A Mother's Defense, by Guela Amir on the Rabin assassination
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Background
In March 1997, President Kennedy's son, John, Jr., ran a controversial
article in his magazine, George. The article was written by Guela Amir,
mother of Yigal Amir, the man who assassinated Israeli prime minister
Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. In the article, Ms. Amir made it quite clear that her
son did not act alone. She provided compelling evidence that Rabin's
assassination was sponsored by the Israeli government, and that her son had
been goaded into shooting the prime minister by an agent provocateur working
for Shin Bet, Israel's equivalent of the FBI and Secret Service combined
into one agency. The motive for the killing was because Rabin was going to
give land back to the Palestinians as specified in the Oslo Accords. The
following is Ms. Amir's article in its entirety:
A Mother's Defense, by Guela Amir
(Published in George Magazine, March 1997 edition, p. 138)
Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin looked exhilarated as he made his way
down the podium stairs that chilly autumn night. The pro-peace rally that
Rabin had just addressed was an unqualified success. Some 100,000 supporters
attended, and public attention was briefly deflected from the mounting
criticism of his administration.
Rabin's carefree, buoyant demeanor that night seemed to put his bodyguards
at ease, and the half dozen or so agents who accompanied him to his
limousine in the parking lot behind the stage encircled him only loosely.
None of the Shin Bet (General Security Service) agents in the entourage
seemed to notice the slight young man leaning casually against one of the
government cars.
As Rabin walked past, the young man drew a pistol, slipped into the crowd of
towering security agents, and fired three rounds at the prime minister. Two
of them hit Rabin's exposed back, and one shot wounded his bodyguard. As the
shots rang out, someone at the scene shouted, "Blanks! Blanks!" as if to
reassure the others that the bullets were not real. But the shots were not
blanks. Rabin, mortally wounded, was rushed to nearby Ichilov Hospital.
Curiously, as Leah Rabin was whisked away by car to Shin Bet headquarters,
one of the agents assured the prime minister's wife that the gunman had
actually used "a toy gun" and that her husband was fine. The reality was
that Rabin lay dying in an emergency room.
The gunman was my son Yigal. The shooting seemed to be an open-and-shut case
of assassination. An amateur videotape of the event clearly showed Yigal
walking up to the prime minister and shooting him. So how could anyone at
the scene have thought that Yigal was shooting blanks? Why was another guard
so certain that the gun wasn't real? And how is it that minutes after the
shooting, even before the details of the incident were broadcast, Israeli TV
received a phone call from a man who claimed to represent a right-wing
Jewish organization. He confidently declared, "This time we missed. Next
time we won't." Other journalists simultaneously received messages on their
pagers with the same statement.
Throughout the tense and painful period since the assassination, the answers
to these troubling questions have begun to emerge, and they depict what I
believe is an unsavory intrigue at the highest levels of government. This is
the story of my search for the truth about the Rabin assassination.
I was visiting a friend's home when the first news bulletin about the
assassination was broadcast. The report said that a law student "of Yemenite
origin" from Bar-Ilan University had shot the prime minister during a peace
rally in Tel Aviv. I had heard about the rally but had no reason to think
that my son Yigal would be there. Nervously, I ran to my car and drove the
short distance home to Herzliyya, a northern suburb of Tel Aviv, my hands
shaking with fear all the way. When I pulled up in front of our house I
could hear my husband, Shlomo, shouting. He is a religious scribe with a
particularly gentle personality. In our more than 30 years of marriage, I
have almost never heard him raise his voice. If he was shouting, something
was terribly wrong.
My husband grabbed my hand and we stood together, eyes fixed stonily on the
television. Within minutes, our other seven children joined us. Relatives
and neighbors streamed into our home. Somebody insisted that it couldn't be
Yigal, that "Gali" (his nickname) was visiting a friend. But then a
broadcast showed a clear image of my son in the custody of the police. There
was no mistake: That was my Yigal. As we sat, dazed, in front of the
television, a swarm of Shin Bet agents burst into the living room, charged
upstairs to Yigal's room, and took it apart from floor to ceiling.
In the streets outside, hundreds of neighbors gathered at the edge of our
yard. Reporters and television crews soon joined them. My youngest children
were crying uncontrollably. The phone rang off the hook that night, and it
has not stopped since.
Daybreak brought the peculiar combination of unreality and routine that is
painfully familiar to anyone who has experienced a family tragedy. For years
I have managed a nursery school in our home for neighborhood children. Forty
preschoolers had enrolled that autumn. At 8 A.M. parents began to arrive
with their toddlers; all but a few came that day.
Later, the Shin Bet returned to raid the house. Concealed in the rafters, in
a backyard shed, and in an underground cache they found weapons and
ammunition. The agents seemed to revel in our shock at each new discovery.
At one point I asked one of them why he was spending so much time examining
several bars of soap found in the house. He showed me the explosives that
were hidden inside. And then they arrested my firstborn son, Hagai, on
suspicion of being an accomplice in the assassination of Rabin. Several of
Yigal's and Hagai's friends and schoolmates were also hauled in for
questioning.
I had lived through four wars and the terrifying Iraqi Scud missiles that
struck Israel-just miles from our home-during the Persian Gulf War. But the
fear I now felt was something entirely different. In wartime we had been
part of a brave and unified community; now I felt that it was my family's
own battle-that our family stood alone. Politicians and newspaper columnists
branded us a family of "religious fanatics" and "extremists," never pausing
to distinguish between us and Yigal. Leading the attacks against us was
Rabin's former chief of staff Eitan Haber, who showed up at one of the early
court hearings for Yigal and announced that he wouldn't leave the "Amir
family in peace until the end of [his] days." Haber's pledge helped inspire
a new round of telephone harassment against us, and our home was attacked by
vandals.
When the news leaked out that my oldest daughter, Vardit, would soon be
married, Haber was on her trail. Needless to say, we were in no mood for
celebrations, but according to Jewish religious tradition, once a wedding
date has been set it cannot be postponed; Vardit's wedding date had been
decided on six months earlier. Haber called for protesters to show up by the
thousands.
To our amazement, Haber's plan backfired. There was a spontaneous outpouring
of sympathy for our family. Gifts began to arrive from anonymous
well-wishers. People we did not know called to offer us help. A stranger
lent the young couple a new car for their honeymoon. Nearly every one of our
invited guests showed up.
In Jewish tradition the righteous are rewarded with a place in the world to
come, and those who are sinful are punished until their souls have been
cleansed. When I was a little girl, my grandfather, a revered rabbinical
sage, would tell me stories about rare individuals whose sins were so
grievous that they could not even enter purgatory. Such a soul, termed a
dybbuk in Hebrew, is sent back to the earthly realm to repair the spiritual
damage it has wreaked. The dybbuk's only hope is to infiltrate and possess
the body of a living person and cling tightly to this purer soul in the hope
of securing enough credit, through that person's meritorious deeds, to be
forgiven for his own misdeeds. In the spring of 1992, a baneful dybbuk took
possession of Israel's radical right-wing political movements and almost
succeeded in driving them to ruin. This dybbuk's name was Avishai Raviv.
Raviv was a part of Yigal's other world-his world away from home-and I
didn't realize what a central role he played in my son's life until his name
began cropping up again and again as the Israeli press probed deeper into
the Rabin assassination.
Avishai Raviv was born in 1967 in Holon, a backwater development town just
south of Tel Aviv. He is remembered in Holon as a youngster who made up for
his shyness and stuttering by playing practical jokes on his classmates.
Raviv's family was not religious and tended to vote Labor. His life changed
suddenly and dramatically when, at the age of 16, he attended a lecture by
Rabbi Meir Kahane, the fiery leader of the Israeli nationalist Kach
movement. Raviv became active in the movement and, under Rabbi Kahane's
influence, seemed to undergo a religious awakening that resulted in his
embracing traditional Judaism. While on leave from service in the Israeli
army's elite Givati Brigade, Raviv began attending demonstrations and other
Kach activities.
Subsequent Israeli and foreign media reports alleged that at some time
during or immediately following his military service, Raviv was recruited as
an informer for the Shin Bet. Raviv, however, was no ordinary snitch. It was
reported that for five years he initiated, organized, and led dozens of
extremist right-wing activities.
After the November 1990 assassination of Rabbi Kahane, the Kach movement
split into two factions. Raviv managed to remain active in both. He
consistently appeared at each group's events and soon became an infamous
fixture on the nightly news. When scuffles broke out with the police or
hostile passersby, Raviv was often in the center of the trouble and was
arrested dozens of times (although he was rarely charged and never
imprisoned).
While he was active in the various Kach splinters, Raviv joined the Temple
Mount Faithful, a group that protests for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount,
the Jewish holy site in Jerusalem upon which Muslims built the Al Aqsa
mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine. Israelis must get permission from
the police before they can pray on the mount for fear of violence between
Arabs and Jews, and the Temple Mount Faithful has responded with protests.
Raviv's attempt to wrest control from the founder of the group would lead to
his expulsion.
Raviv's agitation led to a particularly ugly episode in August 1991 during a
protest outside the Tel Aviv office of Israel's Communist party. As Tamar
Gozansky, a Communist member of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), left
the building, Raviv charged at her with a large metal flagpole. Gozansky's
aide blocked the assault, and a brawl ensued. Photos of a bloodied Raviv
limping away from the rally enhanced his stature among the Kahane activists.
Raviv was arrested, but it took nearly four years for the case to go to
court. He was let off with a mere nine months' probation and a small fine.
The decision by Israeli prosecutors to request probation rather than
imprisonment seemed curious.
In the meantime, Raviv had enrolled at Tel Aviv University and was busy
making trouble on campus. When a Druse student was elected head of the
student union (the largely Jewish student body had chosen a Muslim), Raviv
publicly accused him of being disloyal to Israel. The university
administration brought disciplinary charges against Raviv for racism.
Eventually Raviv was expelled from the university-but not before he asked
the Office of the Prime Minister to intervene on his behalf Tel Aviv
University officials, however, had had enough of his provocations and his
appeal was rejected.
Raviv then founded an organization with settlement activist David Hazan,
called Eyal (the Jewish Fighting Organization). It was a
religious-nationalist youth movement with barely two dozen members at the
start. But Raviv devoted all of his energy to recruiting new members. He
soon built himself a small but loyal following, made up primarily of
religious teenagers. Raviv lured these youngsters with the enticement of
violence and rebellion. According to one girl's later testimony, the
charismatic Raviv would arrange Sabbath weekend retreats for Eyal members in
various Jewish settlements. I believe the cost of these weekends was usually
footed by Raviv.
Before long, Raviv was quarreling with Hazan over the group's direction.
Hazan thought Raviv went too far at times, and, reportedly, when Raviv
started to openly discuss assassinating a prominent Israeli, Hazan resigned.
Raviv took over and shaped Eyal into his vision of the militant vanguard of
the Israeli Right. His former roommate, Eran Ojalbo, claimed that Raviv was
obsessed with obtaining publicity for himself and his small band of
followers and developed a real flair for media stunts. On one occasion,
Raviv invited a television crew to watch Eyal members training with weapons.
On another, he launched a well-publicized leafleting campaign against mixed
Jewish-Arab classes in public schools. He and several Eyal teenagers were
brought in for police questioning. Leaflets of this sort are illegal in
Israel because they're considered racist, and those who are responsible for
creating them are often prosecuted. With Raviv, no charges were pressed.
In September 1993, the Rabin government signed the Oslo accords with the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The accords, and the series of
terror bombings that followed their implementation, brought thousands of
previously apolitical Israelis into the streets and onto the barricades in
embittered protest. These neophyte activists poured into the pre-existing
right-wing groups and placed themselves at the disposal of experienced
organizers such as Avishai Raviv. One of these new activists was my son
Yigal.
The election of Labor party leader Yitzhak Rabin as prime minister in 1992
was the climax of an extraordinary political comeback. After four straight
national election losses and more than 15 years in the political wilderness,
Rabin led the center-left Labor parry to triumph.
Like many Israelis, my husband and I were saddened by Rabin's election, but
we sought consolation in the platform upon which he ran: no negotiations
with the PLO, no establishment of a PLO state, and no surrender of the
strategically vital Golan Heights. If Rabin adhered to his party's declared
principles, Israel's basic security needs would be protected.
In utter disregard of Rabin's platform and in defiance of the Israeli law
prohibiting contact with the PLO, Labor party emissaries initiated
negotiations with the terrorist group. In September 1993, Rabin announced to
a stunned nation that he was going to sign an agreement with PLO chairman
Yasir Arafat, giving the PLO partial control over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.
He also planned to release jailed terrorists in exchange for a PLO peace
pledge.
In Israel, we hoped desperately that peace would emerge. As a wife and a
mother, I know the pain and fear of having watched my sons go off to serve
the mandatory three years in the Israeli army. I yearn for the day when we
can beat our swords into plowshares.
