Inciting times

The chilling image is a reminder that the venom and the violence are happening again, if indeed they ever went away. I remember someone observing in the days after the assassination that Israelis seemed to be driving with less hooting and more courtesy, as though the shock of the murder had made everyone think about how to behave less aggressively in every area of life. It didn’t last, of course.

The problem is that public discourse in Israel is characterised by aggression and shouting. Politicians are among the worst offenders, as evidenced by what passes for debates in the Knesset and in panel discussions on TV. With elections now looming, the verbal aggression, at least, will only get worse.

I’ve been discussing the Rabin assassination with people recently. One friend commented that she wasn’t at all surprised that he was murdered. “People felt utter frustration because they had no way of expressing their opposition to the way he was dealing with the Palestinians.”

Taking this a stage further, then, what might Israelis living in the West Bank do to express their opposition if they are evicted from their homes by IDF soldiers? The photo in Haaretz gives us an idea of how some of them are already reacting. In the article, Diskin foresees that in addition to political assassinations, attacks on Arabs and attacks on Israel’s security forces are possible consequences of increasing Israeli violence in the West Bank.

“They wouldn’t attack our own soldiers,” my friend replied. “This was just an isolated incident.”

That’s more or less what I told my young kids a little over thirteen years ago, when we were at a public event attended by Yitzhak Rabin and we witnessed at first hand the shocking and frightening vitriol being directed at him. When my kids asked me tearfully that day whether someone would try to kill Rabin, I reassured them that while his life might be in some danger, the threat wasn’t from here - not from Israelis.