Page 20 - Issue 8

elements, from any dark corner of Israeli society, to harass people who let their clear, lucid, unique voices
like that of Ze'ev Sternhell be heard," Barak said.

"The attack on Professor Sternhell is a cowardly, terrorist act of those with no sense of justice," the
chairman of the Knesset's internal affairs committee, Labor MK Ophir Pines-Paz, said. "I call on the police
and the Shin Bet security service to make every effort to locate the perpetrators quickly and to make sure
that they be put under lock and key for many years."

"They better not talk to us about a few bad weeds," Meretz chairman Haim Oron said. "These phenomena
spring up on the right-wing [of the political spectrum]." "This thuggish and dangerous act is the result of the
continuing see-no-evil approach toward the vicious violence against soldiers and police officers and anyone
else who doesn't agree with the brutish section of the extreme right wing," Oron said.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, an activist with a fringe settler group calling itself the National Jewish Front, said
Sternhell was an irrelevant figure and that he did not believe settlers were behind the attack. "I don't
denounce this incident, but say categorically that we are not involved," Ben-Gvir said. Settlers regularly clash
with Palestinians and Israeli peace activists in the West Bank, but the use of weapons against political
opponents in Israel is uncommon. There have, however, been precedents. A pro-settlement extremist shot
and killed Rabin in 1995 as he spearheaded efforts to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians. Another
extremist killed a member of Peace Now with a grenade at a 1983 peace protest.

Sternhell frequently writes for Haaretz and was awarded the Israel Prize in political science in February
2008. Recently, Sternhell has received threatening phone calls. Police assess that the background for the
attempt to harm Professor Sternhell is politically motivated. They suspect that right-wing activists carried
out the attack in response to his remarks decrying Israeli settlers.

Five months ago, the High Court of Justice deferred a petition by the Legal Forum for the State of Israel
against the decision to award the Israel Prize in political science to Sternhell. The petition condemned
Education Minister Yuli Tamir and the judicial committee who awarded Sternhell the prize. Sternhell, the
petition claimed, was not deserving of the prize because of his remarks in the media, specifically an article he
wrote in Haaretz which justified an attack by Palestinians on settlers.

I have gathered several resources to help you build peulot/tkasim for this year's Rabin memorial (the
memorial day lands this year on Monday, Nov 11, and the atzeret Rabin in Israel will be on Saturday evening,
Nov 8).
The resources are on the Habonim Dror Olami website, in a newly created 'Yitzhak Rabin' forum:
http://www.habonimdror.org.il/forums/viewforum.php?f=52
I encourage you to read what I've posted, and post additional resources as well - this can be a wonderful
opportunity to share chinuch materials among movement leadership around the world!
Please also feel free to contact me for additional ideas and resources.

Rabin once said that: "Peace between nations is a peace between peoples. It is an expression of trust and
appreciation. The leadership can show the way, but it is the people themselves who have to take the journey".
Let us recommit ourselves to being leaders who show the way through our dugma ishit, and to being willing to
take the journey together though hagshama tnuatit.

Aleh V'Hagshem and Shana Tova,

Sarah Michaels Levy
Racezet Desk Anglo - Habonim Dror Olami