Some studies show they could very well be 10% of the population.
Yet they cannot express their true feelings publicly because a powerful establishment enforces a rigid orthodoxy.
If they were to march under the banner of their authentic identities it would provoke horrible violence.
It is a testament to the weakness of Israeli democracy that even rational public discussion of the topic is suppressed.
None are so marginalized in Israel as those who believe.....
....that Rabin's political legacy is a blight and that the circumstances of his murder have never been fully explained.
At the risk of betraying my gilt-edged galut complacency, the latter part calls for some serious elaboration. You're not referring to the theories that Amir had blanks and it was really Avishai Raviv behind the grassy knoll with the leftover magic bullets from Lee Harvey Oswald, are you?
ReplyDeleteAnd I'll even grant you the first part, though I'd argue that his legacy is very useful as an example of what not to do (though that attitude is probably equally unpopular).
Dr. M,
ReplyDeleteI have slightly altered the wording for clarity. I could easily punt on this one by noting that I didn't suggest that I was among the group in question (who, by the way, number a lot more than 10% -- that was just subterfuge). In fact, though, many questions remain unanswered: two bullets or three? shot in the back or the chest? where was the car for ten minutes? Yeah, whenever an event is examined too carefully, weird stuff turns up and that could well be the case here as well. But I'm bothered by the fact that there is so little genuine discussion of this stuff in the Israeli MSM. Say what you will about the grassy knoll, the MSM in the US has been way more open about investigating alternative theories than their counterparts here.
From what I see, there is no longer ANY doubt that the SHABAK set up a provocation, recruited Yigal Amir (whom they knew well) and gave him access to Rabin in the so-called "sterile area". This parallels in many ways the murder of Leningrad Communist party boss Sergei Kirov in December 1934 which Stalin used as an excuse to start "The Great Terror".
ReplyDeleteIt also seems likely that Amir fired blanks. From this point on I must claim I don't really understand what happened. Some researchers claim that Rabin was injured by the blanks fired (i.e. there was no intention to kill Rabin, just make a provocation that would make the religious-right look bad) , but somehow he was killed by SHABAK men in reaction to his collapsing from this, or others say that the intention was to kill Rabin from the start. I must admit it is hard to know what to think, but the very fact that the SHABAK set up a provocation of this type should be an earth-shaking scandal in and of itself.