This week’s Memorial Day commemorating the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin showed that large swaths of the right deny that there was any incitement campaign against Rabin in the days and weeks leading up to his assassination. Their denial is part of a larger pushback against any criticism of the right’s dangerous policies under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This effort culminated with Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich (HaBayit HaYehudi) launching a campaign to ban the Rabin family from speaking at the official memorial service for the assassinated prime minister. It came in response to a scathing speech by Rabin’s granddaughter Noa Rotman, in which she charged Netanyahu and his ministers with learning nothing from what happened, so that calls of “traitor” have been extended to anyone who criticizes the policies of Netanyahu and the right. “Don’t keep repeating here that Rabin wasn’t a traitor,” she said. “In Israel, criticism is considered treason. If you don’t stop the incitement path of division, partisanship and attacks, blood will be again spilled here.”