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Is the American Left going to school on its Israeli counterparts?
Long before Jared Loughner there was the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin which, above anything, enshrined the all-purpose pejorative “incitement” into Israel’s vocabulary. And not just into the vocabulary but into their criminal statutes as well. In the wake of Rabin’s murder, that was one of the core projects of Israel’s leftwing and it was a huge success. It gave their many apparatchiks in the media, the judiciary and the Shin Bet (FBI) a handy cudgel with which to beat down the speech and criminalize the lawful activities of Israel’s Right while ignoring the true incitement coming from many Israeli Arabs, NGOs and the country’s extremists on the Jewish Left.
If any of that sounds familiar, it should. All the senseless reactionary babble linking American conservatives with the deranged Arizona gunman has nothing to do with a search for solutions or the facts and everything to do with keeping the resurgent conservative movement in our country off-balance and on the defensive. It’s a pity, but if right-thinking Americans are to struggle – and win – against the demagogues’ tactics we must first remember many on the the Left have no shame or scruples and don’t give a damn about the truth.
Dan Friedman
NYC
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