Sadly, the Oslo process did not produce the peace we expected. Within weeks
of the White House handshake, the horror began. A Palestinian terrorist
drove a car filled with explosives into a bus near the community of Beit-El,
wounding 30 people. Next, a Palestinian driving a car filled with explosives
pulled up alongside a bus in the northern Israeli city of Afula. The
explosion killed eight people and wounded dozens more. On Remembrance Day, a
Palestinian suicide bomber boarded a bus in nearby Hadera and blew himself
up, killing five and wounding 25. Public support for Rabin and the Oslo
process plummeted. Labor had insisted that the agreement would bring Israel
untold benefits. But such dreams were shattered by the rude reality of the
old Middle East.
At the same time, a dangerous schism was emerging in Israeli society between
those who continued to support the peace process and those who opposed it.
Faced with widespread public rejection of the Oslo process, an increasingly
defensive Rabin and his cabinet ministers responded by forging ahead with
policies that did not have the support of the public majority.
The terror continued. On October 19, 1994, in the heart of Tel Aviv, a Hamas
bomber blew up a bus, killing 22 passengers and wounding 48. Three weeks
later a terrorist riding a bicycle and carrying a knapsack filled with
explosives pedaled up to an army checkpoint in Gaza and killed three
soldiers. Each week brought more death, violence, and disillusionment.
Around our Sabbath dinner table, the one time each week when all of our
children were together, there was a growing sense of despair. Yigal once
said, almost in tears, "Who cares if you can now take a vacation trip to
Jordan if the street outside is running with Jewish blood?" We didn't know
how to answer him. But we did not quite understand just how deeply he felt
the pain of the massacred victims. We could not imagine that these terrible
events were pushing him past the point of no return.
In the summer of 1995, as Rabin entered the fourth and final year of his
term, his popularity was rapidly declining and his coalition government had
to count on the support of five Arab members in the Knesset for its
survival, though he could not be assured of these crucial votes
indefinitely. And there was turmoil inside the Labor party itself Rabin had
indicated his willingness to surrender most or all of the Golan Heights
region to the Syrians, and a handful of Labor members of the Knesset, led by
the 1973 war hero Avigdor Kahalani, balked. Recalling how the Syrians had
used the Golan from 1949 to 1967 to shell northern Israel, the Kahalani
faction announced that it would vote against the government if it sought to
surrender the Golan.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1995, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu
began to rise in the polls. By late summer of 1995, the polls showed that if
elections were held at that time, Netanyahu. would be elected prime
minister. The polls found that a majority of the nation no longer supported
new territorial surrender.
With elections less than a year away, Rabin's career appeared to be on the
verge of ruin, and it's my belief that the Labor leadership quietly turned
to the security services to help stave off a defeat at the polls.
The dybbuk in our story will now be joined by an authentic spook. Karmi
Gillon came from one of Israel's prominent families. His grandfather, Gad
Frumkin, had served as a Supreme Court justice during the pre-state years
under the British Mandate. Gillon's father, Colin, was Israel's state
attorney during the 1950s, and his mother, Saada, was a deputy attorney
general. Gillon's brother, Alon, is a judge who serves as the registrar of
Israel's Supreme Court. Karmi Gillon forsook the family profession for a
career in the Shin Bet. Created shortly after Israel's birth, the Shin Bet
is, in effect, the Israeli FBI and Secret Service combined; it is charged
with the tasks of gathering domestic intelligence, counterespionage, and
protecting diplomats and VIPs. Control of the Shin Bet is in the hands of
the office of the prime minister.
The Shin Bet like the FBI, has had no small share of controversy over the
years. During the time that Gillon was rising in its ranks, the Shin Bet was
implicated in a series of scandals. The Landau Commission, established in
1987 to investigate the methods of the Shin Bet, found a pattern of perjury
spanning almost two decades. It released an 88 page report sharply censured
the Shin Bet leadership for having "failed by not understanding that no
security operation, however vital, can put its operatives above the law."
The commission characterized the Shin Bet's lawlessness as a danger to
democratic society.
Karmi Gillon had a unique field of expertise. While most of his fellow
agents spent their time combating the threat of Arab terrorism, Gillon was
the Shin Bet's resident expert on Jewish extremist groups; he even wrote his
master's thesis at Haifa University on the topic in 1990. He was an advocate
of cracking down on Jewish nationalist movements and made no secret of his
antipathy to the right-wing outlook.
A few months prior to Gillon's appointment as chief of the Shin Bet in
February 1995, Avishai Raviv pulled off an extraordinary stunt. Raviv,
accompanied by a band of former Kach activists, attempted to stage a
demonstration outside Gillon's Jerusalem home to demand his resignation from
the Shin Bet. Raviv and two other people were briefly detained as they
approached Gillon's house. Raviv told reporters at the scene-I believe he
tipped off the press-that the planned-demonstration was "to protest that the
head of the Shin Bet is being used as a political tool against the right
wing."
To some, Raviv's threatening behavior was just further "evidence" that the
Jewish Right was a menace that had to be combatted. In fact, Raviv, as it
was later alleged, was already serving as an informer for the Shin Bet, and
I find it hard to believe that his stunt hadn't been cleared by Gillon
himself. Even before Gillon assumed control of the service, Raviv's
provocations had become completely unrestrained. According to the Jerusalem
Post, a few days after the machine-gunning of 29 Palestinians by Dr. Baruch
Goldstein in March 1994 at Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, Raviv rented an
apartment-directly above the one where Goldstein had lived-in Kiryat Arba.
While Kiryat Arba's leaders were denouncing Goldstein, Raviv was boasting
about his admiration for him. According to the Post, one of Raviv's splinter
groups, DOV [Suppression of Traitors], vandalized a car belonging to the
Kiryat Arba council head, Zvi Katzover, and the next day, Eyal took credit
for assaulting Katzover's son so seriously that the boy had to be
hospitalized. Again, Raviv was not prosecuted.
Raviv was then accepted by Bar-Ilan University, an Orthodox Jewish
institution located in Ramat Gan, not far from Tel Aviv. Raviv registered
for several history and philosophy courses and also enrolled in the school's
Institute for Advanced Torah Studies. It was there, in the spring of 1994,
that he met my son Yigal.
By the time summer rolled around, Raviv was sponsoring a paramilitary Eyal
summer camp for militant youngsters. Reporters were invited to watch as
Raviv ordered his young recruits, armed with automatic weapons, pistols, and
knives, to engage in paramilitary drills and martial-arts training.
Throughout 1994, my husband and I were aware that Yigal was becoming
increasingly involved in political activities. But as long as his actions
were within the law (and to my knowledge, they were) and he kept up his
grades (and he did), we saw no reason to object. If Yigal felt that the Oslo
process was endangering Israel-and many, many Israelis felt that way-it was
his right, even his obligation, to protest.
What we did not know was that Yigal was being drawn into Raviv's
netherworld. Raviv was blanketing the campus with extremist posters. He
clashed with campus security when some of the more militant notices were
taken down by guards. This resulted in a hearing before an academic
disciplinary committee that issued a warning: He would be expelled if he
caused any more trouble.
