World

Farewell To A Fighter For Peace

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 12, 2000 / 9:57 AM EST / CBS

Peace campaigner Leah Rabin's family led thousands of mourners Wednesday in an outdoor memorial service held at the exact spot where her husband, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated five years ago.

Mrs. Rabin died Sunday, after a battle with cancer, at the age of 72. She was buried next to her husband, in a solemn, simple ceremony in a pine grove at the Mt. Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem.

Among the 1,500 mourners at the burial service Wednesday were First Lady and Senator-Elect Hillary Rodhnam Clinton, who led the U.S. delegation, and Dennis Ross, the Clinton administration's troubleshooter for the Mideast.

"No assassin's bullet could take away her uncommon courage," said Mrs. Clinton, speaking at the ceremony. "We pray today that you rest in peace...and may all of us, in your name, go toward peace."

CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger reports that in the tradition of the quest for peace that marked Leah Rabin's life, her funeral provided the opportunity for diplomacy aimed at stopping the bloodshed of the past seven weeks.

Reuters
Leah Rabin's coffin, in
the Tel Aviv square
where her husband,
Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin, was
assassinated in 1995.

Ross is meeting after the funeral with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in Gaza. Another mourner, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, met with Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami.

Arafat, whom Rabin counted as a friend, decided not to attend the Rabin services and instead sent a letter of condolences.

Wednesday's observances began with a memorial service at the Tel Aviv square where Rabin was assassinated Nov. 4, 1995, by an ultranationalist Jew who tried to stop his land-for-peace agreements with the Palestinians.

After the assassination, the site was renamed Rabin Square and became a point of pilgrimage for many Israelis, especially supporters of Rabin's peace policies. Mrs. Rabin would visit the square every Friday to talk with the visitors.

Wednesday, Mrs. Rabin's coffin was flanked by bird of paradise flowers and draped with an Israeli flag. A single red rose lay on the banner, just below the Star of David emblem.

Mrs. Rabin's children, Dalia and Yuval, and grandchildren Noa and Yonatan, sat in the front row. At one point, a tearful Dalia Rabin-Peelosof hugged her daughter, Noa, to comfort her.

Thousands of Israelis - religious and secular, old and young - solemnly walked past the coffin. Some lit small memorial candles nearby and wrote messages to Mrs. Rabin in a book under a picture of her. One girl placed small yellow flowers near the coffin.

Reuters
This November 1999 photo
of Yasser Arafat and Leah
Rabin sparked anger among
many in Israel.

Dozens of police were deployed around the square, a sign of the tense security situation after seven weeks of Israeli-Palestinian fighting that has killed more than 200 people, most of them Palestinians.

"I had to come here to support all the people who still believe in the peace process," said a Etai Oren, a teen-ager in a blue boy scout uniform.

Dudu Dotan, an Israeli actor, broke down in tears. "We are bidding farewell not only to her," Dotan said. "After he was murdered...she stood at the head of the (peace) camp. She was a soldier for peace."

" We need to support her and we support all the people who believe in her and believe in continuing the peace process," said another mourner at the public memorial.

Mrs. Rabin's campaign for peace and Israeli-Arab coexistence won many friends at home and abroad, but her outspoken quality also made her the target of equally sharp criticism.

She blamed the Israeli right wing for her husband's assassination, accusing right-wingers of creating an atmosphere of hate, and touched off another firestorm because of her friendly relationship with Arafat.

Later, she denounced Prime Minister Ehud Barak's peace moves, contending he made too many concessions on Jerusalem.

At the news of Mrs. Rabin's death on Sunday, Barak called her "a courageous and devoted woman who worked together with her husband for two generations to bring Israel into a secure situation and, in recent years, to bring peace."

Former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, a Labor party ally of her husband, said she was "like a lioness."

"When she learned of her illness she did not surrender," Peres said, "and went out to the great battle for her life, as she had fought, with the same courage, to eternalize the memory of her husband."