Internet Heats Up Over Comparison of Trump’s Words on Clinton To Rhetoric Preceding Rabin Assassination
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The comparison between Donald Trump’s comments about what “Second Amendment people” can do to stop Hillary Clinton and the violent rhetoric that preceded the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 is heating up the Internet.
At a rally in North Carolina, Trump said that Republicans who are not happy with Clinton’s comments on the Second Amendment could take matters into their own hands.
“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment,” said Trump, who later criticized the media for interpreting his words as an incitement to violence. “By the way, and if she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks — although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Dan Malloy, US governor of Connecticut, compared Trump’s rhetoric to the one that preceded the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, when people would wave “Death to Rabin” signs on the street.
“I instantly thought about Rabin in Israel,” said Malloy in an interview on MSNBC. “There were rallies going on in Israel where ‘death to Rabin’ was shouted and politicians didn’t respond.”
Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a right-wing extremist who opposed the decision to sign the Oslo accord. According to Malloy, the widespread hate speech and provocations for violence at the hands of the far right at the time parallels the speeches of Trump and his supporters today.
“This is insanity, it’s a sickness, it’s an evil, and Republicans and Democrats and Independents have to stand up to this, otherwise this insanity will play itself out in our own country and over our existence,” said Malloy. “We’ve had enough assassinations. We’ve had enough death and we just have to reject this.”
Malloy’s words drew both widespread support and criticism online.
Dan Malloy is right – the Trump Rhetoric is like Rabin (not as violent yet but getting there)
— Joel Braunold (@braunold) August 10, 2016
Conn. Gov. Dannel Malloy just compared Trump’s call for violence to those who cried “Death to Rabin.” Apt comparison. Words matter.
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) August 9, 2016
No seriously, comp Trump’s incitement to pre-Rabin assass is precisely as stupid as NRA LaPierre’s Israel parallel. https://t.co/MvW6h36Jqo
— David Hazony (@davidhazony) August 10, 2016
Contact Veronika Bondarenko at bondarenko@forward.com or on Twitter, @veronikabond.
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