In the summer of 1995, Raviv was once more summoned to a disciplinary
committee for his activities. Raviv was again let off with a mere warning by
the university administration. Acquaintances from that period later told me
that he had behaved as if he had protectzia, the Hebrew slang for pull, or
influence in high places. The rabbis at the Institute for Advanced Torah
Studies, however, had seen enough of Raviv's antics. He was expelled from
the institute.
In Hebrew, Yigal means "he will redeem." My second son was born during those
first heady years after the Six Day War, when Israel, on the brink of
annihilation by the Arab armies, miraculously beat back the enemy and
liberated sacred territories that are so central to Judaism and Jewish
history: Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and, of course, Jerusalem.
God had redeemed his nation, and we named our second child Yigal as an
affirmation of that miracle. Even as a young child, Yigal displayed an
energy and drive that set him apart from other children. Whatever Yigal
wanted, he found a way to get.
Yigal had never given us a day of trouble in his life. After graduating at
the top of his high school class, he began his military service. His fierce
patriotism compelled him to volunteer for an elite combat unit. As a mother,
I dreaded his decision to serve in the unit that is called into battle first
when war breaks out. But how could we stand in the way of our son's desire
to defend his country?
When Yigal finished his three mandatory years of service, I detected a new
seriousness in him. He was hired as a government emissary to Latvia, where
he taught Hebrew to potential Jewish immigrants to Israel. He subsequently
told me that this is where he was trained by the Shin Bet.
Upon his return, Yigal gained admission to law school at Bar-Ilan. For a
young man of Yemenitc background, this was quite an accomplishment: Jews
from Yemen and other Arab countries start out at the bottom of Israel's
socioeconomic ladder, and it has taken decades to break into professions
dominated by those of European origin. Yigal enrolled not only in the
Bar-Ilan University law school but simultaneously in its computer classes
and the university's religious-studies program.
Like many of his fellow students, Yigal was drawn to political activism by
the Oslo accords. He attended a number of mass demonstrations in Tel Aviv
and Jerusalem and helped organize a number of campus rallies, but he soon
despaired of their impact because there was no chance of changing Rabin's
mind.
Yigal found himself overwhelmed by a sense of frustration, and this helped
to pave the way for his association with Raviv. He was now spending a good
deal of his time organizing Sabbath weekend retreats for student activists
in various Israeli towns and in the settlements. As Yigal's friends told me
subsequently, he and Raviv worked together, publicizing the retreats,
preparing literature for the discussion groups and seminars, and arranging
for guest lecturers.
We hardly saw Yigal during the summer and early autumn of 1995. 1 couldn't
imagine how he mustered the energy for such outings after his grueling
schedule of classes. But if he was using his day and a half off from school
(Israel's weekends last only from Friday afternoon until Saturday night) for
educational purposes, we considered it worthwhile.
According to Yigal's friends and others who have since testified in court,
Raviv seemed to be obsessed with one topic: killing Rabin. He and Yigal
frequently engaged in discussions about the feasibility of assassination.
On September 16, Israeli television broadcast what was purported to be a
secret late-night swearing-in ceremony organized by Eyal. At the ceremony,
which was later revealed to have been staged for the television cameras,
Raviv assembled what he claimed were a group of new Eyal recruits at the
graves of pre-state Jewish underground fighters, according to the Jerusalem
Post.
Raviv scored his biggest media triumph on October 5,1995, when the
opposition political parties organized a mass rally in downtown Jerusalem to
protest the mounting Arab terror and the government's weak response.
Although I rarely attended demonstrations, Yigal and I went to, this one
together. The main speaker that Saturday night was Likud leader Benjamin
Netanyahu. Circulating among the huge crowd was Avishai Raviv and his band
of Eyal hotheads. According to the Jerusalem Post, Raviv had given them
handouts depicting Prime Minister Rabin dressed up in an SS uniform. When
demonstrators urged the Eyal sign holders to remove the offensive placards,
they refused. Eyal's founder, David Hazan, passed by and tore up one of the
posters. A gang of Eyal toughs promptly pummeled him.
The Post reported that an Israeli television reporter, Nitzan Chen, later
revealed that Raviv had approached him and urged him to broadcast the sign
on the nightly news report, and that he had even called later to be sure
that it had been included.
In the Knesset the next morning, the Labor party made good use of the
poster. Netanyahu was accused of having failed to condemn them. It helped
reinforce the notion that the Likud was extremist and irresponsible. In a
radio interview shortly afterward, Rabin told the public that "the Likud
provides extremists with inspiration. It cannot wash its hands of this and
claim it has nothing to do with it."
Netanyahu's request to meet with Rabin to attempt to ease the mounting
political tensions was ignored. Rabin's refusal to even meet with the Likud
leader again strengthened the idea that Netanyahu was beyond the pale. It
also helped deflect public attention away from Arab terrorism. Finally, so
it seemed, Rabin had found an effective campaign strategy.
On November 4, 1995, Yigal exited a bus and made his way toward Malchei
Yisrael Square, where thousands of supporters had already assembled. The
large floodlights placed outside the Tel Aviv city hall illuminated the area
for many blocks, and security was stepped up around the demonstration. On
hand were more than 700 police and border-patrol officers, dozens of
undercover police, and agents of the Shin Bet who had been assigned the job
of guarding the featured political leaders.
The gathering, whose theme was "Yes to peace, no to violence," had been
heavily advertised for weeks. Labor party-dominated municipalities and
unions pulled out all stops in their drive to generate a large turnout for
the rally. Some of the biggest names in Israeli entertainment were recruited
to perform. In addition to Prime Minister Rabin and Foreign Minister Peres,
other top Labor leaders were present. It was meant to be an impressive show
of strength for the party and proof positive that large segments of the
country still supported the peace process.
Yigal strode quickly through the crowd. The police had erected special metal
railings to keep the crowd away from the rostrum, but people were simply
walking around the barriers. When Yigal arrived near the stage he circled
around the police line and descended the stairway that led to the cordoned
parking area, where the limousines of the prime minister and other
government officials were parked.
After a while, a Shin Bet agent approached and asked Yigal who he was. He
reportedly replied that he was one of the drivers. The agent apparently
accepted the answer and walked away. At no point did anyone ask Yigal to
produce identification or seriously challenge his presence near the cars.
Much criticism was later leveled against the police and the Shin Bet for
failing to create a "sterile" area near the stage, a standard security
precaution.
Yigal struck up a conversation with some of the drivers and police officers
who were mingling in the parking lot. Later they would admit that they had
assumed he was either an undercover policeman or one of the entertainers'
drivers. From his position in the parking lot, Yigal could clearly hear the
singing of the performers.
