"If the campaign of incitement and vilification against anyone who disagrees with your views does not stop, blood will be spilled here. ... There is a deep division and you, elected leaders, have the power to end it."

Those words were spoken in Hebrew at the beginning of this week. They were not intended as a comment on the bombs that had not yet been discovered in the mail in America. Unintentionally, though, they provide commentary on the responsibility for violence by the supposed lone extremist. 

The words come from Noa Rothman, granddaughter of Yitzhak Rabin. She was speaking at the state memorial ceremony for the prime minister who was assassinated 23 years ago. The "you" to whom she referred to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was present to hear her, and more widely to his political camp.

Netanyahu and his loyalists were terribly offended. Quite a few reporters, more practiced at "balance" than at the pursuit of truth, colored their stories with shock that Rothman took a supposedly partisan tone at a state event traditionally above politics. Afterward, the annual debate about Rabin's murder at the hands of a right-wing assassin took a more surreal tone than ever.