It boggles the mind. Especially when fully 38 percent of the religious public feels this way. What way is that? 38 percent of the religious public believes that Yigal Amir is a hero!
38 PERCENT!!! …according recent surveys.
For those who don't remember, in 1995 Yigal Amir assassinated then sitting Israeli Prime Minster Yitzhak Rabin.
This challenges my belief about the very sanity of these people. It makes me question my faith in their basic humanity. How can a murderer be considered a hero? A convicted killer! An Assassin! …while the very mention of the name of his victim is booed!
Remember that Yitzhak Rabin was the democratically chosen leader of the Jewish state, and a military hero of the six day war. But that doesn’t matter, in the ‘what have you done for me lately’ school of Israeli religious politics. He is not a hero to these people. Not any longer. He had sold out. He was willing to trade land for peace. That was unpardonable. It was traitorous. It was so terrible that Yitzhak Rabin was seen as deserving of his ultimate fate. A fate that turned his convicted assassin into a hero.
I understand the theology. It is the essence of religious Zionism to reclaim and resettle our holy land. The land given to us by God. It is a religious mandate.
But despite their arguments to the contrary, not at all costs.
This is one of the more tragic consequences of extremist religious fervor. It is no less despicable than the violence of the Chasidim of Ramat Bet Shemesh Bet. In fact it is a lot worse. It is true that only one man was responsible for this act of murder, just as it is true that it is a small minority of Chasidim that perpetrated the violence in Ramat Bet Shemesh. But that… of course… is not the whole story. The problem is the supporters who stand on the sidelines and cheer. Like those 38 percent of religious Jews who support a murderer.
These are the fanatics who think that human life is not as important as retaining land. That Eretz Yisroel…the land of Israel… trumps life itself. That sounds eerily similar to the message of the Islamic fundamentalists who say they will win because ‘they love death more than we love life!’.
Or as Ha’aretz puts it:
The religious right takes no interest in explanations by this side or that, and views eternal war with the Palestinians as better than giving up parts of the homeland. That is the source of the belief that no leader has the right to give in during negotiations, no matter how large of a majority supports him in the Knesset; and anyone who does give in is a traitor.
I do not mean to say that we are in any position to trade land for peace. Doing so now would be suicidal. As long as any of the Islamic fundamentalist groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah exist. And as long as Iran remains an Islamist theocracy bent on annihilating us.
They must all be destroyed before anything like land for peace can ever be considered again. But that is not the issue for these religious Zionist fanatics. It would not matter to them if Islam itself would disappear from the face of the earth. Or if a true and lasting peace could be guaranteed through a land for peace deal.
For them it is about the religious imperative of retaining all of Eretz Yisroel forever. And doing whatever it takes to assure that. So when Yigal Amir pulled the trigger and fired his gun ...murdering Yitzhak Rabin he became a hero to thousands.