As the speeches and performances continued on the stage above him, Yigal
bided his time. He did not check his watch, nor did he display any anxiety,
he told me. He said that if the police had stopped him or seriously
questioned him at this stage, he would have taken it as a sign from above
and abandoned the plan to kill Rabin. But on this evening there were no such
actions by the police or Shin Bet agents. And so Yigal was content to
peacefully wait for the rally to end and the prime minister to be escorted
to his car.
In the chaotic aftermath of the assassination, rival Israeli law-enforcement
officials engaged in a frenzy of finger-pointing and recriminations. In the
newspapers and on the airwaves, the Police Ministry and the Shin Bet hurled
accusations at one another, each attempting to blame the other for the lax
security. Shin Bet head Karmi Gillon, whose name was then a state secret,
announced that the security services would conduct an internal
investigation. The police announced their own internal probe. Astonishingly,
within 48 hours-on November 7-the Shin Bet report was concluded and leaked
to the press. The document, which was authored by three former branch heads
of the Shin Bet, found that the entire protection system assigned to the
prime minister had collapsed. The report lambasted the inability of the Shin
Bet to gather intelligence on extreme right-wing groups. After the report's
release, the head of the protection department, identified as "D," was
forced to resign. The Shin Bet insisted that D's negligence was the sole
reason for the procedural breaches on the night of the killing.
On Tuesday, November 7, Raviv was arrested by the police, on charges that he
was involved in the assassination. The Jerusalem Post asserted that his
group, Eyal, was being investigated in connection with a conspiracy to kill
the prime minister. As the handcuffed Raviv was brought to court under heavy
police guard, he yelled to reporters, "This is a political investigation and
a false arrest! This is a dictatorship!"
The next day, the government announced the formation of a commission of
inquiry into the assassination, to be headed by former Supreme Court justice
Meir Shamgar. And from the outset, the Shamgar Commission was plagued by
conflicts of interest and questions of impartiality. Shamgar himself had
served for many years as Judge Advocate General of the Israeli army and
maintained ties to the military establishment. He was also a close personal
friend of the Rabin family. Shamgar was joined on the panel by a former head
of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, and Professor Ariel Rosen-Zvi, dean of Tel Aviv
University law school. Professor Rosen-Zvi was in the advanced stages of
cancer at the time and would be dead within weeks of the commission's final
report.
In a strange twist, Judge Alon Gillon, the older brother of Shin Bet head
Karmi Gillon, was named secretary of the commission. Sitting in on the
commission's proceedings was the brother of the government official who was
most likely to be blamed if the commission concluded that the Shin Bet had
failed to safeguard Rabin. The possible conflict of interest apparently
escaped the notice of the commissioners-Karmi Gillon would testify before
the commission at length. Unfortunately, neither the public nor the news
media were allowed to attend many of the commission's hearings.
Equally troubling was the presence of Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair.
Since the commission was investigating, among other issues, whether the
attorney general's office was granting some Shin Bet informants-one of which
was later alleged to be Raviv-immunity from prosecution, the presence of the
attorney general at the hearings was surprising indeed. If the government's
intent was to definitively ascertain what led to Rabin's assassination, then
even the perception of impropriety should not have been tolerated.
During the days following the assassination, Attorney General Ben-Yair had
ordered a crackdown on individuals who were suspected of engaging in
"inflammatory speech." Curiously, the crackdown continued for several weeks,
then stopped suddenly. Ben-Yair announced-in a stunning reversal-that mere
words could not cause an individual to engage in criminal acts, and they had
not caused Yigal's act. "The person who killed the prime minister did not do
so under the influence of incitement.... He acted due to a complete
worldview, which he had developed.... It wasn't because of a poster here or
there." Ben-Yair was not the only one to engage in a sudden, unexplained
about-face. Police Minister Moshe Shahal, who had previously declared, "We
believe that a group of people carefully prepared the ground to conspire to
murder carefully chosen targets," now asserted that Yigal was a lone gunman
who had organized the assassination on his own.
But the "inciting rhetoric" and "organized conspiracy" theories had served
their purpose they had inflamed public opinion against the Israeli Right.
Now, I believe they needed to be discarded lest they open an even bigger can
of worms about incitement and conspiracy.
On the weekend before the Shamgar Commission was to hear its first witness,
Karmi Gillon, there was a stunning revelation: Israeli television and radio
both reported that Raviv was, indeed, an undercover agent for the Shin Bet.
According to the reports, Raviv, codenamed "Champagne" by his Shin Bet
handlers, had been on the government's payroll for at least two years as a
top infiltrator of the far Right. But according to an investigation by the
Jerusalem Post, Raviv's task involved much more than infiltration: His
orders were to attract individuals to Eyal, incite them to illegal
activities, and then inform on them to the Shin Bet.
One of the sources of this information was Rabbi Benny Elon, the dean of
Yeshivat Beit Orot, a religious college, and son of a retired Supreme Court
justice. Elon would later become a Knesset member in 1996. This prominent
Jewish-settlement activist and leader of the right-wing group Moledet held a
press conference and charged that Raviv had effectively manufactured the
wild far Right. He was, in Elon's words, an "agent provocateur," carrying
out a mission by the government to discredit the right-wing opposition,
including, by association, the Likud. "I would venture to say," Elon added,
"that the whole organization [Eyal] and its activities, including the poster
depicting Rabin in an SS uniform, were all paid for by the Shin Bet." (The
Shin Bet later denied the charge.) Elon went on to say, "There is a
reasonable suspicion that [Raviv's activity] was okayed by the legal
authority."
Elon, who had met Raviv and other Eyal activists on a number of occasions at
demonstrations and elsewhere, said that Raviv had been Yigal's constant
companion in the months prior to the killing. How could Raviv have been so
close to Yigal and not known, as Raviv later claimed in court, of the
assassination plan? And how could a Shin Bet informer have been so closely
involved in all of these activities without the knowledge of the Shin Bet,
which is supervised by the Office of the Prime Minister?
The two weeks after the assassination were the most horrible period of my
life. Now, suddenly, came the revelation of a Shin Bet connection to Yigal's
"pal" Raviv.
The Likud, which had been on the defensive since the assassination, came to
life in the wake of the Raviv-Shin Bet accusations. At a meeting of the
Likud executive bureau, Netanyahu called for "a full, thorough, and
exhaustive investigation into the Raviv affair. There must be no coverup.
Even if only a fraction of the provocative activities attributed to Raviv
are true, they constitute a grave danger to democracy. There must be an
investigation, and it must come now, with no delays and no excuses."
