In the days and weeks after the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, the level of discourse in the country was almost civil. The complete shock that a Jewish Israeli could pick up a gun and murder the leader of the Jewish state froze people in their tracks.
There was talk of conciliation, of lowering the flames, of putting a lid on the culture of incitement that had risen hand in hand with the momentum toward the Oslo-era two-state solution, of how something like this must never be allowed to happen again.
Of course, it was short-lived. The Left collectively began to blame the Right for Yigal Amir’s act, and the Right continued to rail against efforts to engage the Palestinian Authority, accusing its advocates of being traitors.
But, in the ensuing years, as the issues have evolved and the shouted words revised and refined, whenever the trajectory appears to be heading toward political violence, someone will bring up Rabin’s assassination and, for a moment, tensions go back to a simmering level.
So, instead, we’ve learned to conduct personal attacks and character assassinations against those we oppose. We trespass on their lives by holding protests outside their homes, whether it be Yifat Tomer-Yerusalmi, Yariv Levin, or Ron Dermer.
This time, the results of those assaults could have been deadly.
We have learned nothing
Thirty years later, the tools of incitement may have been altered, but they have the same effect as bullets in the back.
The incitement against Tomer-Yerushalmi proves that in 30 years, we have learned nothing.