The assassination of Yitzchak Rabin by a Jewish assailant involves myriad dimensions of evil. On one level, it is evil simply because it is murder. Worse still, it was a Jew murdering a Jew, something quite unfathomable to the overwhelming majority of Jewry. Even more sickening is the utter desecration of Judaism and Jewish values every time his photo appears before the eyes of the world in newspapers wearing a Yarmulke. But perhaps the greatest travesty of all was that this misguided fool missed the essential message of the Bibles most famous story.
People are more important than ideas and concepts.
One cannot take a life because of a particular individuals views. What this assailant did was to reject the quintessential and irreducible essence of the Jewish faith which is an undying emphasis on the transcendence of human life over and above so-called truths and concepts. By murdering Yitzchak Rabin in the name of opposition to the peace-process, this depraved youth simultaneously degraded all of humanity. He subordinated human life to abstractions, issues, and concepts. Those of us who disassociate ourselves from his actions forget that there is a little bit of him in each and every one of us.