Sydney exhibition devoted to slain Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin’s daughter, Dalia Rabin, is speaking across the oceans from her home in Israel. The nation, sadly accustomed as it is to existential crisis, is facing a different enemy in its battle with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alongside many other northern hemisphere countries, Israel is struggling to bring down case numbers as winter beckons and its people are deep in lockdown.

Consequently, events to commemorate a quarter century since the assassination of Dalia Rabin’s father, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient and prime minister of Israel, have been mostly subdued.

But, despite the anniversary of the tragedy and Israel’s coronavirus woes, Dalia Rabin’s message — recorded for the launch this week of an exhibition in Sydney to honour the former leader’s legacy — is of hope and gratitude.

On November 4, 1995, an Israeli fanatic shot Yitzhak Rabin dead at a rally in Tel Aviv. A usually resilient nation was grief-stricken, and the world shared in the trauma and loss of a figure who had come to represent peace and hope for a troubled region.

Created with the support of Australia’s vibrant Jewish community, the exhibition, to be held at the Sydney B’nai B’rith centre across the next six months, tells the personal and political story of Yitzhak Rabin through a collection of recordings and photographs.

Read the article by Angelica Snowden in The Australian.