Let's cool it and stop fanning the flames of conflict - editorial

It was barely a week ago that the country marked its 29th anniversary of the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, murdered at the hands of Yigal Amir on November 4, 1995.

Rabin’s family requested that both the Knesset and state ceremonies, which have been held annually to commemorate the dark stain in Israel’s history and the extraordinary life that it extinguished, be canceled this year.

“Now is not the time for large ceremonies, and it would be correct to provide a suitable but restrained way to memorialize Yitzhak Rabin,” wrote Rabin’s daughter, Dalia Rabin, in a letter to President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana. 

The decision was not a precedent. Last year’s ceremonies, scheduled to occur only a month after the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre and the onset of the Israel-Hamas War were also canceled.

Given Saturday night’s attack on Netanyahu’s residence by protesters against his wartime policies and the stream of provocative reactions that followed, the wisdom of putting the only murder of a prime minister in Israel – at the hands of a Jewish Israeli assailant – on the back burner might be a mistake. 

A dangerous escalation

In the weekend incident, which the police’s Lahav 433 significant crimes unit and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) called “a dangerous escalation” in the protests calling for a ceasefire and a hostage deal, three people were arrested after a pair of flares were fired at Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea and landed in the yard. One of the detainees was reported to be a reserve general in the IDF.

Although no damage was reported, and Netanyahu and his family were not at home at the time of the incident, it should be treated for what it was – an act of physical violence against the prime minister.

To their credit, leaders of the opposition, including Yair Lapid, National Unity chairman Benny Gantz, and Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman, condemned the attack, with Liberman saying it “signifies an escalation in the attempt to harm the democratic institutions of the State of Israel.”

Ohana accused the deteriorating national discourse that has fueled incitement on both sides of the political arena as normalizing attacks like the flare incident.

“The shooting at the prime minister’s house tonight is a direct result of a policy that for the past few years has ignored the escalation in words and deeds,” Ohana wrote.

But he erroneously attempted to shift the blame to the attorney-general and the justice system for enabling the culture of violence only against the government and its supporters, accusing those bodies of acclimating the country “to the fact that there are those for whom things are permitted and those for whom they are prohibited.”

Justice Minister Yariv Levin went one step further, calling the incident a “link in a chain of violent and anarchic actions, the purpose of which is to bring about the assassination of the prime minister and the overthrow of the elected government by means of a violent coup.”

He then attempted to use it as an excuse to revise his controversial judicial reform overhaul to restore the justice system and law enforcement systems. But it was Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi who exploited the flare attack to incite against government dissenters by using incendiary language in calling for the firing of Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara.

“The attorney-general must go home today. A person who gets up to kill you – including through weakness and agreement through silence – rise up and fire him,” said Karhi, paraphrasing a line from the Talmud about self-defense.

Given our long history, we Jews have a short memory. Baseless hatred resulted in the destruction of the Temple, and the same internecine strife ended with Rabin’s assassination.

We should be able to agree that acts of violence – whether it be a flair hurled at the prime minister’s home or the verbal violence of calling Israel’s leader “Satan” or the protesters on Kaplan Street “traitors” – are beyond the norms of a society whose country is fighting for its survival.

Herzog pleaded on Sunday that “the flames must not be allowed to escalate.”

We all know all too well exactly where that could lead.