And then there were more revelations. Israel's leading daily, Yediot
Ahronot, reported that in testimony before a closed session of the Shamgar
Commission, several young women at a religious seminary said that they had
recognized Yigal and Raviv from a Sabbath retreat at Ma'aleh Yisrael the
previous summer. The girls told their teacher, Sarah Eliash, that Raviv had
denounced several Rabin government officials as "traitors." During several
marathon ideological discussions that weekend, Raviv had attempted to goad
Yigal into killing Rabin, ridiculing his "cowardice" for not being willing
to assassinate a "traitor." In court, Raviv said he had heard Yigal talk
about the "need to kill Rabin" but claimed he hadn't taken him seriously.
The girls testified: "We used to see Raviv and Amir on Saturdays during last
summer. These gatherings were arranged by Yigal. We would sit out on a
hilltop there. There were no demonstrations or any violence. They were
basically study groups. We met, like, several times.... Raviv was real
macho. He kept saying to Yigal, 'You keep talking about killing Rabin. Why
don't you do it? Are you frightened? You say you want to do it. Show us that
you're a man! Show us what you are made of"' The girls testified that Yigal
didn't react at all to Raviv's pressure and just changed the subject of
discussion.
Suddenly, information about Raviv was spilling forth. Raviv's former
roommate in Kiryat Arba, and former member of Eyal, Eran Ojalbo, testified
as a witness for the defense at Yigal's trial. He revealed that Raviv had
said that Rabin was a rodef-the Hebrew term for someone who endangers others
and therefore should be killed. At a weekend retreat organized by Yigal in
the settlement of Ma'alch Yisrael, press reports say, Raviv had marked
several different government leaders for death.
Ojalbo also testified that ten minutes after news of the assassination had
been announced, Raviv called him and asked how he was and if he knew who had
shot Rabin. Ojalbo responded that in television reports he had seen that it
was "a short Yemenite guy." Raviv asked if it was Yigal. "I looked again,"
Ojalbo testified, "and said that it was Yigal."
Ojalbo also maintained that Raviv had verbally pressured Yigal to attempt an
assassination of Rabin. "Raviv told Yigal and others, time and time again,
that there was a din-rodef [judgment] on Yitzhak Rabin. He said, 'Rabin
should die,' and whoever killed him was a righteous person.... Raviv had a
powerful influence on Yigal. He continuously emphasized to him and other
students that whoever implemented the din-rodef against Rabin was carrying
out a holy mission."
Israel television's Chen appeared before the Shamgar Commission and related
the details of Raviv's involvement with the SS handouts. Raviv's job was to
discredit the Right, Chen said, and what could be more effective than giving
the public the idea that the entire opposition considered Rabin to be a
Nazi?
The next Raviv revelation came from the Jerusalem Post investigative
reporter Steve Rodan. He reported that "Israel Broadcasting Authority
spokesman [Ayala Cohen] said the first report of the Rabin shooting was
broadcast at 9:48 P.M. Channel 1 began broadcasting live at 10:15, and 15
minutes later, the alleged assassin was identified as a 25-year-old student
from Herzliyya."
But Rodan also wrote that Raviv had arrived at the Tel Aviv rally 15 minutes
before Rabin's murder. When the first rumors of the shooting swept through
the crowd, at 9:50 P.M., Rodan reported, "Immediately Raviv pulled out his
mobile telephone and spoke to an unidentified person. 'He called somebody,'
one of the witnesses said. 'He asked whether they shot Rabin.' Then Raviv
asked, 'Was he hurt?'.... When he finished [the conversation] he shouted,
'It was Yigal. Don't you know Yigal? He was at the Orient House
demonstrations [Eyal's protests at PLO headquarters in Jerusalem].' Raviv
then made his way toward nearby Ichilov Hospital and then disappeared."
"Those around him could not understand how Raviv knew the identity of the
assassin before anyone else," Rodan reported.
As the accusations about Raviv mounted, the opposition Tsomet party
petitioned the High Court of Justice to prevent Attorney General Ben-Yair
from attending further Shamgar Commission hearings. The petition asked that,
at a minimum, Ben-Yair be prohibited from questioning witnesses, including
Shin Bet agents and confidential informants, whose activities he might have
authorized. The petition also argued that since Ben-Yair might himself be
called to testify, it was improper for him to become familiar with others'
testimony.
Instead of ruling on the merits of the petition, the High Court offered a
compromise proposal under which Tsomet would withdraw its petition in
exchange for a promise that Ben-Yair would absent himself if a conflict of
interest arose. But it was a disappointing action by the Court, and it did
little to restore the image of the commission. The growing public perception
was that Ben-Yair was sitting in on the commission hearings to conduct
damage control for the government in the wake of the Raviv-Shin Bet
revelations.
On December 14, Raviv himself appeared before the Shamgar Commission. After
completing his secret testimony, he was whisked away in a government car and
vanished from public view.
Following Raviv's testimony, the commission issued warning letters to six
Shin Bet officials, including Karmi Gillon. The letters cautioned the
officials that they might face criminal liability as a result of their
involvement with the events surrounding Raviv and the Rabin murder. Gillon
and several other Shin Bet agents were called back for additional testimony,
in light of Raviv's statements to the commission.
On January 8, 1996, Karmi Gillon resigned. The Israeli media concluded that
had he not stepped down voluntarily, the Shamgar Commission would have
insisted on his removal. The man who had been championed as an expert on
Jewish extremism had failed to examine and follow up on information that he
had received regarding a possible attack on the prime minister by Jewish
extremists. But what was widely perceived as Gillon's negligence explained
only a fraction of the events that led to the assassination. Why hadn't the
Shin Bet ordered Raviv to cease his provocations? Why had it not detained or
at least questioned Yigal before he acted? Why the strange restraint in the
face of a threat to the prime minister?
The Jerusalem Post reported: "Yigal told investigators that he acted alone,
did not belong to an extremist organization, and had 'received instructions
from God to kill Prime Minister Rabin.'" Yigal also reiterated in court that
he acted alone. I believe he did so in order not to implicate others.
On March 28, 1996, the Shamgar Commission released its report. Of the 332
pages, 118 were declared classified. The unclassified parts blamed Gillon
for the failures of the Shin Bet on the night of the murder but did not find
him or any other agents criminally negligent. According to the Jerusalem
Post, the unclassified sections contained only a few scattered references to
the relationship between the running of agents and the Shin Bet. The report
depicted the assassination as a failure by the agents protecting Rabin to
organize themselves effectively. In one of its least believable conclusions,
the Shamgar report claimed that Gillon-the expert on right-wing Jewish
extremism-"did not conduct even one substantive, relevant, thorough, and
comprehensive discussion with all the security and intelligence-gathering
bodies to review methods." This was after two senior Shin Bet officers told
the commission that they had gathered intelligence reports that right-wing
groups could be a threat to both Jews and Arabs.
