On November 7th, Israel’s outgoing Knesset held a commemorative session to mark the anniversary of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, 27 years ago.
Among the speakers was MK Bezalel Smotrich, who chairs the ultra-nationalist Religious Zionism Party, the third largest party in the Knesset and Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief partner in his prospective coalition. In his speech, Smotrich voiced an absurd conspiracy theory that is prevalent among hard-right Israelis. According to this theory, Israel’s Shin Bet secret service “used irresponsible manipulations (…) to encourage the murderer to carry out his plan,” as Smotrich put it. He added that the criticism of Rabin coming from the national religious community was justified, thus minimizing, indeed ignoring, the documented role that extreme right-wing incitement played in pushing the assassin, Yigal Amir, to pull the trigger.