PERSPECTIVES ON ISRAEL : The Loyal Opposition Won’t Be Silenced : The backlash against extremists threatens the democratic freedom of Israelis who are hardly a minority.

There is growing evidence that a dangerous backlash is developing in Israel’s social fabric in the aftermath of the shooting of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In a radio interview, his widow, Leah, said of the killer, “It is enough [that] I know in which school he grew up.” His daughter declined to shake the hand of the opposition Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu at the grave site. Israel’s state-sponsored television showed angry citizens demanding that all anti-government demonstrations be halted. Posters were displayed blaming opposition politicians for the assassination.

Is the pendulum of intolerance now swinging to the other extreme? Is Israel’s democracy still being tested?

The assassin declared, according to police investigators, that he first attempted to kill Rabin 10 months ago. From remarks attributed to him, it appears that his was an insular ideological position rather than one shaped by what has been termed the “verbal violence” at rallies protesting the Oslo process.

Was there indeed a direct link to the atmosphere, at times ugly, projected at mass protests? And if so, will Israel as a result severely curtail the right of the populace to express its disagreement with government policy?

What complicates matters was the undeniable fact that Rabin was perhaps one of the most abrasive of prime ministers. His tongue-lashings were the stuff for a new political dictionary. He insisted that the Likud was “an aide of the Hamas” terror organization. Other ministers adopted similar disparaging declarations. The Labor-led coalition government was able to stay in power by a very thin margin. President Ezer Weizman, noting that the government’s majority of one vote was gained because a deputy minister wanted to keep his chauffeured car, pleaded that the Oslo process be slowed down to allow for additional thinking.

These past three days, numbing and shocking as they are to all, have brought some to the realization that Rabin’s murder, the despicable act of an individual, is subtly being manipulated to ensure that not only the extremist fringes will be dealt with harshly. Even the legitimate opposition, which constitutes 40% of the Knesset, is to be silenced.

Consequently, how am I, a firm opponent of Rabin’s policies, to act in the coming days? Is it demanded that I ignore reality? Just days before Rabin’s murder, two suicide-bombing attempts against Israeli buses in the Palestinian-controlled territory of Gaza fortuitously failed. Is this the security we Israelis were promised? Has my government truly fulfilled its responsibilities toward its citizenry?

Since the Oslo accords two years ago, some 150 Israelis have been killed in terror attacks, the largest number in any similar time period since the state’s founding. Tens of thousands of so-called policemen, actually Palestinian militia personnel armed with automatic rifles and armored cars, are being introduced into Israel’s geographic heartland. Cities and towns lying along the new borders have discovered that none of the promised security arrangements are in place. During the Palestinian Authority elections scheduled for January, U.N. observers will be present in Jerusalem, overseeing the ballot boxes in direct challenge to the government’s assurances. Is this peace or the encouraging of the worst of the Palestinian covenant’s inimical goals?

I can agree with the observation someone once made that while the extremes are logical, they are also absurd. But I cannot, will not permit public opinion, recoiling from the horrific tragedy of political murder, to push me and hundreds of thousands who agree with my basic positions into a corner, there to be pilloried, castigated, to be cast out of the camp of Israel as if a leper.

Israel the country, Israel the people, belong to me no less than to an elected official. I have not labeled any government minister “traitor,” but I am convinced they err. I have shouted my rage after yet another “peace sacrifice,” as our victims of terror were euphemistically termed, was laid to rest, and I feel the loss of Yitzhak Rabin certainly no less than he, I am sure, felt their loss. I have engaged in nonviolent protest on the hills of Judea and Samaria and in the streets of Jerusalem. Am I an outcast?

I have publicly rejected the strident, irresponsible actions of the few, but I will not kowtow to the desires of the government’s majority to make their job any easier. And in the end, I and those of the rational opposition are to be the test of Israel’s democracy.