Mrs. Leah Rabin, late wife of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, is being buried today. In attendance will be Senator-elect Hilary Clinton, The Prime Minister of Israel, the Prime Minister of Germany, the German Chancellor's wife, the Foreign Minister of Russia, the Democratic House leader, and even Winnie Mandela. Already Israeli television has been saturated for days with eulogies, photographs, and interviews with the late Mrs. Rabin's friends and family?And there are no doubt many private citizens that are interested in seeing and hearing all of these things. Perhaps some will even make the effort to go to Mount Herzl and attend the funeral.

But for most average Israelis, the funeral of another woman has completely eclipsed that of Mrs. Rabin's. I am speaking of Sara Lesha, a simple teacher and mother of five, who was buried yesterday in Jerusalem's Har Hamenuchot cemetery. No Knesset members, or illustrious foreign visitors crowded to pay their respects, for unlike the world-renown Mrs. Rabin, she never made any international headlines. No military guard of honor fired shots into the air, for Sara Lesha was not a soldier in any army, and she did not die, armed, on the frontlines of any declared war. She was a teacher, and the mother of five small children. She taught physical education in religious schools, showing young girls how to improve their posture, their health and well-being. She was in her car going home to make dinner for her children and husband, to wash the dishes, and put away the laundry when a carload of Palestinian gunmen pulled up alongside her car, looked her in the face and slaughtered her.

Yesterday, thousands of mourners accompanied her body through the streets of Jerusalem. And millions more in Israel wept quietly in their kitchens and bedrooms and living rooms as they watched her young children, her husband, her students, her neighbors, friends, and thousands of strangers crowd around her on her last journey. The procession paused twice: Once at the Prime Ministers' office, and a second time at Mr. Barak's home.

Before she was killed, Mrs. Lesha had planned to visit these two places, to join the tent of protest across from the Prime Minister's office in which ordinary citizens are gathering from all parts of Israel to protest Mr. Barak's current policy of restraint, which they feel Yasir Arafat and his band of bloody men view as a green light to continue their cruel, wanton, and cold-blooded war of terror against ordinary Israelis.

Instead, she became a victim of that policy, which -among other things- lifted the blockade against the Arab townships under Mr. Arafat's control, permitting carloads of gun-toting murderers to wander the roads of Judea and Samaria looking to claim more Jewish victims. Under the protective cover of the political idea that Yasir Arafat is a peace partner; can be trusted to keep agreements; and has abandoned violence for the negotiating table?policies initiated by the late Yitzchak Rabin when he began the Peace Process in Oslo-- Palestinians continue to use the Rabin legacy to commit the kind of murders that orphans our children, and leaves parents bereaved.

Today, the late Mrs. Rabin will be honored and mourned- in part- for this, her husband's policies, by many important leaders from all over the world. But back here at home, the climate of the times will not allow the average Israeli to view the Rabin legacy in such a simple, positive light.

"I was there when the procession for Mrs. Lesha passed," a woman I know told me this morning, a few hours before Leah Rabin's funeral was to begin. We were in the gym locker after aerobics. "Imagine. In the middle of the day, a funeral for a young mother, who left behind five orphans. In the middle of Jerusalem, all those young girls crying, their heads bent, carrying signs: "They murdered my teacher." Imagine, in our own country, we couldn't protect her, a young mother." There were tears in eyes. She too, I knew, was a young mother with five children .

What must be admitted is that there are two Israels. In one, people will sincerely mourn Leah Rabin and all she symbolized. And in the other, people will turn off their televisions and shut down their radios as the endless eulogies and words of praise for her and her late husband are blasted into their unwilling ears. They cannot bear to hear it. They cannot bear to see it. They are still too busy mourning Sara Lesha.