Excerpts from the speech:
"The murder of Gedaliah ben Achikam in the year 582 BCE was undoubtedly a traumatic event for the people of that period...
But it was not because of the personal trauma they experienced that caused this event to be engraved on the Jewish national heart and calendar. The Fast of Gedaliah was instituted as a moral warning, to warn us against the murder of a Jewish leader by a Jewish murderer! ... When a Jew fasts on this day, he does not remember Gedaliah himself, his works, or his legacy - but rather the stain that his murder left on the pages of our history...
In the eyes of the Israeli student of the year 2015, what should be the main thing he remembers on the anniversary of Rabin's murder - the memory of Yitzchak Rabin the man, or the murder itself?
...We [already] now often hear, "What would Rabin have said?" and "What would Rabin have done?" and "Rabin would not have done this, or that," etc. ... After ten years of attempts to force upon us a package deal of memory and ideology, of myth and political conclusions, I imagine that we are permitted to wonder aloud: "Is Rabin's memory acquiring a grasp on our hearts as an 'enlisted myth'"?
Yes, Rabin was murdered because of his political path, because of Oslo... But in the same breath we must add that this does not grant extra ethical weight to his political stances, with which many great people differed and continue to differ even today...
I believe that no political murder can sanctify a political stance. I believe that even the abominable political murder of Yitzchak Rabin cannot turn people like myself, who continue to believe in that which they believed before the murder, into lepers, or into partners in any measure of guilt...
Ten years later, it tragically appears that the moral lesson has not yet been internalized... The murder of Rabin must be engraved as a symbol for all of Israel - and woe unto all of us, right and left, if it becomes the private legacy of a particular political stream. This is our obligation towards the State. This is our obligation towards Yitzchak Rabin."
"The murder of Gedaliah ben Achikam in the year 582 BCE was undoubtedly a traumatic event for the people of that period...
But it was not because of the personal trauma they experienced that caused this event to be engraved on the Jewish national heart and calendar. The Fast of Gedaliah was instituted as a moral warning, to warn us against the murder of a Jewish leader by a Jewish murderer! ... When a Jew fasts on this day, he does not remember Gedaliah himself, his works, or his legacy - but rather the stain that his murder left on the pages of our history...
In the eyes of the Israeli student of the year 2015, what should be the main thing he remembers on the anniversary of Rabin's murder - the memory of Yitzchak Rabin the man, or the murder itself?
...We [already] now often hear, "What would Rabin have said?" and "What would Rabin have done?" and "Rabin would not have done this, or that," etc. ... After ten years of attempts to force upon us a package deal of memory and ideology, of myth and political conclusions, I imagine that we are permitted to wonder aloud: "Is Rabin's memory acquiring a grasp on our hearts as an 'enlisted myth'"?
Yes, Rabin was murdered because of his political path, because of Oslo... But in the same breath we must add that this does not grant extra ethical weight to his political stances, with which many great people differed and continue to differ even today...
I believe that no political murder can sanctify a political stance. I believe that even the abominable political murder of Yitzchak Rabin cannot turn people like myself, who continue to believe in that which they believed before the murder, into lepers, or into partners in any measure of guilt...
Ten years later, it tragically appears that the moral lesson has not yet been internalized... The murder of Rabin must be engraved as a symbol for all of Israel - and woe unto all of us, right and left, if it becomes the private legacy of a particular political stream. This is our obligation towards the State. This is our obligation towards Yitzchak Rabin."