Who was Yitzhak Rabin? He is remembered as a peacemaker who signed the Oslo agreements in 1993 with PLO chairman Yasser Arafat. However, he served in the military. He rescued Jews from Entebbe who were held hostages by Communist terrorists in Uganda and by Ugandan then leader Idi Amin.

Yitzhak Rabin was born in 1922. He graduated from the Kadoorie Agricultural College with distinction. 

In the 1940's, he joined the Palmach, a Socialist Zionist freedom fighters fighting for a Jewish state. Unlike other Socialists, it also, like the rest of the Zionist movement, sought to have a democracy in the Jewish state and it was not bloodthirsty. 

  Socialist Zionist took out many items from pure Communism, which made it compatible to democracy. 

  After the establishment of Israel in 1948, he served with the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] until 1968 when he retired. He led the IDF though the 1967 Six-day war, in which Israel was defending itself and was close to being annihilated by the Egyptian-led coalition of Arab states.  Soon after he retired from military service, he served as ambassador to the US. While he was ambassador to the USA, he promoted, consolidated ties and strategic cooperation with the US. Israel received more US aid as a result. 

   Before the Yom Kippur war, he returned to Israel and became an active member of the Labor party. In December 1973, he was elected as a member of the Israeli parliament the Knesset.

  He served as minister of labor under Golda Meir's government, which resigned shortly afterwards. On June 2, 1974, the Knesset voted to form a new government headed by Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin sought to solve social problems, improve the economy and strengthen the IDF. In 1976, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP], a Communist faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO], which like the rest of the PLO sought [and seeks] to eliminate Israel and the German Red army Faction, which sought to establish a Communist state in West Germany. The hijacked plane was led to Uganda, whose leader Idi Amin, helped the terrorists guard the hostages at the airport. The terrorists were willing to release the hostages in exchange for terrorists held by Israel. The terrorists released the gentile i.e. non-Jewish hostages and kept the Jewish ones hostage. A deadline was set that if the prisoners were not released, the hostages would be killed. However, Israel planned a heroic operation to free the hostages. It worked. Most of the hostages were free. Some of them were killed. Some IDF soldiers such as the leader of the operation General Yoni Netanyahu and all four of the terrorists along with many Ugandan solders were killed. 

  In 1977, Rabin resigned after discovering that four F-15 jets were delivered on Sabbath and also that his wife Leah held a bank account in the US. Menachem Begin from the Likud party was elected as Prime Minister. Rabin served in the Knesset again as the opposition. He sat as the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. In 1984, after Peres became Prime Minister, he served as Minister of Defense. He called on the IDF to withdraw from Lebanon and only remain a security zone in Southern Lebanon. Hezbollah rejected [and rejects] Israel's right to exist and purposely attacks Israeli civilians and soldiers alike. 

  Israel came into Lebanon in 1982 to expel the PLO, which used Lebanon as a base to launch rockets at northern Israel. The peacekeepers came and peacefully evacuated the PLO to Tunisia.

   Israel did withdraw from all of Lebanon except Southern Lebanon. Yitzhak Shamir from the Likud party made a deal with Peres that every two years the two guys would switch as Foreign Minister and Prime Minister. 

    In 1986, Shamir again became Prime Minister [he was briefly Prime Minister from 1983 to 1984 until Peras took his place].

  Rabin continued serving as Prime Minister. Shamir remained as Prime Minister.

 In 1987, the first intifada broke out. It was controlled by the PLO and then taken over by the Islamic Fundamentalist group Hamas. The journalists provided favorable pictures of the intifada making it look like courageous Palestinians fighting Israeli soldiers. However, the truth was more complicated. The rioters targeted Israeli soldiers, Jewish civilians and suspected collaborators of Israel. Israeli soldiers, Jewish civilians and suspected collaborators of Israel were killed in cold-blood. 

  Israel was facing a security threat as Palestinian terrorists committed terrorist attacks fighting to eliminate Israel. The PLO and Hamas both fought to [and are fighting to] eliminate Israel. So the intifada was controlled by terrorist groups that reject Israel's right to exist.

  Rabin helped to employed harsh policies, which was physical attack on the rioters. 

  In the late '80's, the PLO found it's political influence dying out. It was not the prominent terrorist group it was in the '70's. Its influence was being taken over by the Islamo-fascist terrorist group Hamas. The PLO, while being recognized by the international community as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, was also pressured to recognize Israel's right to exist and denounce terrorism. So in 1988, the PLO officially recognized Israel's right to exist and denounced terrorism. However, the PLO still unofficially had the same goal the destruction of Israel and would use terrorism when "necessary." So even the US, which went along with Israel in rightly calling the PLO a terrorist group, started a dialogue with Israel. The Shamir government was willing to negotiate with Palestinians who did recognize Israel's right to exist and to gradually create a state by giving them self-government.

 It was bitterly opposed by Israel and the pro-Israel lobby. They both didn't trust the PLO and knew that it did not actually recognize Israel's right to exist. In 1990, the PLO committed a terrorist attack on the US embassy in Israel and on a beach in Tel Aviv. The US ended its dialogue with the PLO. 

  In 1991, the US hosted the Madrid conference, in which different Middle Eastern nations; even some that reject Israel's right to exist attend. However, it ended in failure.

  Rabin ran for Prime Minister. He was no longer Defense Minister when he became Prime Minister in 1992.

  The US under president George HW Bush had suspended aid to Israel because Yitzhak Shamir continued to build more settlements. However, Rabin suspended on the construction of settlements. So the US gave Israel more aid. Israel and the PLO had secret talks in Norway. They were started when Bill Clinton became the US president and mediated by him while he was the US president.

 PLO chairman Yasser Arafat gave Rabin a letter saying that the PLO recognizes Israel's right to exist and denounces terrorism. It also said that the articles in the PLO charter that call for Israel's destruction were "null and void."

  Rabin responded by saying that Israel recognizes the PLO as the legitimate representative of the PLO. In 1993, the Oslo agreements were signed. The Oslo "peace" process was an attempt for the creation of a Palestinian state through stages. In 1994, Israel handed over Jericho and 90% of Gaza over to what would be known as the Palestinian Authority [PA]. Those agreements are known as the Gaza-Jericho agreements. Arafat became head of the PA until the elections in 1996. In 1996, Arafat won the elections.

   In September 1995, in Taba, Egypt, Israel divided the West Bank to area A, the area under Israeli civil and security control, Area B, the area under Israeli security control and Palestinian civilian control and Area C, the area under Palestinian security and civil control. So 42% of the west Bank was given to the Palestinian Authority. 98% of the Palestinian people were no longer under Israeli rule. They were under PA rule.

  Rabin passionately wanted to bring peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. He said with tears when signing the Oslo agreements in 1993, "Enough of blood and tears. Enough!"

  Israel did start building more settlements during the Oslo period but not near any Arab villages. It was not in violation of the agreements. They said nothing about Israeli settlements. The Israeli government repeatedly called for peace when talking to their people. The Israeli government was so optimistic about it that it sought to silence anybody questioning Oslo.

  The agreements were also like the Munich accords between Hitler and Chamberlain. PA president Yasser Arafat on the other hand, violated all the agreements. He was seen on Palestinian TV calling for violent jihad on Israel. His controlled widespread propaganda in mosques, radio, TV, newspapers and in most Palestinian textbooks called for Israel's destruction and presented suicide bombers as religious Shahids and terrorism on Israel as heroic resistance. It also called for the killing of Jews. Maps of Palestine in Palestinian textbooks did not show Israel. Arafat said after he was elected in 1996 the following,

"We plan to eliminate Israel. We will establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make the Jews miserable by psychological warfare. Jews won't want to live among us Arabs." Arafat compared the Oslo agreements with agreements between Muhammed and the Quraish, in which Muhammed attacked the polytheist tribe when he was stronger. 

  There is no revised edition of the PLO. In 1998, after Clinton's visit to Gaza, it was discovered that the PLO did not make a revised edition of the charter. So the PLO made the same promise. But Palestinian websites still show the PLO charter that calls for the elimination of Israel. The PA collaborated with Hamas and other rejectionist terrorist groups. It was another pledge at Oslo for Israel and the PA to go after the rejectionist terrorists on their side. The PA collaborated with their rejectionist terrorists and would rarely arrest it's members mainly for show and then release them shortly afterward. During the second intifada, the IDF found documents that prove that Arafat supported terrorists. The PA government including president Arafat, while saying they want peace to the west, was calling for the killing of Jews, the destruction of Israel, portrayed Palestinian terrorism as heroic resistance and suicide bombers as holy Islamic fighters. There were [and are] posters of suicide bombers and other Palestinian terrorists. There are also posters of suicide bombers and other Palestinian terrorists in schools, homes and on sale in stores. There are also pictures and names of suicide bombers and other terrorists on cards and trinkets.

  Summer camps were [and are] named after suicide bombers. Those summer camps were exposed as military training camps, which give a combination of training and indoctrination to fight Israel. As a result, more Palestinians during and after the Oslo period sought to fight Israel then during the pre-Oslo period even during the first intifada. The second intifada was the result of Oslo and was more blood than the first one. More Palestinians fought [and are fighting] Israel in the second intifada than the first. This increased terrorism on Israeli civilians and Jewish civilians in the territories resulted in Israel setting up more restrictions such as roadblocks and checkpoints. In response to suicide bombers, Israel built the security fence, which helped to nearly eliminate suicide bombers while the 2005 disengagement of Gaza resulted in rocket attacks on Israeli cities such as Sderot escalating.

   Israel continued to be dangerously optimistic about peace and rejected any idea of Oslo being what it was doomed to failure. Israel went after the extremists on their side. Israel condemned the Goldstein massacre, which was a terrorist attack on a mosque in Hebron by the Kahanist Baruch Goldstein. Rabin said, "A loathsome, criminal act of murder was committed today at a site holy to both Jews and Arabs in Hebron." 

  Even showing the evidence of PA violations, the Israeli government would still dismiss you as anti-peace.

  In November 1995, while Arafat was appearing on PA TV calling for jihad on Israel, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin went to a peace Now demonstration that calls for peace with the Palestinians. He was singing about peace, which also shows his desperate determination to reach peace with the Palestinians. When he was leaving the demonstrations, another Kahanist Yigal Amir murdered Rabin in cold blood. Rabin and his wife were buried on Mount Herzl.