"Peace is made with very difficult enemies.”
This single statement encapsulates the profound and pragmatic political philosophy of Yitzhak Rabin, whose assassination 30 years ago is being marked on November 4.
That same doctrine now takes the stage in director Amos Gitai’s powerful theatrical work Yitzhak Rabin: Chronicle of an Assassination, which will be performed for the first time in Hebrew on November 1 at the Charles Bronfman Auditorium in Tel Aviv.
The performance features actresses Yael Abecassis and Keren Mor alongside the Haifa Symphony Orchestra, the Bat Shir choir, conducted by Tali Weissman, and international soloists.
It uses testimony and a score including Britten’s War Requiem and Ravel’s “Kaddish” to confront the political rupture caused by the 1995 assassination, positioning the event as a necessary civic action to recall the legitimacy of dialogue.
An architecural memory
Gitai’s spectacle acts as an “architectural memory,” confronting the national amnesia surrounding the assassination that violently ended the possibility of political resolution.
It is a cultural insistence on remembering the dialogue that was silenced and a reminder that Rabin’s conviction that “the way of peace is better than the way of war” remains both a moral and pragmatic truth.
This Israeli premiere marks the first time the production will be performed in Israel, heightening the emotional proximity of the tragedy it recalls.
The piece has already traveled the world as a nomadic cultural statement, presented at the Palais des Papes in Avignon, the Philharmonie de Paris, and the Lincoln Center in New York, London, Vienna, and Salzburg.
In each city, the performance has been adapted into the local language.
“It’s always read by two actresses,” says Gitai. “The original 2016 production at Avignon featured the Israeli actress Sara Adler and Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, both performing in French,” he recalls.
The current Hebrew adaptation stars Yael Abecassis and Keren Mor, alongside the Haifa Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tali Weissman, with a thirty-member chorus evoking the structure of a Greek tragedy.
At the core of the drama lies the dual narrative of the two women, representing voices that once sought dialogue – now echoing across time.
Their text, interwoven with audiovisual excerpts from Gitai’s film Rabin: The Last Day and Leah Rabin’s minute-by-minute testimony, reconstructs the final 24 hours leading to the murder.
Between images, voices, and sound, Gitai weaves a human and political mosaic that exposes the unprecedented incitement and violence unleashed by nationalist forces against the Oslo Accords.
“Since Rabin’s murder a quarter of a century ago,” Gitai observes, “Israelis and Palestinians have never again addressed the complexity of their relations.”
Music occupies a central role in transforming the historical chronicle into a universal lament.
The Haifa Symphony Orchestra and chorus perform an international repertoire steeped in remembrance: the “Lacrymosa” from Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem forms the monumental backbone of collective grief; soprano Olga Senderskaya lends a haunting prayer with Maurice Ravel’s “Kaddish”; and a composition by American composer David Lang turns a Yiddish text into a fragile waltz – a “cry within the very fabric” of the event.
The ensemble includes virtuosos from across cultures: Louis Sclavis on clarinet, Alexey Kochetkov on violin and electronics, Kioomars Musayyebi on santur, and pianists Iddo Bar-Shai and Florian Fischbacher. Their shared musical language underscores the universality of loss and the possibility of reconciliation.
For Gitai, Chronicle of an Assassination is not a governmental commemoration but a civic act. “It’s a civil action,” he says, “because today, the most heartbreaking actions are civilian ones, not governmental.”
“The government is absent from all the important areas of rehabilitation and aid to the first victims. We said, we will do a civil action and remind people that there was once an era when dialogue existed.”
Rabin’s insight, simple yet radical, stands at the heart of this act: “Peace cannot be achieved by force; it has to be by agreement.” Both sides, he insisted, must engage in dialogue. Gitai contrasts this principle with the current rhetoric that glorifies power.
“They told us for two years that only force would free the hostages, only force,” he says. “And in the end, when the hostages were freed, it was through an agreement.”
Rabin’s era, Gitai reminds us, was one of pragmatic engagement. Israelis and Palestinians formed committees on every core issue: water, environment, borders, currency, Jerusalem, and even the right of return.
“All these questions,” he says, “are legitimate. We may not agree, but they must be discussed.”
By staging this unyielding chronicle, Gitai directly confronts what he calls “the most sorrowful coalition in the Middle East” – those on both sides who have always opposed an agreement.
His production restores the legitimacy of negotiation, remembering the moment when such dialogue was still possible.
“Peace is made with very difficult enemies,” Rabin said. Gitai’s work insists that this truth, buried beneath decades of political noise, remains the only path forward, one that art, at least, refuses to forget.
For tickets: https://www.kupat.co.il/show/rabin