NY Times' Friedman: Climate in US like on eve of Rabin murder
Famous political journalist says Obama's legitimacy attacked just like what was done to Israeli PM before his assassination
"I hate to write about this, but I have actually been to this play before and it is really disturbing," New York Times political journalist Thomas L. Friedman, writes in a column published Wednesday, comparing between the hostile atmosphere in Israel before former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's murder and the current atmosphere in the United States in terms of smears directed at President Barack Obama.
"I was in Israel interviewing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin just before he was assassinated in 1995," Friedman writes, almost 14 years later. "We had a beer in his office. He needed one. I remember the ugly mood in Israel then — a mood in which extreme right-wing settlers and politicians were doing all they could to delegitimize Rabin, who was committed to trading land for peace as part of the Oslo accords.
"They questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all.
"And in so doing they created a poisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish nationalist as a license to kill Rabin — he must have heard, 'God will be on your side' — and so he did."
According to the famous Jewish columnist, who has won the Pulitzer Prize three times, "Something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination."
'Encouraging the unforgivable'
Friedman mentions the "madness" in the creation of a poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Obama be killed?”
"The choices were: 'No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.' The Secret Service is now investigating. I hope they put the jerk in jail and throw away the key because this is exactly what was being done to Rabin."
He goes on to ask "where did 'We' go?" saying "sometimes I wonder whether George H.W. Bush, president '41,' will be remembered as our last 'legitimate' president. The right impeached Bill Clinton and hounded him from day one with the bogus Whitewater 'scandal.' George W. Bush was elected under a cloud because of the Florida voting mess, and his critics on the left never let him forget it.
"Now," he writes, "Obama is having his legitimacy attacked by a concerted campaign from the right fringe. They are using everything from smears that he is a closet 'socialist' to calling him a 'liar' in the middle of a joint session of Congress to fabricating doubts about his birth in America and whether he is even a citizen. And these attacks are not just coming from the fringe. Now they come from Lou Dobbs on CNN and from members of the House of Representatives."
After mentioning additional failures of the American political system, Friedman stresses that "we can’t change this overnight, but what we can change, and must change, is people crossing the line between criticizing the president and tacitly encouraging the unthinkable and the unforgivable."
