ABSTRACT
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, is undoubtedly one of the more traumatic events of our times. The tremendous waves of response to this murder, coming from a wide sociopolitical spectrum, bear testimony to this. One of the most notable aspects in the spontaneous public response was the conspicuous share of youth and adolescents in it, which received wide coverage in the media as well as in the academic world. This youthful response was described as a “classical” mourning reaction following patricide, in direct reference to Freud's (1913) well-known description. In what follows, I examine and explore these two intertwined aspects: the reaction of the adolescents on one hand, and on the other, the hypothesis that this constitutes a mourning response over patricide.
