In the name of tolerance and reconciliation.
By Ofir Tzfonbon
Tel Aviv, November 4 - Few moments in Israel's history carry more power or trauma than does the murder of its prime minister in 1995; none others underscore the need to address the polarization of the country's polity, which can only happen if we paint those who share some peripheral characteristics of his murderer as monstrous, bloodthirsty radicals prepared to sacrifice the rest of us for the sake of their maximalist territorial ambitions and Nazi-like ideology. In the name of tolerance and reconciliation.
Yitzhak Rabin's assassination that Saturday twenty-six years ago drove home a point that I and my like-minded colleagues had been arguing - and continue to assert: extremism will be the death of the Zionist enterprise, which is why we must adopt the extreme tactic of assuming the worst about anyone whose background, at a cursory glance, resembles that of Yigal Amir. We must ostracize, shame, and shun them from civic life, and make them regret being born into, or joining, the religious Zionist community, the overwhelming majority of which would never in their worst nightmares consider such a heinous act to prevent undesirable political developments, or to further favored policies, but that's not important: we see the same thing in them because they dress the same way. So out of civic life they must go. In the name of tolerance and reconciliation, to prevent extremism.
Too many of us have let this important lesson fade as the years pass. But with the passage of the decades the responsibility to ensure a tolerant, open society devoid of fascist crocheted-yarmulke-wearers grows, not lessens. Those of us who lived through the trauma bear responsibility to convey this existential principle to the younger generation, who will never know the religious Zionists cannot be trusted, let alone allowed to engage in leadership roles or public life, unless we inform them in the starkest, uncompromising terms. They will never know what can happen unless we impress upon them the dangers inherent in such people participating in our democracy, which, I need not remind you, is perpetually at death's door unless we ACT NOW to save it, much like the planet, which we have destroyed how many times now? The younger generation will never realize how dangerous those religious Zionists are even if they examine religious Zionist behavior and policy goals, which we must depict as monolithic and destructive if we take this threat with the seriousness it deserves.
Otherwise we will become intolerant, which is what they are.