Another Look at the Rabin Carnival (Column 423)
A few days ago I was sent (thanks to my friend Shmuel Keren) a Facebook post written by Rabbi Ilai Ofran, the rabbi of Kibbutz Yavneh and head of a pre-military academy. On the anniversary of Rabin’s assassination this year he wrote a post that managed to stir some further thoughts in me on these matters and to put some of my conclusions into question. But fear not: in the end I did not retract. The position remains in place. And here I begin, God willing.
Summary of my previous remarks
More than once I have written that the assassination of Rabin does not strike me as more severe than any other murder. On the contrary, here at least there was an idealistic motive at the base of the murder, and not an interest-driven one as is customary in other murders—based on money or power interests, or out of anger in a romantic context, or because someone took your parking spot, or any other “lofty” motive, or simply malice for its own sake. Yigal Amir, in my opinion, erred and even committed a grave deed, but at least he did something that, to the best of his judgment, was noble and for the public good, and he was of course ready to pay the full personal price (it was clear to him that he would not get out of this alive and would not himself enjoy the fruits of his act). So how is he worse than other murderers?
I have also previously addressed the trauma that we are subjected to around the assassination. It seems to me like a ridiculous and pitiful hysteria, which in many cases is driven by a political agenda (even if not always consciously), by a moral vacuum, and by sheer loss of composure. Precisely because we are dealing here with a murderer who deserves a good deal of appreciation—certainly more than any other murderer who deserves none—the hysteria testifies that there are no substantive motives here. I did not spare my rod from the crisis of the “candle youth” and other unfortunates either. I wrote that these phenomena arouse my compassion and even amuse me a bit (don’t tell them. It’s not nice to catch a person in his moment of grief). I understand that people search for a father figure, a rebbe and a guide within the secular vacuum, and sadly (for them and for me) they didn’t find anything better than that redhead. Sometimes I think Yigal Amir did him a kindness by assassinating him, thereby instantly turning him into a historic paragon admired by many and granting him eternal renown. Thus was born, ex nihilo, the “Rabin Legacy.” Truly, it’s a pity…
Rabbi Ofran’s post
As noted, Rabbi Ofran’s post stirred further thoughts in me about the whole matter. These are his words there:
| We stopped the studies this morning at 12:00, gathered all the students of the academy in the beit midrash, and I told them roughly this —
The 12th of Cheshvan is a very important day, but I fear that you, who were born long after that bitter and hasty day, don’t really understand why. We adults still remember the shock. You, who were born almost a decade later, mostly remember the politicians’ quarrels and Rachel our Matriarch. Murder is indeed a terrible act, but it happens in Israel about 300 times a year. On average, almost every day. What is it about this murder that is more terrible than any other murder? What in it justifies a national memorial day? One can speak in praise of tolerance and against violence also when it is a “romantic” murder, and the slogan “We argue but remain brothers” can be pulled out also when the background to the murder is a “dispute between criminals.” To answer this it’s important to understand what we are marking today — not Rabin Day and not the Rabin Legacy. In my eyes Yitzhak Rabin was a great leader with many merits, but had he died of a heart attack in the middle of his term (as happened, for example, to Levi Eshkol), no one would have set a national memorial day for him. The 12th of Cheshvan is “the Memorial Day for the Assassination of the Prime Minister.” The person’s image and personality, great as he may be, are not really relevant. Indeed, one must not ignore his figure especially as long as his close relatives still walk among us, but the over-preoccupation with “that man,” who, one must admit, was controversial, has caused quite a few people to feel deep alienation toward this day and what it represents. Jewish culture is a culture of disputes. And out of the habit of analyzing disputes, sharpening and amplifying them, we fail to notice that every dispute is based on very broad agreements. To argue requires shared premises upon which the discussion is built. It’s worthwhile, from time to time, even when arguing heatedly, to clarify what nonetheless we all agree on. Bennett and Netanyahu, Litzman and Michaeli, Deri and Zandberg, or Tibi and Smotrich are perceived by us as opposing extremes where it’s hard to find a common point. And yet, despite the gap, there is one important agreement among them — all of them, at least for now, agree on the system. Although on substance they clash head-on, they certainly agree on the very mechanism that requires mustering a majority in the Knesset to make decisions. What is this like? Like Beitar and Sakhnin players who, despite the searing hatred, don’t start passing by hand. Even in the heat of battle, everyone agrees on the rules of the game. And these agreements are the foundations upon which a society, a community, and a state are built. They are the anchors without which we have no kingdom. The murderer did not try to win the game; he tried to burn down the club. Yigal Amir assassinated Rabin, but the graver act he did was to raise his hand against the very system. Against the fundamental agreement upon which our society is founded, whether knowingly or not, he tried to saw off the branch we all sit on. In that sense, Yigal Amir is not a “right-wing” man just as Hamas is not a “left-wing” organization. Right and left, even “extremists,” are two sides of the agreement; their organizing axis