On July 21, a column in Haaretz by Chemi Shalev makes a chilling connection between the rhetoric and rage being ginned up at the RNC this week to the rhetoric and rage ginned up against Yitzhak Rabin in the weeks before his assassination.
After a recap of the hate-fest in Cleveland, he ends with this paragraph:
Like the extreme right in Israel, many Republicans conveniently ignore the fact that words can kill. There are enough people with a tendency for violence that cannot distinguish between political stagecraft and practical exhortations to rescue the country by any available means. If anyone has doubts, they could use a short session with Yigal Amir, Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, who was inspired by the rabid rhetoric hurled at the Israeli prime minister in the wake of the Oslo Accords. After Rabin was gone, the inciters washed their hands and denied responsibility. One of them did so persuasively that he became prime minister himself, though the incitement itself never stopped.
This is similar to the rage ginned up by the fake Planned Parenthood tapes that Carly Fiorina bleated about on the debate stage and others flogged in the press. One of the results? The attack in Colorado Springs that left 3 people dead. The mentally deranged shooter mumbled about “the blood he saw in that place” and being a “warrior for babies”. Everyone who hyped the fake stories washed their hands of any responsibility.
It seems that these vile hate mongers think they can say anything without compunction and that only terrorists can be incited by others’ rhetoric.