Yitzhak Rabin’s Son Condemns Trump’s Rhetoric as an Incitement to Political Violence

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In an op-ed Sunday in USAToday, Yuval Rabin, the son of assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, condemned Donald Trump’s words about Second Amendment remedies, calling his words “a new level of ugliness in an ugly campaign season.”

Rabin, writing from personal experience of political violence, writes that “In Israel, incitement such as this led to the murder of my father, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, 20 years ago.” Yitzhak Rabin was Israel’s fifth Prime Minister and was assassinated in 1995 by a right-wing extremist.

His son reminds us that,

“After his murder, politicians were quick to condemn the assassin as a lone wolf. They conveniently ignored their role in creating a poisoned environment that led someone to believe that taking a life was a justifiable political act.”

“Intentional or not,” Rabin tells us, “the Republican presidential nominee is removing confidence in the democratic form of governance. If an election is seen as illegitimate, if those who supported a candidate are viewed as somehow lesser ‘Americans,’ then it becomes acceptable — and even appropriate — to work outside the political system.”

Republicans have worked for years to delegitimize Democratic governance. We all remember Sarah Palin’s appeal to “real Americans,” which automatically relegated the rest of us to “fake” American status – black, white, whatever your color, you came an ideologically designated “other.”

In particular, Republicans have singled out Democratic President Barack Obama as a bogus American, allegedly either a Kenyan or a Muslim, or both, but anything but “one of us.” It is a small step to add Hillary Clinton, in particular since Republicans have previously hinted at killing Obama, at the least imprisoning him for not really being president. Republicans have not treated Obama like a president since he was elected.

This question of Rabin’s has been asked here repeatedly: “How can one enter into an agreement with a counter-party that is illegitimate, or worse?”

And that is precisely the problem. Republicans have talked themselves into a very small corner, where conservative compromise with liberals means surrender, where for liberals, compromise means doing exactly what conservatives want them to do.

As Rabin writes, “Trump’s words are not just words. They can sow the seeds for something much more sinister.”

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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