is our common denominator. And one who undermines that anchor is not just another side in a dispute. He is a terrorist who threatens us all. Our Sages taught that “A father who waives his honor—his honor is waived; and a rabbi who waives his honor—his honor is waived,” but “A king who waives his honor—his honor is not waived.” For without awe there is no kingship, and without kingship there is no kingdom. The Shin Bet protects the prime minister not only because of the danger to his life. If danger were the criterion, the Shin Bet would protect crime bosses as well. The PM is protected because harming him is a harm to the entire public living here. They are essentially not guarding him but guarding us. We live in the age of personalization— in recent election campaigns the leaders’ personas have replaced party platforms. On Memorial Day for the IDF fallen one hears less combat legacy and more personal stories and songs of the fallen. Even on Seder night people are busy with “their private Exodus from Egypt” instead of the story of the birth of the people of Israel. And precisely in this era, the memorial day for the assassination of the prime minister must not be about the persona. Its subject must remain primarily the polity. I still bear the dread that arose in me as a teenager in those days when I heard the talk about the civil war that was about to erupt any minute. By God’s grace upon us, it did not happen. With impressive and even surprising resilience, Israeli society managed to recover from that terrible disaster. Our shared and agreed-upon mechanism somehow survived the bullets that were fired into its back. That resilience depends to a great extent on our ability to understand and remember that more than Yigal Amir is a murderer, Yigal Amir is a traitor. |
There is an important point here. His claim is that the principal and unique severity of the act is not that it was a murder. The severity is not the harm to human life, even if he was an important person (?), but the harm to the democratic rules of the game that are of great importance to our lives as a public. He concludes that this is treason more than murder. Seemingly this argument neutralizes all of my above claims, since it shifts the perspective from the question of murder to the question of the democratic rules of the game and their importance. Note that he even makes the comparison I made to other murderers and accepts my framing of it. But, as noted, upon second thought I concluded that I do not agree, as I will now try to explain.
Did Yigal Amir harm democracy?
Yigal Amir certainly did not accept the rules of democracy. There is no doubt that he tried to change the situation by a path outside the rules. But such things are done day in and day out by quite a few people and institutions. Many claim that even the courts and the law enforcement system sometimes do so. Others say there are politicians and media figures who do so (each from his own side). All these are indeed not murderers, but if the severity of Amir’s act is not the murder but the damage to the democratic fabric, I do not see why his act is graver than that of others who do this. There is no doubt that he intended to harm democracy and to act by illegitimate means, but in Column 372 I already pointed out that when we judge a person on the moral plane, we ought to judge him according to his own lights. As I already noted, Yigal Amir apparently truly and sincerely believed in the rightness of his act (in the spirit of “It is a time to act for the Lord,” as he saw it). Likewise, I assume that journalists, politicians, or jurists who act in ways that sometimes seem illegitimate to people usually believe in their own rightness.
My conclusion is that on the level of intentions it is difficult to judge Yigal Amir more harshly than other institutions or individuals. If so, we must move from the plane of intentions to the plane of results. I will already say here that judging a person should be done on the basis of his intentions, goals, and decisions. The results are a by-product, and it is not right to judge a person by them. But the results could perhaps justify the jihad being waged here against Yigal Amir (and his ideological children, according to Lapid—see below). The fear of harm to democracy justifies a memorial day every year, laments and dirges over the righteous Rabin legacy that departed, and the vilification of the “despicable” murderer (one must always add this. There are non-despicable murderers—those who do it for money, anger, honor, and the like). I do not think this is a proper justification. I am not willing to judge a person more harshly because of fears, justified as they may be. A person should be judged by his deeds and motives. But I can perhaps somewhat understand those who think otherwise.
Yet even on the results plane the situation is not simple. Did Amir’s act indeed have such grave consequences? What were they? The aforementioned actions of journalists, politicians, and members of the judicial system have a great impact on society and its conduct. They can cause serious damage to our democracy, and some would say they already do so in practice. Did Yigal Amir do more harm? (Again, in this discussion I am ignoring the fact that his act was murder.) Are the consequences of his act especially severe? Did he succeed in harming democracy as implied by what Rabbi Ofran writes? We are told that Yigal Amir murdered our democracy, murdered peace, murdered trust in state institutions, and the like. We are told that he created social and ideological polarization in the public, sharpened the conflict between right and left and between religious and secular, and more and more. They debit him for all our society’s ills. Is there justice in these claims?
Let us consider this factual question. How severe was Amir’s deed in terms of the harm to democracy? I am speaking about the actual results of the assassination.
What were the results of the assassination?
In general, I think that the impact, insofar as there was any, derived from the unjustified hysteria and not from the act itself. This act did not shake our democracy one bit. If anything shook it, it was the hysteria, the invective, and the polarization that followed. In my eyes, Bibi and Peres harmed our democracy far more than Yigal Amir did, even though most of their actions were legally legitimate (and they of course did not murder anyone). I am not speaking about the corruption for which Bibi is on trial and Peres was not, but about their public conduct. So what? Does that make Bibi or Peres traitors? Therefore is one of them illegitimate? A healthy society does not allow one person, even if he is a prime minister—or a murderer of a prime minister—to harm its rules of the game and change them. In this sense, the changes that were attempted in the rules of the game after the assassination were the assassination’s success, and they are what brought about its problematic outcomes. The hysterical responses are what changed the rules of the game and gave Yigal Amir some of the consequences attributed to him. And here is a partial list: silencing, incitement, invective and polarization, loss of trust in state institutions, in the press, in the justice system, and the absence of public discourse in general (not that before there was anything much better). All these are indeed results of the assassination, but it was not Yigal Amir who did this—it was all of us. Instead of putting him in prison and moving on as before, we turned Amir into a demon and turned the fear of murder (not the murder itself) into a political toy, as if anyone who says something I don’t like is a potential murderer (“words kill,” yeah, right), as well as a legal and media toy. None of this should have come about in the wake of the assassination, since these reactions are unjustified. The assassination should not have aroused any fear for democracy or any harm to anything. It was the act of a delusional man who thought he could change political processes that way. I do not think his act had a diplomatic impact, but it certainly did have political and social impact. Only we are to blame for that, not Yigal Amir. We pounced on him and cast all our sins upon the desert Azazel.
Yigal Amir did not murder peace, did not murder democracy, did not murder trust in institutions, nor even freedom of expression. All these indeed deteriorated further since the assassination (though they existed before too), but as noted it was not he who did this—it was we. The only thing that Yigal Amir murdered was the assumption (mine as well) that it is impossible for a Jewish citizen of Israel to murder a prime minister in a political assassination. That assumption indeed collapsed, and that was truly done by Yigal Amir himself. But even that stemmed from a palpable sense of danger that prevailed in a broad public, for which the leaders of the time—and at their head Rabin—bore significant contributory fault. Their disregard for the protests and for the justified public fears regarding their reckless actions (remember the “propellers”?)—their motives and their manner of conduct, which seemed very problematic—was part of what led to the assassination. A frustrated public whose voice is not heard even though a disaster (in its view) is about to be brought upon it cynically, reacts extremely. That is predictable, even if very undesirable and illegitimate. So the one who murdered that assumption was all of us, together with Yigal Amir.
In any case, I think the only conclusion that follows from the assassination is that we must conduct ourselves with greater consideration and caution, and that now we must be more careful about political assassination. Nothing in our democracy should have changed, including everything I listed above. Our hysterical and unjustified reactions to the assassination are what made those changes. I think all those problems were always here, and these reactions merely reflected them and brought all this to the surface. The assassination did not create those phenomena; it exposed them. But we attack the stick instead of the one holding it (=all of us).[1]
In my estimation, if anyone ever thought of carrying out a political assassination here, Yigal Amir showed him that he has no chance of achieving anything. He will only shoot himself in the foot and set back his aims (it must be admitted that the aforementioned hysteria contributed to this outcome; so even though it is unjustified, it has positive results). The conclusion is that Yigal Amir contributed (unintentionally) to preventing future political assassination. Perhaps someone who aspires to anarchy received motivation to murder a leader (if he needed any), but the encouragement for that he received from us (who created the anarchy with our own hands), not from Yigal Amir.
A qualifying note and summary
One can speak about Yigal Amir’s intention to harm the rules of the game, not about the outcome. His intention from the outset was to achieve some goal by a non-democratic means, and that is indeed problematic. This problem lies on the plane of intentions and not on the plane of results, which, as noted, were not truly due to his act (but because of us). Perhaps in this Rabbi Ofran is right, although on the results plane I do not agree that his act had a particularly severe consequence. But as I argued, this can be alleged toward anyone or any factor who acts in ways that deviate from the rules of the game in order to influence society and the state. Above I brought several examples of this.
In conclusion, I think Rabbi Ofran’s claim that the severity of Yigal Amir’s act is betrayal of society and its rules is problematic. There was indeed betrayal here, but I think his claim covers simple anger at a political assassination. Harm to the rules of democracy can be done by other means as well, less dramatic than murder, and the result will be no less severe (several examples were brought above), and I haven’t seen such things addressed in the same way. So if Yigal Amir is a traitor, we all are traitors. The difference is that he committed murder—but, as noted, I have no special grievance against him for that beyond what I have for any other murder, and even less than that.
A note about Yair Lapid, may he live long
Parenthetically, on that same yahrzeit of Rabin, may the righteous be blessed, our foreign minister and alternate prime minister posted the claim that Yigal Amir’s successors now sit in the Knesset and receive media and political legitimacy. His intention was apparently toward Smotrich and Ben Gvir. I heard on the radio Irit Linor (who years ago seemed to me like a refreshing voice in our mainstream media, but after the change of government expresses herself and relates like the most die-hard Bibist and cannot see anything not through those glasses), who explained that there are no supporters of political assassination in the Knesset, including the above-mentioned. That is of course true, and at first blush I thought she was right in her criticism. Seemingly it looks like Yair Lapid is once again trying to ride the populist wave. However, a look at his words shows that Lapid did not mean potential murderers. He spoke of those who support harming democracy and deviating from its rules (for example racists, and those in favor of discriminating against Arabs), and in that there is certainly merit. In this sense, it seems that Lapid assumes Rabbi Ofran’s premise, according to which the problem with Amir was not the murder but the attack on democracy. But as I argued above, there are many more examples of such an approach even if they are less extreme than murder. Therefore I do not agree with this claim either. My conclusion is that Lapid is not right, but neither is Irit Linor.
In short, let the Rabin carnival and the inciting left-wing catharsis conducted within it come to an end. Return to your tents.
[1] See in Column 388 and Column 258 my comments on the film Joker.
Discussion
The people chose a leader democratically, and he killed him. That means he stole votes from millions of people => by definition, that is an injury to democracy. You also ignore the fact that Rabin was a leader, so the murder did indeed affect millions of people emotionally. It’s like suggesting that the murder of Martin Luther King is not especially significant; of course it is—because as a leader he had a broad impact on public life.
I don’t think he stopped it. The Palestinians, as expected, stopped it.
That’s a tautology. The question is what the substantive result was, not the personal one. And as for the fact that people were hurt—I certainly did not ignore that. I explicitly mocked it.
Two comments:
1. The murderer is more “despicable” not objectively, but because he murdered a person who mattered to a larger group of people than in an “ordinary” murder.
2. How would you propose trying to prevent such a case in the future if it mattered to you, and from a pragmatic point of view, don’t you think it would be proper to treat it more severely than an “ordinary” murder?
Hi Michi,
I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but I don’t understand why Yigal Amir’s act of betrayal (the very murder of an elected leader) seems to you to be on the same plane as many other fine people’s [acts]..?? We are all “traitors,” you say… but at the level of intentions, most of us are not planning to assassinate democracy in such a radical way. In that sense, all of our “betrayals” are really not similar to what Amir did. It’s hard for me even to think of an example of an attempted betrayal (of democracy) on that scale… maybe you can convince me if you bring such an example yourself.
Just as I try to prevent any murder. I don’t think murdering a prime minister is more severe, so long as people don’t make a bigger issue of it. By the way, a prime minister is guarded much more than any ordinary citizen, so the chance of murdering him is very small. There is no reason at all to take steps aimed specifically at preventing the murder of a prime minister.
Take for example the Bibists’ view of Bennett, who took power for himself with a party of 6 seats. By doing so he changes government policy and gravely harms the state (depriving us of the beneficence of Bibi, the ultimate ruler). Isn’t that far more harmful than murdering Rabin? And what about decisions of the Attorney General and the courts that go against government decisions and its policy? Many see them as assassinating democracy. That too has consequences far more fundamental and profound than Yigal Amir’s act.
How is it that a deontologist like you has deteriorated into consequentialist considerations..? Betrayal is judged first and foremost through intentions. Bennett’s and the judicial junta’s goals may not be the most worthy, but at least on the declared level (and in my opinion to some extent in substance as well) they are indeed aimed at serving Israel as a democratic state (at least in those people’s eyes). Amir didn’t care about democracy at all, neither in substance nor at the declarative level.
That’s not specifically the Bibists’ view (and I’m somewhat of a Bibist), specifically. Bennett himself said before the election that the head of a party with 10 seats (and even 15) becoming prime minister is an immoral thing. So by his own view it’s an injury to democracy. (Apparently if he gets to be prime minister then it’s “It is a time to act for the god of democracy; they have violated your democracy…”)
Maybe better: “It is a time to act for Bennett; they have violated your democracy…”
“That means he stole votes from millions of people = injury to democracy.”
Indeed so—but Rabbi Michael Abraham addressed this in his remarks, that many have injured democracy in this way.
Recently claims were raised against Prime Minister Mr. Bennett that he “stole his voters’ votes.”
(There are too many examples to count—see Guy Zohar.)
A deontologist like me distinguishes very well between considerations of intention and considerations of outcome, as I did very clearly in the column. I discussed each separately.
Just as those people intend to serve the State of Israel, so too Yigal Amir thought he was serving it. In his case this is far clearer than in theirs. They have an interest (to get elected and accumulate power), whereas he had no interest at all. A splendidly altruistic act.
Political murder is far more severe than ordinary murder.
Because if the political murderer does not achieve his goal, then he will murder the leader’s successor as well…
Indeed there are people who admire political murderers.
Stalin, Trotsky, Che Guevara, Pol Pot—for all of them there are admirers (mainly in intellectual circles).
However, according to Rabbi Michael Abraham’s approach, this is a congregation of righteous people who, from their own point of view, were morally supreme.
Regarding the use of the word “despicable” and the description “the Rabin carnival,” I can only agree with the rabbi’s words.
The consequences of a political murder depend on time and circumstances. In the past two hundred years there have been many such murders, and most of them changed nothing. From the 1820s until 1914, an Austrian empress, a Russian tsar, a king of Italy, a king of Spain, a president of France, two American presidents, and many more were assassinated by anarchists who wanted to overturn the entire political and social order of the world. They failed again and again because at the same time the modern state was being built, with its branches and bureaucrats, and it turned the head of state into just another cog in the sophisticated bureaucratic machine. And that was until Sarajevo 1914. What happened following that assassination really did change everything. But there were special circumstances: the assassination of the beloved empress (“Sisi”—think Diana, only several times more so), preceded by the “Mayerling incident,” led all the Austrians to the decision: “We will not endure this again. Next time we will blow up the world.” And that is what they did.
But there were other assassinations with major impact: the assassination of the tsar led to the great wave of pogroms whose results affected the subsequent history of the Jews to this very day (emigration to America, increasing secularization, Zionism).
The assassination of Martin Luther King completely changed the course of African Americans in the U.S.: from a desire to integrate while cooperating with liberal elements in America (and especially Jews), to a separatist, hostile, and at times (often) violent and antisemitic approach.
Rabin’s assassination inflamed and strengthened the hatred and polarization in Israel, and continues to do so, while many actors keep pouring fuel on the fire—some of them foolish populists like Lapid, and some of them people who want to destroy the Zionist entity and latch on to every excuse and opportunity to add more hatred. Amir provided all of this for them, and the damage is terrible. And as with the assassination of the tsar, those who really paid the price (apart from Rabin of blessed memory, of course) were good and innocent Jews.
Why does it matter that others injured democracy (and also, when was a prime minister removed illegally)? The rabbi asked why Rabin’s murder is more severe than any other murder. It is more severe than another murder because in addition it injured democracy.
So because other people injured democracy, that is no longer a consideration?
It matters because it means there is no especially exceptional act here.
He did not injure it; he wanted to injure it.
Maybe it’s the combination of things that is so shocking? Murder + injury to democracy + the death of a leader.
He didn’t say it was immoral; please be precise. He argued that with 10 seats he would not be able to become prime minister, based on a reasonable assumption—but oops… happy to be proven wrong.
And by the way, you not infrequently fall into “whataboutism.” The fact that one does not recoil in horror from one case does not contradict the need to recoil in horror from another.
And between us, there are also quite a few differences between the examples you gave. The injury to democracy created by Bibi is subject to debate and interpretation; it is certainly not a clear and settled fact. Moreover, it happened (if it happened) over many long years and not in one big “boom”… which reduces the option of shock… And as stated, even if not justly, perhaps the demand should be for shock in both cases and not the reverse.
Who said that Yigal Amir did not have pure intentions regarding the State of Israel, or some desire to betray it?? What does that have to do with the discussion? The discussion was about an intention to betray Israeli democracy, not the state as a state. That’s what Ofran said, and you said you agreed with him, with some reservation. Yigal Amir despises democracy and therefore acted to harm it (as he understood it). That is really not the case with the other figures you mentioned, even if they are not as altruistic as he was.
We’ve moved into the realm of fantasy. Who told you that he despises democracy? He wanted to save it from Rabin. And who told you that the others do not despise it? After all, according to your own approach, if they acted against it, then they probably do despise it.
First of all, I’m a fantasist by nature and have no need at all to move into some new such realm. But according to your latest remarks, it seems that you’re the one who is right at home there. Yigal Amir wanted to save democracy from Rabin?! Are you serious? His declared ideology (which he truly believes in) is standard fascist nationalism (and probably also theocratic). In complete contrast to Bennett and the like, who even if in practice they are far from being great democrats, their basic intellectual and moral world is there, more or less.
Besides, in your penultimate response you completely deviated from your claim in the article (betrayal of democracy) and instead wrote to me about loyalty to the state. I already commented to you about that.
Now at long last you are returning to the topic, but your remarks, as stated, are not grounded in reality… According to your approach, Yigal Amir, simply by virtue of being an “idealist” (I would say a fanatic), is committed to democracy… amusing. Next stage, you’ll recommend him as a lecturer at Van Leer.
Well… the comparison is still unclear. One can understand that people do not recoil in horror from an ongoing event, one with no specific point in time that can be singled out and recoiled from (maybe they’ll set the day of Netanyahu’s coronation as a day of national shock?!) as compared to Rabin’s assassination. According to that argument, you have nullified any possibility of being shocked by an anti-democratic act.
P.S. You didn’t respond to my first question. You bring an argument against each rationale separately (there are more terrible murders, there are more anti-democratic acts, not every death of a leader is shocking), but you did not take into account that here there is a rare combination of several bad things that converged into one night, one moment, that can be marked and remembered.
If saving the state at the price of injuring democracy’s wing is what you call disloyalty to democracy, then I can only confirm your self-diagnosis at the beginning of your remarks. May my portion be with those who are not loyal to democracy (traitors to the state for the sake of democracy).
I will only add that we naturally have masses of such traitors to democracy. All those I listed in my previous messages. All of them injure democracy for the sake of what seems to them (not always rightly) to be the good of the state. So even if I accept your fantastic definition, not a thing has changed.
I have nothing to say about the arithmetic of shock, except that on the ground it really does not appear that way.
Michi, do you understand what you wrote here? You wrote that Amir wanted to save democracy from Rabin… not the fascist Jewish state (in which he truly and sincerely believes), but liberal democracy… I’m asking you seriously: do you believe that this is what Amir believes in and also tried to do? Do you believe that the main thrust of the murder was aimed at realizing a democratic agenda?
I see that we both understood very well the main thing I wrote here. What you did not understand was my last message. You should read it again.
Sorry. He said it wasn’t democratic. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=310256420520435
These are empty pilpulim. You wrote explicitly that Amir wanted to save democracy from Rabin’s clutches (a delusional assertion), and you further added that what they all have in common is the good of the state (when that is not the topic at all, even by your own account). And this fits very well with your central claim in the column, as though Amir’s betrayal of democracy is more or less equivalent to others’ betrayals of it. I already explained the difference (on the plane of intentions, but perhaps also on the plane of outcome): the ideological background. It really isn’t hard to understand.
Hello Rabbi,
I’m trying to offer an argument in the opposite direction: the murder is no more terrible than any murder of an innocent person; the pain is particular to Rabin. The added wailing and crying and the annual carnival are an added pain over the fact that a person was murdered because of an ideological dispute. Murders of the lesser sort—parking, drunks, etc.—we accept/make peace with as something that cannot be prevented in human society. But murder on ideological grounds is embodied for us as much more primitive and frightening (fundamentalism)… the modern person feels that this kind of murder belongs to another period in history, unlike murder on romantic grounds.
Just as religious zealotry frightens us more than ordinary violence.
I did not mean the claim on the psychological plane. On that plane there are several explanations for the matter. My claim is that the psychology here biases us away from the truth, since in truth there is no reason for this hysteria.
You wrote: “I think all these problems were always here, and these reactions merely reflected them and brought all this to the surface.”
I think the murder not only brought things to the surface; it also tried to entrench them. True, there were problems beforehand, but the murder put on the table the option of civil war and of violence as an overriding and absolute solution to those problems.
It is not only about rejecting the democratic game, but also about what the opposing side is trying to put in its place. And in that respect it is very different from all the counterexamples you brought.
Or as Rabbi Ofran describes it: “I still vividly remember the fear that awoke in me as a teenager in those days, when I heard the talk about the civil war that was about to break out.” There was an alternative model here, not merely democratic disagreement. That is where the shock comes from.
My argument may have sounded as though I was aiming at the psychological plane, but my intention is that this is an intuitive insight for the modern person—that ideological murder is more horrifying and justifies hysteria. (There is a psychological justification for this since our whole lives are ideological/value disputes that are utterly opposed to one another.)
Nice.
There is always an alternative model. So it is in all the examples I brought: that the court replace the Knesset, that a minority faction replace the voter, that the Attorney General replace the government. There is nothing at all special here.
And regarding civil war and murder, that option did not arise and could not have arisen. And if it did, it was not because of Yigal Amir but because of the public. A war does not happen because of one person.
I don’t think so. But even if you were right, that is a consequentialist consideration and not a deontological one. That is, the perpetrator is not a greater evildoer.
There is always an alternative model.
But none of the alternative models is as destructive as war, violence, and anarchy.
As for war and a lone individual—I tend to disagree. If a civil war had broken out, we would retrospectively explain how it was unavoidable and would have happened in any case, as in the First World War. But to claim that just because something happened, therefore it was bound to happen that way? There have already been cases where one person prevented nuclear war (three cheers for the Cold War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov ), so I assume it can also be that one person causes a war to break out. He does not need to create everything from scratch; he needs to be the spark for the explosion—something that very well might not have happened without him.
