Lea Rabin
Encyclopedia
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Israel
The Prime Minister of Israel is the head of the Israeli government and the most powerful political figure in Israel . The prime minister is the country's chief executive. The official residence of the prime minister, Beit Rosh Hamemshala is in Jerusalem...
Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin
' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....
, who was assassinated
Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin took place on November 4, 1995 at 21:30, at the end of a rally in support of the Oslo Accords at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv...
in 1995.
Biography
Born in KönigsbergKönigsberg
Königsberg was the capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945 as well as the northernmost and easternmost German city with 286,666 inhabitants . Due to the multicultural society in and around the city, there are several local names for it...
, East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...
, Germany (now Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad is a seaport and the administrative center of Kaliningrad Oblast, the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea...
, Russia), in 1933 Leah emigrated
Aliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
with her family to Mandate Palestine where she met her future husband, Yitzhak Rabin, at school. They married in 1948, the year of Israel's independence.
Yitzhak became Prime Minister in 1974 following Golda Meir
Golda Meir
Golda Meir ; May 3, 1898 – December 8, 1978) was a teacher, kibbutznik and politician who became the fourth Prime Minister of the State of Israel....
's resignation, but in 1977 a US Dollar bank account (illegal at that time in Israel) held by Leah was exposed by Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...
journalist Dan Margalit
Dan Margalit
-Biography:Dan Margalits studied international relations and modern Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He began writing for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in the 1960s. He is married to Dana. His daughter, Shira Margalit, is the deputy director-general of the Reshet television...
. As a result, her husband decided to take responsibility, resigned from office. This came to be known as the Dollar Account affair
Dollar Account affair
The Dollar Account affair was a political scandal in Israel in 1977, following the exposure of an illegal US Dollar bank account held by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his wife Leah...
.
Leah supported the peace efforts of her husband in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or...
and worked further for a solution after his assassination
Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin took place on November 4, 1995 at 21:30, at the end of a rally in support of the Oslo Accords at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv...
. She wrote a book about her memories of her husband, which was released in 1997, under the name Rabin: Our Life, His Legacy.
She supported Shimon Peres
Shimon Peres
GCMG is the ninth President of the State of Israel. Peres served twice as the eighth Prime Minister of Israel and once as Interim Prime Minister, and has been a member of 12 cabinets in a political career spanning over 66 years...
in the elections of 1996
Israeli prime ministerial election, 1996
The first ever election for Prime Minister was held in Israel on 29 May 1996 alongside simultaneous Knesset elections. There were only two candidates: Shimon Peres of the Labour Party and Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud. The result was a surprise win for Netanyahu by a margin of 29,457 votes, less than...
, calling people to vote for him so that so that her husband's death "would not be in vain." She also expressed her disappointment after he lost the elections to Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is the current Prime Minister of Israel. He serves also as the Chairman of the Likud Party, as a Knesset member, as the Health Minister of Israel, as the Pensioner Affairs Minister of Israel and as the Economic Strategy Minister of Israel.Netanyahu is the first and, to...
. In the election of 1999
Israeli prime ministerial election, 1999
The second Prime Ministerial election in Israel was held on 17 May 1999 alongside elections for the 15th Knesset. Voter turnout was 69.0%.-Context:...
she supported Ehud Barak
Ehud Barak
Ehud Barak is an Israeli politician who served as Prime Minister from 1999 until 2001. He was leader of the Labor Party until January 2011 and holds the posts of Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister in Binyamin Netanyahu's government....
. However, during Barak's term as prime minister she changed her opinions about him. She was especially disturbed by the fact that he was negotiating a territorial compromise in Jerusalem.
Leah Rabin was diagnosed with lung cancer
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
and died in Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva known as Em HaMoshavot , is a city in the Center District of Israel, east of Tel Aviv.According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2009, the city's population stood at 209,600. The population density is approximately...
in 2000 at the age of 72, a few days after the fifth anniversary of her husband's assassination.
In 2005, he was voted the 152nd-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet
Ynet
Ynet is the most popular Israeli news and general content website. It is owned by the same conglomerate that operates Yediot Ahronot, the country's secondleading daily newspaper...
to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.
The couple's daughter, Dalia
Dalia Rabin-Pelossof
Dalia Rabin-Pelossof is a former Israeli politician. The daughter of former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin, she served as a member of the Knesset for the Centre Party, New Way and the Labor Party between 1999 and 2003.-Biography:...
was later a Knesset member for the Centre Party
Centre Party (Israel)
The Centre Party , originally known as Israel in the Centre, was a short-lived political party in Israel. Formed in 1999 by former Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai, the aim was to create a group of moderates to challenge both Binyamin Netanyahu on the right and opposition leader Ehud Barak's...
, New Way
New Way (Israel)
-Background:The faction was formed on 6 March 2001 when three MKs, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Dalia Rabin-Pelossof and Uri Savir, broke away from the Centre Party....
and the Labour Party, serving as Deputy Minister of Defense.