One question haunts Jews in the wake of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination -- how could a Jew slaughter another Jew? But the real surprise is why Jews would find such an act surprising. PNS commentator Todd Gitlin, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley and author of "The Sixties -- Years of Hope, Days of Rage" (Bantam Books), writes a bi-weekly column for The New York Observer.

NEW YORK -- When all the lapses are analyzed, the noses cleaned, the security wrists slapped for letting Yigal Amir near Yitzhak Rabin after the Tel Aviv peace rally, what will have been laid bare in Israel and in the torn body of the Jewish people? The undeniable fact that a Jew could slaughter another Jew. How many Jews turned to each other and said, "But Jews don't do things like that!"

The real surprise is that the slaughter of Jew by Jew is surprising. Like America's lost innocence, some Israelis and many American Jews are quick to decree the loss of our innocence -- over and over again. We have a deep need to believe that, schooled in morality, Jews wouldn't do such a goyisch thing as murder Jews. Are we not the people of the book and the tablets, chosen for a redemptive mission by the one all-seeing Judge?

Some innocence this is, that keeps flaring up as if nothing had ever erased it! The zealotry of scriptures wasn't enough. The political fratricides of Zionist history weren't enough. Baruch Goldstein's slaughter of Palestinians at the cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron last year wasn't enough. The rabbi who said at Baruch Goldstein's funeral, "one million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail," wasn't enough. When such words trip lightly off the lips, isn't it obvious that Jewish fingernails would be next?

To paraphrase Mark Twain: Innocence is another word for amnesia. And this amnesia about Jew-on-Jew homicide extends through time immemorial. The Bible is, among other things, a book of bloodletting. The Old Testament is a saga of fratricide. Who can count the times when God told the elect to soak the holy ground with blood?

Consider, for example, the Book of Judges, Chapters 19-20, where it is recorded that a certain member of the tribe of Levi was traveling with his concubine. Wishing not to spend the night among foreigners, he went on to a city where the tribe of Benjamin lived. There a generous old man offered to put them up. But "perverted men," in the words of the New King James Version, beat on the door and told the old man, "Bring out the man who came to your house, and we may know him carnally!" The old man offered his virgin daughter and the concubine instead, saying, "do with them as you please; but to this man do not do such a vile thing." The perverts abused the concubine all night, and deposited her dead body back at her master's door.

And what did this worthy do? He "divided her in 12 pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel." And the leaders of the tribes of Israel recruited 400,000 soldiers. The Benjamites proceeded to kill 22,000 of the Israelites on the first day, another 18,000 on the second, whereupon the Lord visited ruin upon them and arranged to destroy an equivalent number of the Benjamites. Not satisfied, the men of Israel proceeded to burn down their cities and slaughter all their women -- except for the virgins.

"In those days there was no king in Israel," says Judges, "everyone did what was right in his own eyes." This story, too, is chapter and verse of Jewish history -- a history that is supposed to swell us up with pride because it is proof that we are better than barbarians.

In fact, in the Jewish tribe -- or any tribe -- is the history of the whole human race. You are not entitled to bask in the light of history if you are blind to the shadows.

Two days after the assassination, I took a car to the airport with a Russian-Jewish driver who said that assassination was what you got for defying the will of the people -- while perfunctorily acknowledging that Rabin was "a good man." A few hours later, a cabbie who drove me back from La Guardia listened on public radio to Rabin's 17-year-old granddaughter saying farewell at the funeral, and commented on the beauty of her words. That man was Haitian. Which of these two men was chosen? Who bore witness to the oneness of humanity made in the single image of the single God?