Rabin's killer interviewed (influenced by right, military)

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Rabin's killer interviewed (influenced by right, military)

Postby Jeff » Fri Oct 31, 2008 1:36 pm

Israeli TVs cancel airing interview with Rabin killer

Oct 31

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Two Israeli television channels cancelled plans to broadcast interviews on Friday night of the extremist Jew who assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, following a public uproar.

The broadcasts by privately owned Channel 2 and Channel 10 were to have coincided with Tuesday's anniversary of the 1995 assassination of Rabin by Yigal Amir, who aimed to torpedo the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians.

The Jewish state remains deeply divided over the Middle East peace process, which has made little progress since the collapse of the Oslo talks in 2000.

Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert welcomed the cancellation, saying the interviews had "nothing to do with freedom of expression.

"The broadcasting of the interviews would have hurt the feelings of a broad segment of the population," Olmert's office quoted him as saying.

"One can only regret the excessive and unnecessary attention given to the murderer instead of the murdered, Yitzhak Rabin."

Olmert had discussed the issue with the broadcasting authority that supervises the private channels, his office said.

Amir, 43, is serving a life sentence. He was able to speak on the phone to reporters from both channels without the prison service's knowledge in recent weeks.

A few excerpts were published on Friday morning.

Amir told Channel 10 his act was influenced by the rhetoric of right-wing politicians and generals, including former prime minister Ariel Sharon and former army chief of staff Rafael Eitan, whom he said made it clear the 1993 Oslo agreement "would lead to disaster."


Amir has never expressed any remorse for the killing.

"Yigal Amir ought to wither in prison for the rest of his life and he should under no condition be part of the mediatised public debate," Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who heads Rabin's centre-left Labour party, said in a statement.

The chairman of the right-wing National Religious Party Zevulun Orlev slammed the television stations for doing the interviews.

"I think that the interviews with the despicable murderer have broken the boycott and ostracising that exists, and ought to exist, on Yigal Amir," Orlev told public radio.

Most Israeli media were also critical of the controversial interviews.

"These interviews contribute nothing to the freedom of expression. Nothing. The legitimisation process of this wretched murderer has been going on for a long time," wrote Ben Dror Yemini, an editorialist for the mass-selling Maariv daily.

Sever Plotzcker, a senior correspondent for the Yediot Aharonot daily, said the initial decision to broadcast the interviews "is a contemptible journalistic act, which no stammering can excuse."

But Channel 10 anchor Ofer Shelah defended the decision to air the interview, before it was reversed.

"The Israeli society decided not to face the question and remain in a bubble saying that Yigal Amir does not exist," Shelah said.

Israeli Prison Service, meanwhile transferred Amir to a high-security prison in the south of the country and placed him in solitary detention on Friday after excerpts of the interviews were published, a spokesman said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081031/wl ... assin#full



Rabin's convicted lone gunman, Yigal Amir, had close ties to the extremist nationalist organization Eyal, and was groomed by its founder Avishai Raviv to kill Rabin. The Israeli paper Maariv reported November 24, 1995 that "according to Sarah Eliash, a schooteacher working at the Shomron Girls Seminary, some of her pupils heard Raviv encourage Amir to murder Rabin. Raviv told Amir, "Show us you're a man. Do it."

Uri Dan and Dennis Eisenberg elaborated on the girls testimony writing for The Jerusalem Post, which Barry Chamish quotes in his Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin?

Sarah Eliash had already appeared voluntarily before the commission and related how her pupils had run to see her on the night of the killing. In tears they said they knew Yigal Amir. They had met both Amir and Avishai Raviv.... 'We used to see Raviv and Amir on Saturdays during last summer,' they related.

These gatherings were arranged by Yigal... 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're made of.


Now, would it surprise you to know that Avishai Raviv, the founder of the extremist Eyal and the bug in the ear of Rabin's assassin, was also a Shabak (or "Shin Bet," Israel's covert internal security) agent, codenamed "Champagne" for, writes Chamish, "the bubbles of incitement he raised"?

