A Killer's Son and a Soccer Game

Liberal Israelis have taken a one-two punch these last two days, and it's all to do with the assassination 12 years ago of late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a crazed Jewish extremist opposed to peace with the Arabs. On November 4th, while 150,000 Israelis gathered in a Tel Aviv park to mark the peacemaker's death, a small ceremony was happening inside a prison yard: the circumcision of an eight-day old boy. The smug father shuffled as he cradled his bawling son because he was in leg-chains. The baby's Dad was none other than Rabin's murderer, Yigal Amir.

Outside Rimonim Prison clusters of rival protesters gathered: leftists who were appalled that the killer of a prime minister was being given such soft treatment, and extremists who saw the circumcision ceremony as a kind of victory for their belief in endless war with the Palestinians. And how, you might ask, did Amir manage to sire a boy in jail? The court gave his wife conjugal visits and provided a nice little room with curtains, a bed and a shower.

You could dismiss the Amir celebration as an aberration, the gloating of a few fringe loonies.

But you would be wrong. Polls show that 38 per cent of religious Israeli Jews consider Amir to be a hero, a defender of Israel. At a soccer stadium the same night, when the announcer asked the crowd to stand for a minute of silence to honor the fallen Rabin, thousands of fans belonging to Beitar Jerusalem, hissed and booed.

One big fan of Beitar Jerusalem is Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who was said to be shocked and angered by the display, and many commentators suggested that Olmert must be wondering what extremist demons he is conjuring up by agreeing to take part in the Annapolis peace conference. Columnists drew parallels between the posters by religious extremists who depicted Rabin in a Gestapo uniform and the latest ones showing President Shimon Peres swathed in a Kaffiya headdress with the title: “Peres, President of the Arabs”.

And what of the baby? In Ha'aretz daily, columnist Yoel Marcus wrote: “From the moment he leaves his mother's womb his forehead will bear the mark of Cain. To many he will always be Rosemary's Baby.

“It's hard to hate an eight-day old infant. How can you hate a baby? But at the moment, this child is the raw material for a chilling, macabre tragedy of biblical proportions.”

Marcus does make it sound like a horror film in the making, but there's no denying the depth of hatred some Israeli extremists feel towards any leader who tries to make peace with the Arabs. Olmert be warned.

By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem