We've come to a sorry pass in the battle between the right and the left for the hearts and minds of the Israeli public. It's gotten to the point where I can barely stand to read the news any more. The outrage of the day is over more reports of threats and attacks by disengagement opponents against members of the government. The specter of political assassination is being invoked. Prime Minister Sharon is issuing threats of his own. Various ministers are making noises that suggest the imposition of some sort of martial law -- or worse.
Radical right-wingers who have the potential of leading the evacuation of the Gaza Strip in a violent direction should be placed in administrative detention, Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
There are dangerous people out there who need to be arrested today," Ezra said. "The situation we find ourselves in now, in which we invest lots of resources and time in investigating, is not working. We do not have the time [to investigate] and the people whom we have material against which is classified and cannot be brought to court should be placed in administrative detention."
But this material is so classified that no one has yet been able to back up these allegations with real and verifiable threats. We hear a lot about a menacing letter that was sent to Minister of Transportation Sheetrit and signed by the sender. The text is released but not the name. What kind of assassin telegraphs his intentions in advance? Might not something else be at work here?
The Israeli government, particularly in its leftist iterations, has an unsavory history of staging ugly incitement against itself by its opponents in an effort to discredit them. This isn't some wild conspiracy theory. The most notorious example is somewhat shrouded in less reliable and fairly preposterous genuine conspiracy nonsense but stripped of all that, it's there out in the open.
In the months leading up to the Rabin assassination, a particular agent of the securitiy service was assigned the task of masquerading as a right wing extremist. Accounts differ as to whether his job was simply to spy on that crowd or to actively provoke violent and offensive behavior on their part that could be exploited to turn the public against them. What's not up for dispute is that this man, Avishai Raviv, was put on trial for having had advance knowledge that Yigal Amir was going to try to assassinate Rabin and doing nothing to stop it. Here's another account. He was acquitted, for a rather strange reason. The court decided he was a liar.
Raviv was acquitted on the grounds that he likely lied to Shin Bet interrogators during two sessions of questioning on November 7 and 8, 1995, after the Shin Bet became suspicious that he may have known about the planned assassination and even been involved in it. During those interrogations, he said many things to indicate that he knew of Amir's intention to kill Rabin. During his trial, however, he testified that these statements were lies. The court accepted his testimony.
The fact that the verdict was unanimous does not mean it is not controversial. Critics such as Eitan and Elon, not to mention those on the extreme right who believe in a conspiracy linking the Shin Bet to the assassination, may not be satisfied with a ruling that is based largely on a psychological analysis of Raviv's character. Nevertheless, it would come as a great surprise should the state decide to appeal
It certainly would have, because the state didn't want to try him in the first place. As the JPost article mentions, there was a lot of pressure from right-wing groups who hoped that a public trial would help to exonerate them by showing that the incitement for Rabin's murder came from a government agent and not from their own ranks. It didn't do that, but it's still far from clear, today, exactly where all of the blame lies.
The media is correct to compare what's going on in Israel now to what was going on in 1995. There are a lot of Israelis who feel strongly that the government is pursuing a suicidal course. There's a lot of hyperbole, bunches of demonstrations, threats of violence -- on both sides. And there's a concerted effort to demonize those who are expressing their dissatisfaction, their rage with the government's policies, which is taking its toll.
Chabadniks are turning against each other. Prominent and respected right wing Israel advocates are trying to organize a boycott of Israel Insider because they object to its inclusion of opinions by Barry Chamish (no link intended).
Chamish is a nut case conspiracy addict, but his theory that Rabin was assassinated by his own people because he was questioning the wisdom of Oslo is understandably being ressurected again in light of the factors I've cited above. Giving him a forum to prove just how out there he really is isn't necessarily a bad thing. Infighting and censorship, backbiting, accusations and counter-accusations among colleagues -- these are bad things. And that's just the state of affairs within the confines of the conservative, staunchly pro-Israel Jewish world today.
It's a sorry state of affairs and it needn't have come to this.
