Rabin, Bill Clinton and Arafat
Rabin, Bill Clinton and ArafatIsrael news photo: White House

This week’s publication of a decade-old letter in which the late wife of former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin castigated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is the tip of the iceberg of anti-nationalist hatred, a Bar-Ilan researcher said.

 

On the eve of the annual memorial for the murdered prime minister who promoted the defunct Oslo Accords, the Hebrew-language Ha'aretz newspaper published letters from his wife Leah, who wrote that Netanyahu is “corrupt.” Other epithets she used were “liar, nightmare [and] monstrosity.” She wrote the letters towards the end of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s first term of office, which began three years after Rabin died.

 

Dr. Dror Eidar, a Bar-Ilan researcher, told Arutz Sheva that Rabin’s children Dalia and Yuval protested that Ha'aretz chose to reveal the letter without their permission, exactly during the week of ceremonies in memory of the former prime minister.

He said that the publication of the letter is only a symptom of a wider campaign of hatred and incitement by mainstream media and left-wing organizations who every year “repeat the same ritual” of trying to silence anyone who opposes the philosophy of the Oslo Accords. The agreement between Rabin and long-time terrorist Yasser Arafat, who headed the Palestinian Authority before his death five years ago, blew up with the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000.

 

The uprising also is referred to as the Oslo War, but mainstream media never use the term.

 

Dr. Eidar said that the anniversary of Rabin’s death should be a national day of soul-searching instead of a platform for trying to portray nationalists as illegitimate in society. Rabin’s murderer was Yigal Amir, a resident of the Haifa area -- but he was immediately misidentified after the assassination as a resident of a Jewish community in Judea and Samaria.

“We need nerves of steel not to succumb to provocations that the left uses in order to trip us up,” the researcher added. “A large part of the public is conservative but is not allowed to express its opinion [because] the right wing is not considered a part of the public.”