Soccer Dad

Yossi Sarid Seems To Kerry On

Arutz Sheva reports:

As Israel approaches the national memorial day commemorating the 1995 murder of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, the Gesher Organization asked Israelis what event caused the greatest rift in society.

The Rabin assassination came in second, while Ariel Sharon's destruction of the Jewish communities in Gush Katif came in first.

But apparently Yossi Sarid is intent on seeing the Rabin assassination claim its rightful place as the event that has caused the greatest rift in Israeli society.

In Thursday's Haaretz, Said writes

Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Friday that one in every three Israelis supports a pardon for Rabin's assassin, and that one in every two religious right-wing Israelis favors his early parole. Your eyes burn in their sockets as you read this news, as you refuse to believe what you are reading. Yet, why should we be surprised? The spirit of amnesty is drifting down from the upper echelons of Israeli society, slowly descending to the lower ones. The rabbis who encouraged the assassin, explicitly or implicitly, long ago received their pardons. Those who stood on the balcony at Jerusalem's Zion Square the night that bloodshed was sanctioned inherited Rabin's place, and were later even declared his ideological successors - the last "Mapainiks."

Although the assassin was apprehended and sent to prison, because he was the one who fired the three bullets, those who drew a bull's-eye on Rabin's back and told him that the prime minister was a permissible target have never been forced - perish the thought! - to account for their actions.

For a another perspective of the Rabin assassination Israel Matzav has posts here and here.

Sarid's attacks on the rabbis reminds me of John Kerry's comment about the US soldiers in Iraq--except for 2 differences.
1. Sarid is not telling a 'joke'--he means every word.
2. Unlike in the US, in Israel there will be no wellspring of condemnation and demands for an apology.

Daled Amos

Technorati Tag: Yossi Sarid and Yitzchak Rabin and Israel