forever be important to our lives.
At Ma’ayanot, junior Mira Simantov organized the commemoration. Faculty taught the students that they must not let their beliefs and arguments lead to violence.
At Frisch, a history teacher told his students about Rabin and how he gave so many Israelis a new feeling of hope, which they hadn’t felt since Begin’s Camp David Accords.
In the year 2015 there are exactly 231,000 results on Google for “Oslo Accords are dead.” High school students today are too young to feel like we lived in the same time as Arafat, since he passed away in 2004, and we obviously never knew Rabin either, so the men who famously shook hands at Oslo are history to this generation.
To this generation, peace is only a dream. Unlike adults, we have never seen any progress, any reason to trust the PA, and we see more and more Israeli politicians not even attempting to think of a solution. What we will remember are the one hundred and fifty injured Israelis this past year who were stabbed and shot by Palestinians, and that we lived through Gush Katif but can only remember the wars in Gaza.
It was Begin who gave hope to his generation and Rabin to the next. Twenty years later I have to admit it’s a bit sad that I and my friends have to learn that all this could have been solved by now, but with no one else to turn to, nor to look forward to assistance from, we too will say “shalom chaver.”
By David Needle, RKYHS junior
