Israel will mark the 23rd anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin this weekend. The question is whether this year, like every year, the commemorators will once again accuse a large portion of the Israeli public of being responsible for or having contributed to the murder. I will be very pleasantly surprised if they don't.
There are people in Israel who just can't help it. Despite having made a historic contribution to our resurrected statehood, a large camp has chosen, consciously or subconsciously, to consistently cast blame on the rival camp. It is a fundamental political principle for them. It is as though they believe the only way to gain the public's love is to make the public hate the opposite camp by demonizing it and painting it as the enemy. The irony is that this camp keeps decrying all the "incitement" against them. This is not a disagreement, it is a hate-fueled fight, and it is preventing any kind of serious debate between the sides on the issues that need debating – anything to avoid bringing up the devastating failure of the previous haphazard peace accords. What does the Left gain from all this?
The Bible, the foundation that props up our nation, tells a story of a fight between Abraham's shepherds and his nephew Lot's shepherds over grazing lands and water sources. The verse describing the fight adds that "the Canaanite was then in the land." The other inhabitants of the land looked on with glee as Abraham's family quarreled. They thought, let the Hebrews fight among themselves; it will spare us a war. A millennium and a half later, when King Alexander Jannaeus' sons Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II fought over their father's kingdom, the Romans were summoned to rule in favor of one or the other, and Jews invited international intervention and asked the empire's "security council" to impose order on the Jewish nation. That is how we lost our independence.
Even during our long exile, in the various valleys of death, there were Jews who could not help but criticize their Jewish rivals. As they were succumbing to the enemy, they accused their Jewish brethren of what the actual enemy was about to do to them.
Last Saturday, Jews were massacred by an anti-Semitic murderer, who shot them while they prayed to the Jewish God. Before murdering them, the shooter expressed his hatred toward all Jews, wherever they may be. It is impossible not to be rocked to the core by such heinous acts. Ostensibly, sorrow at the tragedy was uniform among all Jews, reminding us of the bond between us.
But a deeper look revealed that this was not the case. Even before the bloodstains could be washed away, the usual complainers rose up and accused the rival political camp of being responsible for the massacre. It is difficult for radical liberals to contain anti-Semitism. It is a stain on their universal identity. That is why they rush to rid themselves of it by casting it on others.
One commentator went a step further and concluded that the Israeli government's values are more in line with those of the murderer than with the values of the Jews he murdered. Appalling. Before he finished making this outrageous claim, another fool – a professor with severe moral narcissism whose main focus is on his moral behavior without taking the big picture into account – lashed out at Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett. The professor contended that Bennett, who set off to console the survivors of the shooting, had no right going there because he is more like the murderer than the victims. Absolute insanity.
The people who make these kinds of remarks and the newspapers that provide a platform for such views (Haaretz, for example), are known for backing the Palestinians' aspirations to establish a Palestinian state on the ruins of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Some of them even view the very existence of Israel as an unforgivable sin, because its existence comes at the expense of the Arabs who were there before. Would anyone even consider suggesting that the people who express these views have more in common with terrorists than with the thousands of terror victims who have been murdered, burned and massacred over the years? The murderers of Jews don't need any excuse to carry out their plots, incidentally.
And of course U.S. President Donald Trump is to blame too, because he is an anti-Semite or because he supports anti-Semites and neo-Nazis. He is responsible for the "atmosphere" that encouraged the massacre.
When will this tired gang of pretentious children give it a rest? Trump is the most pro-Israel president in the history of American presidents; his daughter and grandchildren are Jewish; he relocated the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, publicly recognizing Israel's right to its capital; he sent his representative to the U.N. to attack its anti-Israel bias and hypocrisy; he defended us in an unprecedented manner; he recognized the terrible injustice and suspended funding to UNRWA, accusing it of perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem; he withdrew from the international nuclear agreement with our sworn enemy Iran, and ratcheted up American sanctions on Tehran – all this and you think the president is anti-Semitic? How obtuse, alienated and detached from reality do we need to be to actually take such claims seriously?
Now they're going after Brazil's president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro. According to them, some of Bolsonaro's past remarks warrant severing ties with the massive country he now heads. Fortunately, the people who think this way aren't in charge of Israel's foreign policy. Do they think that close ties with other countries and their leaders mean that we accept everything they say and do? The reality is a little more complicated than that. Bolsonaro likes Israel and wants to learn from us to strengthen his own economy and defense. This ensures robust trade relations between Israel and Brazil.
Unfortunately for the detractors, he also promised to relocate the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem, without balancing the move out with a payout to the Palestinians. In fact, he spoke harshly of the Palestinians, comparing them to a Colombian terrorist organization. Bolsonaro's critics talk about applying morals to international relations – that would be well and good if those same people hadn't given their seal of approval to the biggest murderer of Jews since the Holocaust – Yasser Arafat – as Israel's partner for peace. So Arafat yes, but Bolsonaro no?
And the madness doesn't stop there. On Tuesday we heard the terrible news about the Atar family from Psagot, which was wiped out – both parents and six children – in a horrifying traffic accident. A Haaretz reporter was quick to correct the radio presenters, saying, "I would like to remind everyone – Psagot is not a community, it's a settlement." That was the detail that was important for her to dwell on in the face of the horror. To distinguish the hometown of the victims from the rest of Israel. This comment is equivalent to the distinction between terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria, which are seen as less serious, and attacks inside the Green Line, because in Judea and Samaria the victims are "just settlers."
The Haaretz reporter who made the unfortunate comment is not an influential voice, but it is her precisely her place in the margins that proves the unbearable lightness within her social circle with which the political story supersedes the human story. Just like in the cases of the previous two writers. They don't see the tragedy. They don't see Jews whose lives were taken. They see a political story that needs to be steered in the "right" direction.
This politicization has taken over Israeli culture and academia and has destroyed them. There is no area that can escape this group's political judgement. Like a fanatic cult, they espouse their moral superiority, comparing it to their political rival's moral corruption. This attitude serves only to increase the public's disdain for them.
Israeli society knows that these accusations are false. We are not racists. Israel's democracy is not in danger of collapse, in fact it is now stronger than the democracies in Europe and the U.S. We didn't murder Rabin. Our values are in no way similar to those of our murderers - be it in Pittsburgh or Toulouse or in Israel. Our people's ancient tradition of expressing remorse – a tradition we have bestowed upon the world – says "we have sinned," not "you have sinned."
