Question: In your opinion, why would an Israeli have wanted to kill Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin? ...

Question: In your opinion, why would an Israeli have wanted to kill Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin? What will be the result of his assassination upon the peace process in the Middle East?

Answer: Rabin probably won the 1992 Knesset election through his firm promises not to return to the Arabs the hard-won strategic territory essential to Israel’s survival against an implacable enemy which has sworn her extermination. Nor is any piece of land so vital as the Golan Heights, which provides a location for Israeli radar and a minimal buffer between Israel and Syrian tanks and guns. Syria’s president, Hafez Assad, has sworn in his hatred of Israel, “We shall never call for nor accept peace. We shall only accept war....We have resolved to...throw you into the sea for good....” Of course, he would (as Arafat has done to get the West Bank and Gaza Strip) make a false pledge of “peace” in exchange for the return of the Golan, which would position him better for the eventual war he intends.

When he was Israel’s Foreign Minister, Abba Eban went so far as to say that with the Golan in the hands of Syria the threat to Israel of extermination “has for us something of the memory of Auschwitz....This is a situation which will never be repeated in history.” In a visit to the Jewish settlements on the Golan on June 10, 1992, the 25th anniversary of its capture by Israeli forces, Rabin recalled how the sacrifice of much Israeli blood had “removed the nightmare” formerly faced by the villages of Galilee “forever, forever.” And he promised that never again would “these villages be under the Syrian guns.”

Promising preferred status for developmental investment to the settlements on the Golan, and forecasting a bright future for that region, Rabin swore to these settlers, “It is inconceivable that even in peacetime we should go down from the Golan. Whoever thinks of such a possibility is forsaking the security of Israel.” That clear pledge was made a plank in the Labor Party platform.

Therefore, it is easy to understand why Israeli patriots with any common sense at all would consider Rabin to be a traitor for reversing his pledge and giving Arafat and his PLO terrorist army a foothold within Israel and negotiating to give the Golan back to Syria. It is like committing suicide for Israel to do so. Hence the determination to kill Rabin; a foul deed which, ironically, will have just the opposite effect from that intended by his assassins. Instead of hindering the so- called “peace process,” it will accelerate it.

His assassination has made Rabin a martyr. In memory of his life and death multitudes will take up the banner of “peace.” In the wake of national mourning, the stark reality of 50 years of Arab threats and determination to exterminate Israel will be submerged under irrational emotion. On the eve of his departure for the White House at the end of September to sign the latest “peace papers” (the Oslo 2 interim agreement), Arafat told Jordanian TV viewers that he was simply implementing the 1974 PLO Plan of Phases, a 10-point scheme for the destruction of Israel, the first step of which calls for gaining control of territory inside Israel. In spite of the cold facts, however, the so-called “peace process” will gain momentum and, as the Bible has foretold, lead to the near destruction of Israel at Armageddon, when Christ will intervene from heaven both to rescue Israel and to prevent the destruction of all life on planet earth.

How could Israel be so blind? An equally important and perplexing question is how the entire Western world can hide its eyes from an even larger truth. The Iron Curtain was in the news daily for decades, yet no mention is ever made in the media of the far more impenetrable and vicious Islamic Curtain. Pressure was applied to the Soviet Union and is still applied to China and other communist countries for their violations of human rights, yet the persistent violations of human rights in Muslim countries are never mentioned!

Muslims are allowed to build mosques and proselytize in the West, but no one can build a Christian church or proclaim the gospel in most Muslim countries. One cannot even have a Bible study in one’s home in Saudi Arabia, where it is officially the death penalty for a Muslim to convert to another religion. It is the death penalty in Pakistan to “blaspheme” Allah. Christians are literally being crucified in the Sudan; but the United Nations, which recently condemned the United States for “human rights violations,” says not a word! Of 22 Arab nations, not one is a democracy. There is no freedom of religion, of speech, of press or of conscience in Muslim countries, yet Muslims riot in the West for such freedoms when a Muslim terrorist is arrested! Christian Arabs, in Jericho and throughout the territories Israel has put under PLO control, are being imprisoned and tortured and threatened with death if they don’t renounce Christ. An American citizen visiting relatives in Jericho was recently arrested and tortured to death by Arafat’ s Palestine police, the sixth such known case since the PLO took over.¹

The injustice and inequity of Muslims demanding and being granted “rights” in the West which are denied in Muslim countries is outrageous beyond comprehension! We must pray earnestly for those who suffer deprivations in Arab countries and that God will bring down the Islamic Curtain so that Bibles and the gospel may enter those lands as has taken place in Eastern Europe. Pray too (and write your congressmen and senators) that the West will act to stop the human rights violations and murderous repression of non-Muslim religions in Arab countries.

Endnote

1. Jerusalem Post (Week ending Oct. 7, 1995), 1, 6.