Today is Yigal Amir’s birthday. People who act on their political beliefs though they face life in prison, deserve utmost respect; Yigal Amir no less than Nelson Mandela.

Rabin fled a battlefield near Jerusalem during the War of Independence, abandoning his soldiers to death, and he gunned down defenseless Jews on the Altalena.

Rabin committed high treason to win the 1992 elections. Yosi Beilin conspired in Cairo with Abu Mazen to convince Israeli Arabs to vote for Labor in exchange for sweeping concessions to the PLO; thus started the Oslo accords. Rabin campaigned on the platform of tough response to Palestinian terrorists, but embraced them soon after the elections. Rabin formed coalition government with the support of Arab parties in the Knesset; the PLO friends have told them that Rabin’s tough stance is a fiction intended for Jews.

Rabin’s actions were detrimental to the Jewish state. A ruler who endangers the people can legitimately be killed. It’s better to kill one ruler than have many citizens die; the Oslo process claimed more Jewish casualties than Yom Kippur war. Crowds are not wise, especially when brainwashed, and it could take years to dethrone Rabin. Killing him was a feasible solution.

Assassination of evil rulers is widely acceptable. The US prompted South Vietnamese generals to kill the unruly Diem, and tried to kill Castro. Germans attempted to kill Hitler. The US could have spared itself a couple of wars by killing Milosevic or Saddam.
Palestinians have killed high-ranking Israeli officials, and Israel similarly eliminated the Palestinian bosses. Israeli security services organized the murders of Meir Kahane, his son Binyamin, and probably of Rehavam Zeevi. During the Mandate period, Jews killed British officials. Those Jews are now Israeli heroes. Political assassinations are socially acceptable. Are they just? Yes, sometimes. Some targeted assassinations benefit societies. Some are a just retribution for the victim’s crimes; Rabin did not accord due process to the Jews he machine-gunned on Altalena and when they tried to swim ashore; he did not deserve a due process himself. Rabin skipped on due process when he ordered teenage Jewish soldiers to break hands and legs of Arab participants in the Intifada. Israel refuses due process to Islamist guerrillas her forces assassinate now and then; why accord a due process to a Jew who abets the guerrillas, such as in the Oslo accords?

Common Israelis kill common Palestinians all the time because the common Palestinians remotely affect Israeli security; kill them without trial during urban fights and police operations. Rabin endangered the Jewish state much more than any individual common Palestinian did, and deserved much harsher treatment. Israel is at war, and Rabin was a traitor; no due process was necessary.
Is the assassination democratic? No. But Rabin operated non-democratically and unjustly, and was answered in kind. Democracy is a sham; it is the government's right to manipulate public opinion, and the Rabin-Peres-Beilin clique exercised that “right” to the utmost. Democracy could decide on whether to build a bridge or a dam. Core values are not up to a democratic decision-making. Jewish character of Israel, possession of the Jewish land in its entirety, and security of the Jews are non-negotiable. Rabin openly betrayed those values, and no court sentence has been required to execute him.

What are the democratic rules of the game? Submit to the government which manipulates the public through media and bribes it through welfare? Let the faithless Jews destroy the Jewish state by electing Rabins before they emigrate? Did not the American Blacks resort to violence to claim their rights? Did not the Basques? The Irish? The Chechens? The Americans – against the British? Courts award justice to criminals, but not to the people who oppose the government. Assassinations are often the only recourse.

Torah says, "Do not follow a majority to evil." Democratically elected rulers can be evil and deserve death. Hitler was democratically elected and Stalin enjoyed near total support of the population. Soviet dissidents rejected the democracy (Soviet people enthusiastically elected their rulers) in favor of the more important values. In critical moments, societies are not ruled by majority, but by the most determined groups. If the minority’s goals are wrong (such as Khomeini's), they are reversed fairly soon by the majority which grows more determined. If they are right (such as Lincoln), the majority eventually accepts their views.
Core values of a society are those that pass the test of time. Societies continuously experiment with values, and various groups attempt to enforce (Maccabees) or promulgate (modern Reformists) their values. Sometimes, several groups clash when enforcing their values upon a society. Values eventually pass a triple test: of violent strife (enough determined people should support them to pass), of short-term acceptability (the enforced values need to gain democratic approval soon), and of long-term sustainability. Judaism passed that test; Rabin had not.

Is civil strife inherently bad? Not if it is necessary. The American Civil War arguably bettered the society. Maccabean civil war re-imposed Judaism on the assimilating Jews. The US supported anti-communist civil wars in scores of countries. In regard to the Israeli civil war, "a Jew against a Jew" would be an improper generalization. It is rather, "Jews against Jewish traitors," a feasible dichotomy.

Toward the end, the weak-willed Rabin suddenly revolted against Peres and Beilin, declaring in his last appearance in the Knesset, "We will not return to the lines of June 4, 1967 – the security border for defending the State of Israel will be in the Jordan Valley, in the widest sense of that concept." That was a dangerous return to Rabin’s 1980 position, "Our evacuation of the West Bank would create the greatest threat we can possibly face." When Rabin became obstinate about further concessions to Arab enemies who did not stop murdering Jews, Peres & Co. eliminated him. The security services framed Yigal Amir - a Kahanist - to ban Meir Kahane’s party. A hollow live Rabin was exchanged for dead Rabin a vibrant symbol of the peace process. Peres had only miscalculated about the stupidity of Israelis: for all the brainwashing, they voted Likud rather than Labor. Sacrificing Rabin backfired for the leftists.

Assassination of Rabin, as of Moyne half a century earlier, was superficially a setback for conservative Jews. Israeli security services hunted down right-wing protesters, Rabin was virtually divinized, and brainwashing engraved the peace process onto the collective unconscious. Nevertheless, Likud won the subsequent elections. Likewise, Moyne’s assassination alienated Churchill from Zionists, but Britain did not want to relinquish the mandate, anyway. The British have carved two-thirds of the land promised to Jews for Jordan long before the Moyne’s affair. The UN partition of the Land of Israel between Jews and Palestinian Arabs loosely follows the Peel Commission guidelines, drafted seven years before Lehi killed Moyne. Academic historians and media love to paint violence counterproductive, but terrorism usually bears huge political fruits: witness IRA or Hamas.

No Jew comes out to execute heinous traitors like Barak, Peres, Beilin. Is everyone afraid? Aren’t there any terminally ill people who want to serve their country even at no cost to themselves? Yigal Amir, at least, proved himself a hero.