Perhaps the vandals who defaced posters of Yitzhak Rabin did us a favor. They reminded us what Rabin stood for, and who opposed him, and why. They scrawled on a poster "Kahaneh was right," giving us a chance to reassert, "Rabin was right." The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin was an attack on the peace process, and an attack on Zionism, the real Zionism that was about national rebirth and not about real-estate and racism.

The murder should have provoked an upheaval in Israeli politics and thought. The mourning youth with the candles in Rabin square should have been the start of a movement that would bring hundreds of thousands to the rescue of the founding values of the state. Instead, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin was co-opted by the very people who attacked the peace process. The event has been trivialized and and the memory of Rabin has been inherited by a government and a society that make believe they don't understand the message. Rabin alive was a fighter for peace, and an unpleasant reminder to some of who it was that had really built Israel, who it was who had given them their territories in "Greater Israel," and why those territories were being held - as hostages for peace rather than as real estate for development. Rabin has become banal, a part of history and a pedestrian symbol, like a forgotten statue in a public park.

This year someone painted swastikas on the Rabin memorial and "Kahaneh was right" slogans on Rabin posters, a reference to the racist ideology of Rabbi Kahaneh. At least, that is a reminder that for some people the struggle is not yet dead. They know what Rabin stood for, even if the Israeli government has been busy trying to make us forget. Rabin was the hero of a struggle that was lost. The bad guys are winning. The people who painted the swastikas are the extreme wing of the crowd of bad guys. They are not satisfied with their victory. They want more.

NRP MK Shaul Yahalom said in reaction to the vandalism, "[E]very attack on Rabin's memorial is an attack on democracy." That is true, but beside the point. Defacing the grave of Rehavam Ze'evi, who advocated transfer of Arabs, would also be an attack on democracy. "Democracy" was not the point of Rabin, and he was not assassinated because of his advocacy of democracy. He was assassinated because of his advocacy of peace and ending the occupation, because he was opposed to the settlements so dearly beloved of Shaul Yahalom. Yahalom was saying in essence, "I disagreed with Rabin's politics, but he should not have been killed. It is not democratic."

However, the disagreement between Rabin and Shaul Yahalom was not just a political disagreement. It was a disagreement between the keepers of the legacy of Zionism and those who have sought to disinherit them, and to usurp their achievements for their own ends. Attacks on the Rabin memorial are attacks on the peace movement and on Zionism as it should have been. This is what the government took away from us by co-opting the memory of Rabin, and this is what Shaul Yahalom wants to take away from us. Ariel Sharon likewise was quick to insist on catching the vandals. Nobody should be fooled. The eight illegal outposts in the West Bank that Shaul Yahalom and Ariel Sharon and his government have now legalized in the West Bank deface the memorial of Yitzhak Rabin and insult democracy and the rule of law much more than some graffiti scrawled on a poster.

The institutionalization of the Rabin memorial has taken away Rabin from the peace movement and somehow made Shaul Yahalom and Ariel Sharon part owners of the legacy of Yitzhak Rabin. The graffiti were a reminder of the real reason Rabin was murdered and the real significance of Rabin's struggle. Perhaps that is why Sharon and Yahalom are so anxious to find the culprits. They want to get it out of the way, so they can go back to trivializing the assassination of Rabin and sealing the legacy of Zionism. If we let them do it, then the state sponsored memorial day for Rabin becomes a celebration of the victory of Shaul Yahalom and Ariel Sharon and their values, rather than a rededication to the task of making peace. It lets them say, "We are OK. We are not like Yigal Amir, because we killed the old values and the old Zionism in a respectable way, not with a gun."  It puts the seal of respectability on their usurpation of Zionism, and makes their differences with Rabin into just another trivial political disagreement in a democracy.