Hypocrisy at the square
Powerful leftist minority continues to seek delusional peace with our Arab enemy
The 12th annual rally commemorating the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin has passed. Again we saw the Israeli Left’s hard core gather at the square, armed with holy fury against anything to the right of it. Again, it longingly clung to its wonderful days in power and the happy Oslo days. Again, we saw Meretz and Labor representatives clashing over which signs can be raised, so that the fools on the Right believe this is a national rally rather than a political one.
Again, they sought and easily found the rabbis and leaders who pushed Yigal Amir to commit the murder. Again, they were angry about the protests against the Oslo agreement and referred to them as “incitement.” And of course, they again went back to dreaming together, about peace, which for some reason blew up in our faces.
This year, as opposed to previous years, the crowd consisted of two absentees who were there nonetheless – Yigal Amir and Marwan Barghouti. We’ve been hearing calls to pardon both of them recently. Pardoning Yigal Amir or Barghouti has no moral, political, legal, or security justification, yet the mere calls for pardon brought Barghouti and Amir to the square in spirit.
Both Barghouti and Amir are the rotten fruit of the Oslo agreement. This deal brought out the human race’s most extreme evil out of both of them, although each one of them acted based on his own choice and murderous will.
As radical people and deeds often do, Yigal Amir not only failed to stop the Oslo process, but rather, he was the main element that accelerated it and enabled it to proceed. As opposed to the cliché which maintains that he murdered the peace process and enabled Netanyahu to come to power, the truth is of course the opposite – Amir accelerated the withdrawal from Palestinian towns following the murder, and prevented the Netanyahu-led rightist camp from scoring a sweeping victory against the leftist camp in the wake of the serious terror attacks of early 1996.
Just like Yigal Amir, Barghouti’s cruel and extreme murders not only failed to bring independence to his people, but rather, led to the reoccupation of Judea and Samaria by Israel during operation Defensive Shield, after the number of Jews murdered by Tanzim and Hamas reached unbearable levels.
There is no doubt that these two murdered do not deserve a pardon, yet it is also very clear that many of those at the Rabin square rally, and among the Israeli peace camp in general, are willing to pardon Barghouti for the sake of “peace,” but would never imagine doing the same for Yigal Amir regardless of the situation. Indeed, the murder of a prime minister by a member of his own people is justifiably considered to be as more severe than a “regular” murder by terrorists, but the mere willingness to pardon Barghouti in principle is very grave.
‘The people were wrong’
The willingness to free terrorists who murdered Jews vis-à-vis the stubborn objection to the release of Jews who murdered Arabs; the willingness to expel 8,000 settlers from their home vis-à-vis the stubborn objection to expel the family of even one terrorist from its home; the willingness to exempt Israeli Arabs from any kind of national or military service vis-à-vis the stubborn objection to exempt yeshiva students from the army – all of these phenomena have one painful common denominator: Very many members of the Israeli peace camp spend most of their time seeking delusional peace with their Arab enemies, while also seeking confrontations and struggles with their Jewish brethren who belong to the “other” camp.”
Former Labor party member Yitzhak Ben-Aharon expressed it well after Likud came to power in 1977 with his famous declaration that “the people were wrong” when they elected the Likud and Menachem Begin. Indeed, ever since then, the camp that was “always right” – both when it supported Stalin and Arafat – is making every effort to avoid peace and a compromise with its brethren but seeks peace with its enemies. In this framework, a murderer such as Barghouti becomes a legitimate dialogue partner, while all those who object to Oslo become Yigal Amir supporters.
An overwhelming majority of Israel’s citizens are not part of the peace camp that gathered at Rabin square Saturday night. An overwhelming majority mourns the murder of a prime minister, but does not translate it into support for one political camp, or heaven forbid, the persecution of another political camp.
Despite this, and regrettably so, the powerful minority that gathered at the square has been leading the country to a “peace” process for many years now. We see the rotten fruits of this everywhere, but we have not learned a thing.
