Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli military General, politician, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, was born in Jerusalem on the 1st of March 1922. His parents were Rosa and Nechemiah Rabin (originally Rubitzov), both immigrants from the 3rd Aliyah, Nechemiah arriving from the United States in 1917 with a group of volunteers, and Rosa (Cohen) from Belarus in1919.
Rabin spent his childhood and youth in Tel Aviv after his family moved there in 1923, and in 1940 he graduated from the Kadouri Agricultural High School. Later he traveled to the U.K and took several courses in Military Strategy but never tried to obtain a degree.
After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 during the War of Independence, he met and married Leah Schlossberg, who was working for a newspaper as a reporter. They had two children, Yuval and Dalia.
During his years at Kadouri High School, he met and became friends with Yigal Allon, who later became a leader of the Haganah Underground Elite Strike force, the Palmach, which Rabin joined in 1941. He took a large part of the operation that freed 200 illegal immigrants from the Atlit Detention Camp and became Deputy Commander of the Palmach in 1947. During a substantial British Operation launched against the leaders of the Jewish authorities, Rabin was arrested and was in detention for five months.
After his release, he continued his activities in the Palmach and in 1947 became the Palmach’s chief operating officer. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Yitzhak Rabin fought in a number of battles around Jerusalem and against the Egyptians in the Negev. He remained in Military service until January 1968, when he retired after being in uniform for 26 years.
During the six-day war in 1967, he was the commander of the Israel Defense Forces and led Israel to victory. After his army career came to an end, he joined the Labor party and was appointed Ambassador to the United States. During his years in the U.S., Rabin built up strong mutual ties between the two countries and promoted strategic cooperation with the United States that led to a huge amount of military aid being supplied to Israel from America.
Rabin returned to Israel in 1973 and was appointed Minister of Labor in Golda Meir’s cabinet. In June 1974, Yitzhak Rabin became the youngest and first Israeli-born Prime Minister in the country’s history.
A truly dramatic event took place during Yitzhak Rabin’s first term as Prime Minister when he ordered the heroic and daring Entebbe Operation on the 4th of July, 1976, to rescue passengers and crew of an Air France Flight that terrorists had hijacked to Uganda. Thousands of miles from home, the operation ended successfully, and the hostages were safely flown to Israel. Unfortunately, however, the operation resulted in the tragic death during the fighting at Entebbe Airport of the operations commander Lt.Col Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of Prime Minister Benyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu.
Rabin resigned as Prime Minister in 1977 but, in 1992, once again was elected as Prime Minister and succeeded in leading Israel to the Oslo Peace Accords with the Palestinians and a Peace Agreement with Jordan. In 1994 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat.
Unfortunately, the peace agreement only unleashed an unprecedented wave of terror attacks against Israeli civilians, which caused Rabin’s popularity to drop dramatically. On the 4th of November, 1995, after a well-attended Peace Rally, Rabin was shot several times on the way to his car by a right-wing fanatic Yigal Amir. Rabin was rushed to a nearby hospital but died shortly after his arrival there.
Many world leaders attended his funeral, including King Hussein of Jordan and United States President Bill Clinton who used the phrase “Shalom, Chaver, “meaning Goodbye Friend, which became famous worldwide.
Yitzhak Rabin is buried on Mount Herzl, and the square where the Peace Rally took place and where he was assassinated has been renamed Rabin Square.