Problems can exist and be resolved slowly, and they can be resolved in an explosion. The murder pushed in a certain direction, far more than any single act of a single individual.
Maybe I’m repeating comments that have already been made, but I’ll try in my own wording:
The injury to democracy is measured by the intensity of the act. Forming a government with 6 seats with the support of a majority of the elected representatives is not a change in the rules of the game like murder, which changes the rules of the game completely.
The murder of a prime minister is an extreme and radical act that expresses more than anything that there is no democracy, no law, and no government; everything is permitted in order to achieve the goal I believe in.
Isn’t that so?
All of the above alternative models are what cause war and anarchy. Don’t expect one side to sit by and allow itself to be enslaved. That would be its just war of liberation. Civil war is not always a bad thing, if its aim is the freedom of one of the brothers, especially if one of the brothers is evil. Yigal Amir was only the tip of the iceberg. Whoever is afraid of civil war should not enslave the brothers. Beyond that, today there is no brotherhood on the Left. It is progressive, or led by such people, and for them the Jewish nation is a racist concept. If there is a war, it is the right wing’s war, representing the Jewish people, against the left, which today in practice is a foreign body, a foreign invader, and a foreign occupier. And the truth is that there is no need to fight. One can simply leave the army, and that’s it. Be like the Haredim.
Some accuse the right of Yigal Amir having grown in its flowerbeds. Well, I don’t have that much of a problem with that. Rabin despised the right, and I do not regret the death of someone who despises me. One may not murder (in the absence of direct mortal danger), but there is no obligation to cooperate together with him, and there is also no obligation to refrain from harsh expressions toward him (that are not direct incitement—explicitly calling for someone to be killed), such as calling him Amalek, etc. On the contrary, this is a war of consciousness, and in it one must not have mercy on the enemy. Even today I believe that the left—if it continues in its autism and in its lack of self-awareness and in the wickedness that follows from that lack of self-awareness—there is no choice but to collapse it psychologically by every means. They are already half mentally ill anyway, and are on the edge of the abyss. It only takes a few pushes. “Love your neighbor as yourself” applies only to one who shares a common destiny with the people of Israel, not to a progressive mental patient (I think this is also the halakhah. They are not called a child captured among the gentiles but apostates, I think).
Correction: “and there is also no obligation to refrain from harsh expressions toward him, etc.…
I wanted to suggest an explanation for the phenomenon called “Rabin’s legacy”:
When someone assassinates a prime minister, he is usually trying to prevent the line that that prime minister is trying to advance. In order to deter a future assassin of a prime minister from doing such a thing, the public must create a deterrent equation saying that if someone assassinates a prime minister, he will achieve the opposite result, because the public will perpetuate his legacy (his values and worldview) and act to advance the line he promoted in his lifetime even more forcefully. Thus, for example, if someone supported the Iranian nuclear deal and opposed Bibi’s policy of acting against the deal, and he contemplated murdering Bibi in order to advance the nuclear agreement with Iran, the public would have to act after the murder in a way that preserves Bibi’s policy in that area as a penalty and future deterrent to any other assassin of a prime minister.
Excellent explanation. Indeed, for those reasons the legacy of the man with no legacy was born.
“In general, it seems to me that the impact, insofar as there was one, stemmed from the unjustified hysteria and not from the act itself. This act did not undermine our democracy in the slightest. If something undermined it, it was the hysteria, the attacks, and the polarization that were created in its wake.”
It reminds me a bit of the coronavirus. A virus that, in practice, did not really do much damage. Only the artificial and authentic hysteria generated by it caused a lot of damage and brought all the restrictions that have brought and will bring real economic, medical, and psychological damage. Governments, the media, the public, and others all share responsibility for this.
Not related. It just reminded me a bit. It simply surprises me that a super-smart person like you is convinced (I see this from your answers in the Q&A) that these restrictions of more than a year and a half really have a public health benefit.
It surprises me that a person like you sees this event in such a narrow way.
The only way I can explain it is your affiliation (social, if not ideological) with religious Zionism and the way they embraced this plague and all the madness bound up with it. They found themselves a new religion.
The question of this sector’s attitude toward corona raises a few speculations for me, but it is still a mystery to me.
Since beyond the nonsense you wrote here you will not find any such positions in anything I’ve said, you are welcome to go on creating me out of thin air and criticizing me as you wish. Good luck.
With God’s help, 21 Heshvan 5782
Rabin’s assassination did not stop the 'Oslo' process. On the contrary, before the assassination the Left was at its lowest ebb in the polls, and it was clear that in the elections to be held a few months later—the Right would return to power.
The assassination led to a surge in the Left’s standing, and only the chain of terrorist attacks and bus bombings that took place that winter brought about the decline of the Left and its defeat in the elections.
The assassination almost achieved the exact opposite of its purpose, so apart from the moral gravity of the prohibition of bloodshed—the assassination was political folly.