Equally bizarre was the commission's assertion that in order to "safeguard"
the Shin Bet's operational methods, testimony by or about Raviv and his role
had to be placed in a classified appendix to the report. In Chapter 5 of the
commission's report is a section entitled "The Avishai Raviv Episode." The
page is blank except for the cryptic note that "the details of this subject
will be discussed in the secret appendix."
A section entitled "The Operation of Agents" states: "The body that operates
an informer must keep tight control of him and not allow him to initiate
actions at his will ... and to prevent the carrying out of provocations that
in the end might have a boomerang effect." Could they have been referring to
Raviv?
The official investigation of Raviv's relationship with Yigal remains
shrouded in secrecy. Labor, of course, wanted no further probing into a
potentially explosive scandal. Ironically, Likud, having forced national
elections in two months, preferred to put the issue to rest.
The idea of using an agent provocateur was not originated by the Shin Bet.
The secret police in czarist Russia created fake anarchist cells in order to
attract genuine anarchist militants whom they would arrest and execute. When
the Soviets came to power, they employed the same tactic against their
political enemies. In the United States, the FBI created COINTELPRO (the
counterintelligence program) to recruit potential lawbreakers, help incite
them to break the law, then arrest them. By the late 1970s, the use of such
unscrupulous tactics had been exposed and widely condemned as improper
interference with citizens' rights. In Israel, unfortunately, dirty tricks
are still commonly used.
Neither the Shin Bet nor the political echelon that controls it, the Office
of the Prime Minister, seems to have appreciated the difference between a
legitimate informant and an agent provocateur.
I believe Raviv enjoyed the full backing and protection of the Shin Bet. He
assaulted a member of the Knesset and did not serve a day in jail. The
Office of the Prime Minister was contacted to help intervene in an attempt
to prevent his expulsion from Tel Aviv University. He emerged scot-free from
distributing racist literature, publicly praising Baruch Goldstein, holding
illegal summer militia camps, and allegedly distributing the Rabin-SS
poster. On many occasions, he allegedly urged the assassination of Rabin and
other Labor government officials and was never prosecuted. Raviv's
lawlessness had to have sent the message to potential extremists that
violence could be employed with impunity.
As I see it, Karmi Gillon and Avishai Raviv were the perfect match: Gillon,
the Shin Bet chief obsessed with the belief that right-wing Jewish terrorist
groups were on the loose; and Raviv, the alleged Shin Bet informer actively
ensuring that Gillon's dark prophesies came true. If Raviv was an informer,
did he alert Shin Bet agents that Yigal was now a potential assassin? I find
it inconceivable that he would have kept such information to himself. Yet
Yigal was never arrested. Never questioned. Never had his gun license
revoked. Never had his gun confiscated. Did Gillon know from Raviv about
Yigal's activities? If so, why didn't he order his agents to undertake any
action against Yigal? What were they waiting for?
Just minutes after Yigal had shot the prime minister, somebody called
reporters, identified himself as a spokesman for a right-wing organization,
and claimed, "This time we missed. Next time we won't." It seems astonishing
to me that the caller could have known that the shots were fired by a
right-wing Jew rather than an Arab. Why did he think that the attack had
failed?
Could the caller have been Raviv? I think he spent months inciting Yigal to
make the attempt. He may have suspected that it would take place that night.
I also think that he positioned himself at the rally, close enough to the
scene of the crime to know that the shots had been fired, enabling him to
make the immediate calls to the reporters. (One wonders what might emerge
from an investigation of the itemized bill of Raviv's cellular phone.)
Yet, for some reason, Raviv was sure that the attempt would fail. Why?
Perhaps somebody-either Raviv or someone else-was surreptitiously supposed
to have disabled Yigal's gun, either by removing the firing pin or by
replacing the bullets with blanks, before the shooting. It has been claimed
in court that it was Yigal who shouted, "Blanks! Blanks!" But Shin Bet
agents are trained to shout out "Blanks! Blanks!" in security drills. And I
believe that that cry, combined with the fact that an agent assured Mrs.
Rabin that the gun was not real, might mean that the Shin Bet were expecting
an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
The Shin Bet could have arrested Yigal at any time in the weeks before the
rally and charged him with plotting to kill Rabin. But the impact on the
public would be so much more dramatic if Shin Bet agents heroically foiled
an attempt on the prime minister's life. But something went terribly wrong.
The bullets were not blanks; the gun was not a toy.
My belief has some basis in past events. Foiling attempted crimes at the
last second is a well-established Shin Bet method. In April 1984, in a Shin
Bet operation, agents were tracking a group of settlement leaders who were
engaged in retaliatory attacks against Arab terrorists. They followed the
suspects as they planted explosives on several Arab buses in East Jerusalem.
After this, the suspects were allowed to travel back to their residences.
Only then did the Shin Bet raid their houses and conduct arrests. At the
time, it was reported that the Shin Bet delayed taking suspects into custody
until after the bombs were planted in order to sensationalize their own
heroic efforts. Faced with the shocking news story, then prime minister
Yitzhak Shamir had no choice but to let the security services arrest dozens
of other suspects and crack down on the settlement organizations.
More recently, there is the disturbing case of the Kahalani brothers, Eitan
and Yehoyada, from Kiryat Arba. The two men were convicted of plotting to
shoot an Arab in retaliation for the murder of a Jewish settler. The pair
had taken their loaded rifles to a road near the village of Kafr Batir,
where they spotted an Arab man on a bicycle. As the Arab approached their
truck, Eitan raised his rifle to fire, but the gun malfunctioned and Shin
Bet agents waiting in ambush rushed to arrest the two brothers. The charge
sheet is revealing. It contends that the murder was dramatically foiled "as
a result of the removal of the firing pin by GSS [Shin Bet] without prior
knowledge of the accused, [hence] no shot was fired."
The Kahalanis' attorney argued that a third individual involved in planning
the attack was a Shin Bet plant who had disabled the guns. The alleged
informant was arrested and then quickly released despite the charge that he
was involved in the conspiracy. Why did the Shin Bet wait until after Eitan
Kahalani had pulled the trigger to move in and make the arrest?
What Israel needs now is to heal the terrible wounds that the nation has
suffered as a result of the assassination and its aftermath. To ease the
malaise that is eating away at our society. To restore the public's
confidence in our government. And, above all, to preserve the principles
that are the basis of our democratic way of life.
My concern for the lives and the freedom of my two sons ensures that I will
not rest until the truth-about Avishai Raviv, the Shin Bet and my son
Yigal-is fully revealed.
(Guela Amir, A Mother's Defense, published in George Magazine, March 1997,
p. 138)
Next Appendix
Table of Contents
Home Page
Adam Littman
>APPENDIX B: George Magazine Article About Yitzhak Rabin's Murder
>
>Previous Appendix
>
>Table of Contents
>
>Home Page
>
>
>
>
>Background
>
>In March 1997, President Kennedy's son, John, Jr., ran a controversial
>article in his magazine, George. The article was written by Guela Amir,
>mother of Yigal Amir, the man who assassinated Israeli prime minister
>Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. In the article, Ms. Amir made it quite clear that her
>son did not act alone. She provided compelling evidence that Rabin's
>assassination was sponsored by the Israeli government, and that her son had
>been goaded into shooting the prime minister by an agent provocateur working
>for Shin Bet, Israel's equivalent of the FBI and Secret Service combined
>into one agency. The motive for the killing was because Rabin was going to
>give land back to the Palestinians as specified in the Oslo Accords. The
>following is Ms. Amir's article in its entirety:
ROFL. I am sure Lee Harvey Oswald's mother would have said the same thing. Her
son is a crazed assassin, and de-nile ain't just a river in Egypt.
>A Mother's Defense, by Guela Amir
>
>(Published in George Magazine, March 1997 edition, p. 138)
>As Rabin walked past, the young man drew a pistol, slipped into the crowd of
>towering security agents, and fired three rounds at the prime minister. Two
>of them hit Rabin's exposed back, and one shot wounded his bodyguard. As the
>shots rang out, someone at the scene shouted, "Blanks! Blanks!" as if to
>reassure the others that the bullets were not real. But the shots were not
>blanks. Rabin, mortally wounded, was rushed to nearby Ichilov Hospital.
>Curiously, as Leah Rabin was whisked away by car to Shin Bet headquarters,
>one of the agents assured the prime minister's wife that the gunman had
>actually used "a toy gun" and that her husband was fine. The reality was
>that Rabin lay dying in an emergency room.
If true, then so what? The job of the bodyguard at that time was to get her
away. The chances of that were better without worrying about whether she would
get hysterical, break down, or faint.
>Throughout the tense and painful period since the assassination, the answers
>to these troubling questions have begun to emerge, and they depict what I
>believe is an unsavory intrigue at the highest levels of government. This is
>the story of my search for the truth about the Rabin assassination.
This is so pathetic, and sad. Actually it is patheti-sad. The woman is
desperate to believe that her son didn't do it, so instead she posits a vast
government conspiracy.
>In the streets outside, hundreds of neighbors gathered at the edge of our
>yard. Reporters and television crews soon joined them. My youngest children
>were crying uncontrollably. The phone rang off the hook that night, and it
>has not stopped since.
And how comforting to cling to the delusion that it wasn't her own son who was
responsible for all this.
>After a while, a Shin Bet agent approached and asked Yigal who he was. He
>reportedly replied that he was one of the drivers. The agent apparently
>accepted the answer and walked away. At no point did anyone ask Yigal to
>produce identification or seriously challenge his presence near the cars.
Yeah, that falls under the category of "oops".
>Yigal struck up a conversation with some of the drivers and police officers
>who were mingling in the parking lot. Later they would admit that they had
>assumed he was either an undercover policeman or one of the entertainers'
>drivers. From his position in the parking lot, Yigal could clearly hear the
>singing of the performers.
Unsurprising. People tend to perceive what they expect.
<snip much conspiratorial speculation>
>The Jerusalem Post reported: "Yigal told investigators that he acted alone,
>did not belong to an extremist organization, and had 'received instructions
>from God to kill Prime Minister Rabin.'" Yigal also reiterated in court that
>he acted alone. I believe he did so in order not to implicate others.
Or maybe he just acted alone.
>Just minutes after Yigal had shot the prime minister, somebody called
>reporters, identified himself as a spokesman for a right-wing organization,
>and claimed, "This time we missed. Next time we won't." It seems astonishing
>to me that the caller could have known that the shots were fired by a
>right-wing Jew rather than an Arab. Why did he think that the attack had
>failed?
Or, here's a thought. Maybe the call came from someone who heard the security
guard yell "blanks" and wanted to capitalize on the situation.
Just _how many_ minutes? 2? 5? 20? 40?
>Yet, for some reason, Raviv was sure that the attempt would fail. Why?
>Perhaps somebody-either Raviv or someone else-was surreptitiously supposed
>to have disabled Yigal's gun, either by removing the firing pin or by
>replacing the bullets with blanks, before the shooting. It has been claimed
>in court that it was Yigal who shouted, "Blanks! Blanks!" But Shin Bet
>agents are trained to shout out "Blanks! Blanks!" in security drills. And I
>believe that that cry, combined with the fact that an agent assured Mrs.
>Rabin that the gun was not real, might mean that the Shin Bet were expecting
>an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
Ah, that explains the "blanks, blanks". Pavlovian response. Every other time
someone shot, you yelled "blanks!" so when it was for real you yell the same
thing you always yell.
>The Shin Bet could have arrested Yigal at any time in the weeks before the
>rally and charged him with plotting to kill Rabin. But the impact on the
>public would be so much more dramatic if Shin Bet agents heroically foiled
>an attempt on the prime minister's life. But something went terribly wrong.
>The bullets were not blanks; the gun was not a toy.
Yeah, "it was that nasty Shin Bet responsible for killing the PM, not my
little boy".
>Only then did the Shin Bet raid their houses and conduct arrests. At the
>time, it was reported that the Shin Bet delayed taking suspects into custody
>until after the bombs were planted in order to sensationalize their own
>heroic efforts. Faced with the shocking news story, then prime minister
Gee, or maybe because waiting until they actually had proof of a crime meant
prison, while arresting too soon meant they would get off?
>The Kahalanis' attorney argued that a third individual involved in planning
>the attack was a Shin Bet plant who had disabled the guns. The alleged
>informant was arrested and then quickly released despite the charge that he
>was involved in the conspiracy. Why did the Shin Bet wait until after Eitan
>Kahalani had pulled the trigger to move in and make the arrest?
Because you can't make a case for attempted murder when the lawyer says "he
would have changed his mind at the last minute"?
Once the trigger is pulled, it is a bit harder to deny that you intended to
shoot someone.
Isn't that what they call "an overt act"?
The article amounts to a lot of speculation and desperate attempts to avoid
her son being responsible.
--
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Adam Littman / ^ \
AL...@cornell.edu /\ / \ /\
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/ \( ) ( )/ \
\ /\ o /\ /
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"Four minutes twenty-two seconds, \/____\_/____\/
Baldric, you owe me a groat" \ \ /
--Blackadder \ / \ /
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