Like all Israelis of my generation, I remember the night of Nov. 4, 1995.

Having just heard from the news desk editor at Israel’s Haaretz newspaper that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been shot, I called Palestinian officials for reaction. I was Haaretz’s Palestinian affairs correspondent at the time and was on the phone with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat when I heard on Israel Radio that Rabin’s spokesman was about to make a statement. As Eitan Haber hushed the crowed, I started translating for Erekat: “The government of Israel announces in dismay, in great sadness, and in deep sorrow, the death of Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered by an assassin, tonight in Tel Aviv.”

This week, Alpher discusses whether the set of understandings between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority regarding the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif acheived by Secretary of State Kerry will end the violence; the overall effect of the mini-intifada of the past month; why Jordan’s King Abdullah couldn’t play a more active role, without recourse to Kerry; what we are to make of bewildering statements by Netanyahu, to a World Zionist Congress audience in a speech in English, that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, suggested to Hitler in 1941 that he annihilate the Jews (“burn them”) rather than expelling them and that as prime minister he has built far less in the settlements than his predecessors;

Saturday night’s Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) rally brought out thousands of people, Israelis sick of the status quo, to protest the Netanyahu government’s intransigence, its diplomatic inaction and its fomenting of violence and brutality.

Under the slogan “There is no Security without a Political Solution,” thousands of Israelis urged their government to choose dialogue over demagoguery and incitement, diplomacy over force and subjugation, to offer Israelis hope, and to lead Israelis toward peace with the Palestinians.