Vitriolic incitement against Bennett has all the hallmarks of 1995

There is a chilling resemblance between the vile campaign of incitements against late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin following the signing of the Oslo Accords and that currently being waged against Naftali Bennett. In the case of Rabin, it ended in 1995 with his assassination by a Jewish extremist minutes after he had attended a peace rally. Today, Bennett and his family, like other members of the current government, have been subjected to a vitriolic verbal hate campaign aimed at discrediting them and, even worse, delegitimizing them.

To make the threats more explicit, on two occasions letters with a bullet stuffed in them were sent to the family home, leaving little room for doubt about the senders’ intentions. How long before this intimidation campaign ends in physical violence or even another assassination?

Israel last week held its annual Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism, which is usually a very somber occasion of personal and collective anguish. This time, however, during the events to honor the dead, and of all places in cemeteries, some well-known Benjamin Netanyahu supporters and those “inspired” by the current hate campaign against the government loudly heckled Bennett and Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, screaming at them to shut up and hurling insults such as “traitor,” “garbage,” “dishrag,” “fraud,” and “swindler.”

Criticizing politicians is one thing — and politically and ideologically I have little sympathy for either Bennett or Shaked — but delegitimizing and intimidating them is unacceptable and those who attempt to do so should face the full force of the law before another act of fatal political violence takes place.

In the eyes of those who are leading the smear campaign against members of the current governing coalition, their ultimate “crime” is sharing power with Ra’am, a Palestinian party baselessly accused of supporting terrorist organizations. That is the way this political dog whistle works: Questioning people’s loyalty and patriotism and implying treacherous behavior at the behest of foreign actors. From there, the road to demanding their banishment from politics and subjecting them to worse intimidation and even violence is a short one, and its instigators will likely escape accountability.

Rabin’s contemptible assassin is serving a life sentence behind bars, but all those who incited against a man who transformed himself from a war leader into one leading the charge for peace have never been brought to justice. Let us not forget that one of them was rewarded with becoming the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history.

There is one major element that links the events of nearly 30 years ago with the current fascist-like intimidatory behavior in Israeli politics — Netanyahu. He might not have pulled the trigger that killed Rabin and with him the peace process or himself stuffed bullets into envelopes in recent days, but his and his deviant disciples’ constant goading of the current prime minister and other members of the coalition has been creating an environment conducive to intimidation and violence.

It is inevitable that political debate and discourse often become emotional, overheated even, but what Israel has been witnessing in recent years — and with added nastiness since Netanyahu lost power — is a calculated campaign to establish a narrative of a stolen election and a betrayal of the electorate and of the national interest, in addition to portraying the government and the one who heads it as incompetent. These disingenuous arguments are attempts to undermine an elected government and put pressure on some individuals in the coalition in the hope they will succumb and jump ship.

But not all of those who engage in these vitriolic attacks have the same goal. For the Netanyahus, incitement and intimidation are part of their desperate attempts to regain power, partly because they believe it is their divine right, but chiefly to help the former prime minister in his long battle against conviction in his trial on counts of fraud, bribery and breach of trust. Netanyahu’s hypocrisy is excruciating, as it was he who first negotiated with Ra’am over joining a government headed by himself and who shamefully accused Bennett of deceit when, in this case, the only difference between the two men is that the latter eventually succeeded in assembling such a coalition.

In principle, we should probably thank Netanyahu for — albeit unintentionally — ringing in a change in Israeli politics that had been long overdue, but also for exposing his true racist nature and dishonest colors. To his shame, he now portrays the inclusion of Ra’am in the governing coalition as serving the interests of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. His ultra-right colleagues, such as Otzma Yehudit’s Itamar Ben-Gvir and the Religious Zionist Party’s Bezalel Smotrich, are more authentic and hence probably more dangerous in promoting falsehoods about the current government and in creating provocations that can only lead to violence, not just against Palestinians but also among Jews.

When Netanyahu eventually leaves the political scene for good, he will leave behind him the toxic legacy of “Bibism,” which is a type of populism adapted to the unique circumstances of Israeli politics, especially Jewish-Arab relations. After all, Netanyahu was fostering populism long before anyone had even heard of Viktor Orban of Hungary or Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, and in the days when Donald Trump was better known as a reality TV show host.

His legacy is one of incitement, provocation, xenophobia, scaremongering and the baseless smearing of political rivals, including members of his own political camp. It is a legacy of legitimizing the most divisive and violent elements in society in the service of his own political interests. And it is a legacy of labeling everyone that disagrees with him as unpatriotic, while threatening the democratic institutions of the country with particularly vicious attacks on the rule of law, on the justice system, progressive civil society and the media.

Netanyahu unconvincingly protested his innocence after the assassination of Rabin, but should a similar fate befall Bennett or any of his coalition partners, the blood will be on the hands of those who did not learn from their despicable behavior back in the Oslo days, above all Netanyahu himself.

• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg