Last night marked the 9th anniversary of Rabin’s murder (there should be some sort of legal obligation for every Israeli to take a minute or two on this day and firmly resolve that Yigal Amir will rot in jail for the rest of his life). There are many in Israel, however, who have apparently failed to learn the lessons of history:
The incitement against PM Sharon has reached an all time high. Hours before the crucial Knesset vote on the disengagement plan, which happens to fall a day before the 9th memorial of Rabin’s assassination, right wing militants sprayed graffiti calling for Sharon’s assassination on walls in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The slogans included “We got Rabin and we’ll get Sharon”, and “Hearty wishes to the next assassin”.
The thought that anyone could be so far gone as to think of assassinating a sitting Prime Minister, let alone one who has done so much for the nation as Sharon, should be sending shockwaves through Israel. This is one of those rare oversteps – Rabin’s assassination, 9/11, etc – that should cause everyone to recoil from the precipice and ask “how did it come to this?” But apparently we’re going to have to wait for something even more horrible before people will tone down their open incitement.
It’s tempting to try to reason with such lunatics: just as killing Rabin got you a Peres, killing Sharon will get you a Mitzna. But that’s giving these scum too much credit – you can’t reason someone out of what they haven’t been reasoned into, and this is a matter of blind idiology. But the Likud needs to get ahead of the curve on this, to say nothing of the rabbis. What will the Right say this time if another sitting Prime Minister is killed? “We didn’t know”? Unacceptable.
