Yitzchak Rabin Day....

The memorials for Yitzchak Rabin have long been hijacked by the Left-wing to
spew hatred against anyone who disagrees with them and their failed,
suicidal policies. It is a shame that is the case, and that people like
myself are made to feel excluded from rallies to honor his memory and to
mourn his loss. Below, Steve Plaut gets it right.

Naomi Ragen


1. Rabin Day - Part I

Today is the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
according to the Jewish calendar. In Israel the week around the day has
long been turned by the Israeli political establishment into an annual
ritual of McCarthyist attacks on freedom of speech. In ceremony after
ceremony and speech after speech, Israelis are reminded by their
politicians and by the chattering class that Rabin was murdered because
those who disagreed with his policies were allowed to exercise freedom of
speech. The myth of a conspiracy by Rabbis and by the political Right to
have Rabin killed is repeated with all the mechanical repetition of the
Big Lies of two generations ago. This year, even Olmert repeated it,
although he was a member of the Likud in 95 and is clearly one of those
the McCarthyist Left asserts is collectively guilty of the murder.

Never mind that not a single Rabbi has been identified as having expressed
approval of the idea of killing Rabin, nor approval after it happened, and
not a single politician from the Israeli Right cheered or said hurrah when
Rabin was killed. A handful of fringe Kahanists might have said hurrah,
half of whom were probably police moles, but they are hardly
representative of the half of Israelis who opposed Rabin's policies.

I disliked Rabin and his policies. I think his policies were disasters
and that they directly produced the 2000 or so Israeli deaths from the
Oslo "peace process." That does not make me a killer of Rabin. I am
tired of being accused by the McCarthyists of having been part of the
assassination. Like virtually everyone else who hated Rabin's foolish
policies, I wanted him evicted from power via an election and not
murdered. I also want Kadima evicted via an election.

The anniversary of Rabin's killing could have been turned into a day of
education about democracy and freedom of speech. A day in which Israeli
children are reminded that political assassination is an attack on
democracy, and where they are also reminded that everyone has the right to
freedom of speech even if they disagree with the leftist canon. Most
importantly, a constructive Rabin Day would remind Israelis of the massive
anti-democratic wave of McCarthyism launched by the Left, right after the
assassination, in which dissidents (including Rabbis) were arrested,
indicted, harassed, demonized.

On a constructive Rabin Day, Israelis should also be warned of the efforts
at deification of Rabin and the attempt to build around him a cult of
personality, where his policies have been represented not as controversial
and often foolish political proposals, but instead are raised to
unchallengeable theological canon. A constructive Rabin Day might also
address the dangers to democracy from a situation in which the entire
media are self-recruited for one wing of the political spectrum. A
constructive Rabin Day might point out the dangers to democracy of
incidents such as Ehud Barak's getting up and screaming that those who
disagree with the Left are a cancerous tumor. In a week in which a
communist candidate is running for mayor of Tel Aviv, a constructive Rabin
Day might be spent discussing the dangers of totalitarian ideologies.

The McCarthyism around Rabin Day reasserts itself in the Israeli media
every year. This year it is being fed by hysteria over an attempt to bomb
far-leftist anti-democratic Prof. Zeev Sternhell, an attack attributed by
the Israeli media with no evidence whatsoever to the political Right and
to "settlers." The media continue to demonize daily the Jews who live
inside the West Bank as violent criminals.

One component of the Big Lie invented by Israel's McCarthyist Left is that
the political Right consists of people who are congenitally lawless and
violent. No one denies that there have been a handful of violent
criminals to emerge from the Right, people universally repudiated by the
leaders and thinkers in the Right. Yigal Amir may be the worst.

But let us not forget the long long long history of crime and violence by
the Left. Leftist hooligans clash violently with police and soldiers in
the West Bank every day, trying to sabotage the security fence so that the
terrorists can get in more easily. The Left produced the spies and the
traitors, including Mordecai Vanunu, Azmi Bishara, Tali Fahima, Marcus
Klingberg, and including the ring of espionage and terror operated by
kibbutznik Udi Adiv (today a lecturer in political science at the Open
University) in the 1970s. Those with long memories will remember the
earlier campaigns of leftist violence against the Right in the 1940s, the
"season," the sinking of the Altalena, the betraying of members of the
Edsel to the British by the Left, the gangs of street thugs operated by
Ben Gurion to beat opponents, etc.

A constructive Rabin Day, devoted to stopping political violence and
promoting open political debate, would mention not only Yigal Amir and the
clown who threw a grenade at a Peace Now demonstration in 1983, killing
protester Emil Grunzweig, but also Vanunu and Adiv and the others.