
DATE: Wednesday, May 21, 1997               TAG: 9705200060

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E7   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY CHARLENE CASON 

                                            LENGTH:   75 lines

WIDOW'S ACCOUNT OF SLAIN ISRAELI LEADER IS INSIGHTFUL

LEAH RABIN was not her husband's best friend: ``He was his own closest friend, and I was next in line,'' she writes. This is but one example of the candor that Leah Rabin exhibits in her new book describing the nearly 40 years she spent as the wife of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995.

``Rabin: Our Life, His Legacy'' is such a sensitive and insightful book that it's difficult to remember the author had been a widow little more than a year when it was published. Yet, throughout, Leah Rabin is honest and straightforward when she writes about her relationship with her husband. She shows the same veracity in discussing Rabin's military mentality, his early political naivete, principled tenacity and family devotion.

The book begins and ends, in essence, with Rabin's murder by an extreme right-wing Jew who, Leah Rabin writes, ``believed he was fulfilling a holy mission.'' Chapter I, ``A Last Kiss,'' actually starts with a letter from Leah, written within weeks of Yitzhak's death: ``It is very difficult to get up each morning - without you, to sit down at the breakfast table - without you, and to know that from now on this is how it will be forever.''

Sorrowful letters such as this, as well as political correspondence and excerpts from talks delivered by, and about, the Rabins are knitted into the text of Rabin, giving it a pattern of genuineness.

There is a key excerpt from a speech given by Rabin at the Hebrew University shortly after Israel's victory in 1967 in what is now called The Six-Day War. He said, ``Our warriors prevailed not by their weapons but by their sense of mission, by the consciousness of the rightness of their cause, by a deep love for their country and an understanding of the difficult task laid upon them.''

Yitzhak Rabin was, first and foremost, a military tactician, and, writes Leah, ``the Palmach (Israel's early border-defense force) was the first large-scale setting for the development of Yitzhak's practical skills - especially the mastery of leadership and military strategy.''

Though only about 60 pages of Rabin are devoted to Rabin's 25-year military career with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), we see how strongly that career influenced the 30 years of political life that came later.

While he was out of office (1977-84 and 1990-92), Rabin held various military consulting and peacemaking positions with the government. After serving four years as Israel's defense minister, Rabin was elected prime minister for the second time in 1992.

Leah unabashedly describes Yitzhak as a Zionist, who ``had enormous sensitivity to the loss of life'' occasioned in Israel's fights for independence and a place among nations; an atypical warrior who ``believed that the role of power was, above all, a guarantee of our existence and our defense.'' In the end, Leah Rabin believes, her husband will best be remembered for his unfailing dedication to Israel's survival, and his ceaseless efforts to find peace for the nation in a seemingly constantly war-torn Middle East.

``Rabin: Our Life, His Legacy'' poignantly closes by marking the one-year anniversary of Rabin's death, and quoting the speech given by Rabin's grandson Jonathan at his grave site, which concludes, ``Forgive us, Grandfather, for letting them take you from us.'' MEMO: Charlene Cason is a free-lance writer and student in the master's

writing program at Old Dominion University. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Leah Rabin, widow of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, writes

about the country's first native leader.

Graphic

BOOK REVIEW

``Rabin: Our Life, His Legacy''

Author: Leah Rabin

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Pages: 311.

Price: $24.95