‘Before Rabin, They Accused Us of Killing Jesus!’

Rabbi Yehuda Glick, a friend of Israel Today whom we have interviewed several times, attempted on Monday to calm the tension between left-wing and right-wing Israelis that tends to be aggravated every year on the anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

Posting to Twitter, Glick insisted that it was both unfair and non-conducive to national unity for left-wing Israelis to blame the entire right-wing camp for that heinous murder. He noted that long before Rabin, the entire Jewish nation was blamed for the murder of Yeshua (Jesus).

Glick suggested that it would be better to alter the discourse entirely, just as Jews would like Christians (at least those who still do so) to stop accusing their people as a whole for the actions of a small religious elite and their Roman co-conspirators.

לכל אלו שמתכוננים לנצל את השבועות הקרובים בהאשמת מחנה שלם ברצח רבין רק מזכיר לכם שהרבה לפניכן רצחנו את ישו!

ואוליי בכל זאת כל הצדדים יבחרו לנצל את התקופה הקרובה הזו לשיח אחר…

— Yehudah Glick יהודה גליק يهودا جليك (@YehudahGlick) October 18, 2021

Many of those who responded to Glick were not impressed.

It was clear from the comments to his post that a great many left-wing Israelis believe that the man who assassinated Rabin, Yigal Amir, was acting on direct orders from senior rabbis. And given that these rabbis are seen as the spiritual leaders of the Right, they do blame, or at least demand contrition from, the entire camp.

Interestingly, those who addressed Glick’s invocation of Jesus were adamant that the Romans alone bore responsibility for his death. While in Rabin’s case they are happy to point an accusatory finger at an alleged rabbinical conspiracy behind Yigal Amir’s actions, in the case of Jesus they entirely sidestep the role of the Sanhedrin in putting him on the Romans’ cross.