Avi Aharon

A do-it-yourself conspiracy theory

750 people have managed to take the “Obama Assassination” Facebook poll before it was taken off. Mashable, who reports this news doesn’t provide the vote breakdown. We’re told that the Secret Service is after the poll’s developer(s). Moreover, Facebook’s legal team are so deeply involved wishes they’d work on an hourly basis.

Now that everyone got the publicity they planned for, and assuming that we all agree that it’s impolite to discuss the US president assassination, even as a – bad – joke, I would like to add that it is not completely unlikely for him to get assassinated.

How do I know?
Well, I don’t.

Why do I say that?
Because Obama is a complete failure and because we –here in Israel – have a recent example.

We’re discussing a failing Israeli Prime minister here. Of course, it is not trivial for an Israeli PM to match his predecessor’s failures. You lose a war, only to you find that other PMs have lost more severely, with more casualties and to a lesser enemy. You irresponsibly expend money, only to find out that you’re not the first to cause inflation so high that it takes a decade to eliminate it.

Yitzhak Rabin, a two times PM, is responsible for the 1970s post-Yom Kippur war inflation (making 0-to-40% inflation in three years). On his second round as PM, he is credited for the Oslo accord, a stupidity Israel has hard time getting rid off for the past 13 years.

The Oslo accord was recognized a complete disaster even at Rabin’s time. This is why he was murdered in November 1995, and this is why his coming assassination was peddled, weeks before it took place. I’m not offering a new conspiracy theory here, nor displaying new facts. It’s a known fact that Rabin’s coming assassination was broadly discussed weeks before the night it took place and maybe it was discussed for a reason. One might guess that the failing Rabin government, causing civilian casualties in the thousands, needed a scapegoat.

A failing regime usually has several cards to play. Going bankrupt – calling for new elections – is a common Israeli solution. I wish – I think all Israeli wish – Rabin had applied this solution in 1995. However, failing regimes have a dynamics of their own. Sometimes, this dynamics doesn’t go hand in hand with the longevity of their leaders.