1977: A Madman Turns 40: 2017- Day 66

  Today marks the first meeting between President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Though Rabin would be out of office before the end of the year, this historic 2-day meeting is what got the wheels rolling for a peace accord between the State of Israel and Egypt a couple of years later.

Different Room, Different Photo Op,
Same pose by Carter.

    Carter's peace plan between Israel and Egypt marked the first time in history that an Arabic nation acknowledged the Jewish state as a sovereign nation. This was big stuff as less than a decade prior to Carter's meeting with Rabin, Israel defended itself from Egypt and several other Arab nations in the Six-Day War, a skirmish that sought to wipe Israel off the map.

    As you know from reading this blog, I have a deep love for the Jewish people. My wife is Jewish and my five children (God rest their souls) are a quarter Jewish as a result. But there's another reason for my highlighting of this meeting and it has everything to do with Yitzhak Rabin.

The two heads of state and their wives.

    Rabin once again becomes Prime Minister in 1992 where he continues to serve until November 5, 1995. On that date, Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing extremist gunman who opposed Rabin's signing of the Oslo Accords, a peace process aimed at Israel recognizing and normalizing relations with the Palestinians. 

     Going to a Christian private school, let me tell you when word of Rabin's murder got out, everyone freaked. People were crying not for the tragedy but that they were convinced it was the end of the world. Having just gone to war in the Middle East in 1992 during the Gulf War and just about to turn 18 in 3 short weeks, I was scared too, convinced I was going to be drafted to serve in a another conflict over there.

Jerusalem Post front page dedicated to
the Rabin assassination.

     Well, the US didn't repeal the repeal on the draft, the assassination was viewed as a 'Lone Wolf' act, and war didn't break out between Israel and the US versus the Arabic nations of the Middle East as everybody at my school thought. But it truly was a frightening time and one that impacted me greatly all thanks to a short meeting between two heads of state in 1977.

    Until tomorrow...