Regards, Yaron Fisch"l Ordner
There is no need to recruit the fact that it is “an injury to democracy” against “political murder.” Murder is the gravest of crimes, whatever its intentions and reasons may be.
But our obligation to protest and warn against murder justified by an “idealistic” rationale is greater, for murder for criminal reasons is not something an “ordinary person” is likely to stumble into, unless he is a professional criminal or on the verge of insanity.
But when there is an “idealistic justification,” the danger increases that even an “ordinary person,” and even one of “our own people,” may be dragged into an act of murder out of idealistic justification, and therefore our responsibility to protest and warn becomes greater.
Regards, Yifa"or
It very much reminds me of the absurdity of what has been happening in the U.S. in recent years.
There is a great deal of evidence that the FBI, together with Obama, did many illegal things in an attempt to pin Russian ties on Trump and his associates. In the end they did not really succeed, except for a few individuals who were caught on minor offenses that are usually ignored.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53784048
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-flynn-idUSKBN23V24A
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But when Trump’s people went to the Capitol, made a bit of noise, one person was killed and the rest were sent out, that was the end of democracy, as the media will keep drumming into you endlessly (January 6, may God protect, have mercy, and save us).
I asked a friend whether it bothered him that the FBI and Obama did those things. He said—look, when you think a person who is very dangerous is about to control the country, then yes, perhaps you will also cross such lines, and that is legitimate.
I told him no problem, but then don’t tell me that this side or that side is the one killing democracy.
Rabbi Michael, in the very writing of a column devoted to Rabin’s assassination and Yigal Amir’s motives, there is a major missed point regarding the clarification of the events of that night, when it is not at all clear that Yigal Amir did indeed murder him.
True, in legal terms he was convicted of murder, but the evidence was never examined in court, since one can convict in court on the basis of a confession without examining the evidence. That is what Yigal Amir did after his Shin Bet interrogation, and ever since the conviction he has been kept in isolation from the other prisoners in the prison where he is incarcerated.
Should we therefore relate to Yigal Amir as a person whose legal case was not sufficiently clarified, when the conviction was obtained by crooked means? Or perhaps from the moment the matter passed through the court stage, then “a judge has only what his eyes can see,” and each and every one of us, as you did in the column, should regard him as a full-fledged murderer?
Nonsense. Under Israeli law there is no conviction based on confession alone.
But beyond that, my discussion is not about Yigal Amir but about the phenomenon he represents. Even if he did not murder Rabin, I am discussing the question of how to judge a person who murdered a prime minister for ideological reasons. Whatever his name in Israel may be.
So then according to your approach, what is the great problematic aspect in the murder of Gedaliah ben Ahikam, and why did Hazal feel the need to establish a fast?
Because the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel was destroyed. All the Jews fled to Egypt, and the Return to Zion began from a desolate land without Jews.
With God’s help, 22 Heshvan 5782
To Y.D.—Greetings,
The fasts were established for days on which great calamities befell the people of Israel, but the purpose of the fast (in the words of Maimonides in the Laws of Fasts) is that we should repent of the sins that caused those calamities, and “let us search and examine our ways” to check whether those same sins are also found in us.
Therefore, even if the national damage in Gedaliah’s murder may perhaps have been greater—but a murder that happens in our own time, and in which some of “our own people” are also involved—obligates us to a careful self-examination: are we doing enough so that we will not deteriorate into an atmosphere of baseless hatred and bloodshed, which are among the causes of destruction? And therefore there is value in warning about Rabin’s assassination.
Indeed, there is something distasteful in the fact that the warning is usually directed at “the other side” and does not focus on a sincere examination by each side in the political dispute toward its own camp: are we not contributing to the inflaming of the discourse and its radicalization?
Regards, Yaron Fisch"l Ordner
Empirically, unlike in authoritarian states, the assassination of a leader in a democratic state has no appreciable effect on that state’s policy.
https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-ben/htm/Assassinations%20Paper.pdf
And as evidence, Netanyahu implemented the Hebron Agreement, gave the Bar-Ilan speech, continued transferring money to the Palestinian Authority, and so on and so forth.
“In my estimation, if anyone ever thought of carrying out a political assassination here, Yigal Amir showed him that he has no chance of achieving anything.”
It seems to me that this is open to interpretation. True, the agreement was signed, but some would say that the implementation was botched because of the assassination and the change of government that followed in its wake. True, Peres continued the implementation and Bibi did too (although perhaps he also made implementation somewhat harder), but I think that on both the right and the left there will be people who can see the assassination as an event that harmed the process (the peace process, as if).
And Hazal have already expressed their opinion about a Torah scholar who has no understanding.
There is a claim that Rabin’s assassination was the most successful political murder, since it stopped the Oslo process.