ISRAEL AFTERAMIR

Judaism is a communitarian religion, which means that while Jews must take responsibility for their sins, they also must recognize that their crimes poison not only their own souls, but those of their families, friends, and neighbors. Amir and his confederates may consider themselves religious Jews, but if they have convinced themselves that an evil action can lead to a positive good, they might as well have been praying all these years to a totem or a household god for all that they understand of their faith.

Judaism is a religion largely concerned with behavior, with conduct. That is why one of the signal ironies of our age is that since its founding (and even before, as Yoram Hazony explains in his article beginning on page 31) the Jewish state’s political discourse has been characterized by rudeness, ugliness, Vituperation, even the occasional fistfight inside the Knesset. What the Rabin assassination proves, most of all, is how critical it is for democracies to foster and fiurture a spirit of civility in their politics. It is true, as commentators noted at great length last week,. that extremists opposed to the peace process have spent the last year talking about Rabin and the ruling Labor party in the most repugnant, ghastly terms. No less an opponent of the peace process — and of Rabin! — than opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu confessed on the David Brinkley show that the apocalyptic rhetoric of the extremists had something to do with Amir’s crime.

It is also true that when it comes to irresponsible, hysterical rhetoric, the Labor party has its own legacy of shame to contend with — its rage at being unseated after 30 years of uninterrupted rule when Likud first took power in 1977 led to the habitual use of the word “Nazi” to describe Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon, among others. That, too, was on display in the immediate aftermath of the assassination. It took Education Minister Arenon Rubenstein all of five minutes to declare Netanyahu and the Likud party the real killers. And while it is difficult to criticize a widow in her time of grief, the very fact that Leah Rabin emerged from mourning to accuse her husband’s legitmate political rivals of murder suggests the extent of the civility crisis inside Israel.

Collegial political systems cannot long survive this sort of talk. The parliamentary rules of procedure in the world’s most stable countries — the elaborate dance of Robert’s Rules of Order, the amusingly archaic traditions of Britain’s House of Commons, the head-shaking insistence in the U.S. Senate on couching all criticism in falsely friendly language — were necessary in order to ensure that political assemblies would not lead to civil wars. Earlier this year, California Rep. Robert Dornan went a little too far in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives and, before the chair could speak, cheerfully agreed to exile himself from the floor for a day. Manners are habit-forming, even for those who don’t feel like using them.

Though Americans do not know it, our nation probably has the most civil political discourse of any important nation in the world. Indeed, it is a mark of how civilized our discourse is that Americans are so concerned about it. We may live in the age of the soundbite, but often the soundbite is used as a weapon to ensure public civility. If a candidate for office runs a negative ad, the negative ad may well backfire on him in the eyes of voters who deem it unfair. Let Dick Armey’s tongue slip and an anti-homosexual epithet emerge, and there are days of stories, attacks, apologies. Let Bill Clinton try to tie Rush Limbaugh to Timothy McVeigh, and he must back down — his polls tell him so. The list goes on.

This is now such a regular feature of American political life that there is reason to fear the age of the stemwinding polemic is over. But if we have all but lost the capacity to speak plainly, if Americans have become too sensitive, maybe we’should give some of our surplus delicacy to our friend, the Israelis.

That is not said in jest. As “the response to the Rabin assassination indicates, America continues to have an almost mystical relationship with Israel, one that cannot be ascribed simply to the political clout of American Jews.

Israel is America’s child. It would not have been born without the midwifery of Harry S Truman, and it would not today be the only truly Western nation devised in the 20th century were it not for the influence, the advice, the example, and (yes) the money of the United States.

Israel has had a difficult time growing up. A purely socialist country in its infancy, its economic policies boiled down to the complaint of a four year-old: “It’s not fair that. . . .” In its adolescence, it has been overly dependent on Dad’s car and credit card.

But if it is true that, as the essayist William Hazlitt said, no young man believes he is ever going to die, the Rabin assassination was the end of Israel’s national youth.

Alas, it goes into its adulthood not all that well prepared. A child as ill- mannered as Israel won’t do very well on its own. Now its people are learning why a stable, civil society requires a more formal affect than Israel now possesses. Now perhaps Israelis will turn to America for for a way out of the maze of misbehavior that characterizes their political system. Perhaps America, with all of our faults and tragedies, can give Israelis the kind of help that Maimonides called the noblest and wisest charity: We can help them to help themselves.