Last week, the Jewish state commemorated the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzḥak Rabin, who served in that position from 1974 to 1977 and then from 1992 to 1995. On the Israeli left, and perhaps even more so on the American Jewish left, a persistent myth remains that, had he not been murdered, the Oslo peace process that he began would have somehow succeeded. On the right, many blame him for embarking on this course in the first place, ushering in years of terror and bloodshed. Efraim Inbar rejects both views:

While many in the West seem to think the current fighting in Israel is about housing policy, or human rights, or the selective blockade of the Gaza Strip, the rhetoric of Palestinian leaders and on Palestinian social media makes clear that it is in fact about al-Aqsa mosque. This should come as no surprise: fabricated claims that “al-Aqsa is in danger” have been used to provoke anti-Jewish violence for a hundred years. In this particular case, explains Haviv Rettig Gur, both Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party exploited the claim in their rivalry for Palestinian hearts and minds: