The son of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Tuesday his father was killed during a time in Israel that he describes as similar to the political climate in the United States and he urged restraint from Donald Trump and other candidates because “words do kill.”
“I saw the progression of things through the US campaign, the latest campaign, and saw the analogies and eventually I felt that I cannot stay silent any longer,” Yuval Rabin told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day.” “The atmosphere is toxic.”
Rabin said he thinks debates during election season are “legitimate,” but he cautioned that “words do kill.”
“The politicians have to exercise some restraint and know where the line must not be crossed,” Rabin said.
Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995 in Tel Aviv by an extremist.
Yuval Rabin’s comments come just a day after he published an op-ed for USA Today warning that some of the rhetoric on the campaign trail from Trump could lead to violent “incitement.”
“Donald Trump’s utterings about ‘Second Amendment people’ taking matters into their own hands to block a President Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court picks were a new level of ugliness in an ugly campaign season,” Rabin wrote. “In Israel, incitement such as this led to the murder of my father, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, 20 years ago.”
In addition to the Republican presidential candidate’s comments about Clinton, Rabin also criticized Trump for insisting that President Barack Obama was the “founder” of ISIS.
“They definitely have to denounce,” Rabin said about the Republican party. Trump has since walked back the comments, stating it was sarcasm.