It began with footage of Yitzhak Rabin heralding “a chance for peace” and ended with a crowd of tens of thousands singing “A Song for Peace,” the song the prime minister sang shortly before he was gunned down in 1995.

During those moments and in between, a massive crowd filled the center of Tel Aviv to mark the 30th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination by a right-wing extremist. At the memorial rally, where attendees held signs calling for peace and reading “Rabin was right,” a roster of politicians ascended the stage to warn that the forces behind the left-wing leader’s murder were still present in Israeli society today — and were even gaining force.

“A man was murdered; it’s our job to make sure the idea is still alive,” said Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, head of the center-left Yesh Atid party, who warned that far-right forces were “distorting what the very idea of Judaism is. They are again turning Judaism into violence, murderousness, internal hatred, a thing that tears us apart.”

Lapid decried those “who distort Judaism and turn it into politics of hate and violence,” adding that “these people are sitting today also in the government.”

Rallies marking the anniversary of the November 4, 1995, assassination were once an annual event at the Tel Aviv square where Rabin was murdered and which now bears his name.

Organizers estimated that more than 80,000 people were in attendance when the rally began, stretching far beyond the confines of the plaza, with later estimates putting the number at 150,000 as more people arrived. Speakers used the stage to call for a range of goals, from peace to national unity to an ongoing fight for return of the deceased hostages in Gaza to a state inquiry into the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

Others focused on Rabin’s example and legacy.

“If Yitzhak Rabin were prime minister today, no one would have been left behind,” said Gadi Mozes, who was held hostage in Gaza for more than a year, in an emotional address. “He would not have given up on us, the hostages, for two years… He would not have slept until everyone was brought home.”

Rabin, an iconic military leader who was part of Israel’s founding generation, served as prime minister from 1974 to 1977 and from 1992 to his assassination in 1995. A leader of the Labor Party, he signed the Oslo Accords with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat in 1993, launching an Israeli-Palestinian peace process that later collapsed.

He was assassinated by........

© The Times of Israel