From Marriv:

Amnon Abramovitch dropped a bombshell last night, announcing that Avishai Raviv was a Shabak agent codenamed "Champagne." Now we ask the question, why didn't he report Yigal Amir's plan to murder Rabin to his superiors? In conversations with security officials, the following picture emerged. Eyal was under close supervision of the Shabak. They supported it monetarily for the past two years. The Shabak knew the names of all Eyal members, including Yigal Amir.

http://rigint.blogspot.com/2006/07/viol ... -away.html
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CHannel 10 news

Postby hava1 » Fri Oct 31, 2008 2:55 pm

Half an hour ago, channel 10 news announced the decision not to air the interview, BUT said that it will be decided finally by the board of directors later this month. Ofer shelah defends the decision also citing the interviews with famous american political assassins.

I was lucky to watch this afternoon news (before the decision) when excerpts were aired, interesting statements.
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Postby hava1 » Sun Nov 02, 2008 4:14 am

http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1033429.html







Air the Yigal Amir interview

By Haaretz Editorial

Tags: Yigal Amir, Yitzhak Rabin

Nobody benefits from the decision by the two commercial television channels to shelve a series of interviews with Yigal Amir, Yitzhak Rabin's murderer. Nobody apart from the assassin himself, who due to the hysteria surrounding the broadcast has garnered an aura of reverence and mystery reserved for larger-than-life figures.

It is very easy to understand and even identify with the many Israelis who do not wish to see or hear Yigal Amir. With three shots to Rabin's back he murdered the prime minister of Israel at a peace rally, in order to prevent the continuing reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians, and in the process undermined the democratic foundations of the state.

Yet there is a clear public interest in questioning the killer, and there is a real need to shed additional light on his motives and his sources of inspiration, on the people and groups that affected him and the public atmosphere that led him to his terrible deed. Thursday night's preview on Channel 10 contained enough new information to justify broadcasting the interview in full.
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Opponents of the broadcast fear a slippery slope: They fear that Amir will, in the eyes of the public, turn from being the murderer of a prime minister into just another talk-show celebrity whose reason for being in prison is forgotten by all. In fact, though, it is the sudden censorship of the broadcast that has built an image of a mysterious character who should be hidden from the public. As such, it is difficult to understand the concerns of those who oppose broadcasting the interview. Hasn't Israeli society emphatically stated its position against the assassination and the assassin? Isn't Israeli society strong enough to confront with his statements?

An interview with the press is not a prize or a medal of honor. The media in Israel and abroad often broadcast interviews with killers, terrorist leaders and the heads of crime organizations. Usually they provide snippets of information that are vital to understanding the sources of evil and painting a portrait of its perpetrators. Airing these stories is not tantamount to admiration for their murderous acts. This is exactly how the interview with Amir should be understood.

Of particular concern are the attempts at the highest level to intervene in the decision over the broadcasts. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appealed to the chairwoman of the Second Authority for Television and Radio, Nurit Dabush, to prevent the broadcast. Dabush, whose job is to represent the public interest in commercial broadcasting, should have immediately opposed this meddling and defended Channel 10's decision to air the tapes as planned. Debating censoring a broadcast for political reasons is not in line with her job description, and in fact is contradictory to it.

In shelving the interviews, new and pertinent information was kept hidden and the commercial networks lapsed in fulfilling their duty. The suddenness of the decision strengthens the rumors of a conspiracy and lends an element of romance to the figure of the murderer. It is not too late for the Second Authority to correct its mistakes in this affair. It must defend the journalistic decision to broadcast the interview, allow it to be aired this week and prevent crass attempts at intervention by politicians and shareholders in the professional considerations of the newsroom. There is a clear public interest in airing the Yigal Amir interviews. There is no less clear a danger in preventing its broadcast.
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Postby Gouda » Sun Nov 02, 2008 2:29 pm

Sunday, Nov. 2nd, 2008:

Israel spy chief fears Jewish extremist plot

AP Link

JERUSALEM – The head of Israel's internal security service said Sunday he is "very concerned" that Jewish extremists could assassinate an Israeli leader in an attempt to foil peace moves with the Palestinians.

There has been a recent increase in violence by hardline Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and this week, Israel marks the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli opponent of his negotiations.

"Just ahead of the anniversary of Rabin's murder, the Shin Bet sees in the group we're talking about on the extreme right a willingness to use firearms in order to halt diplomatic processes and harm political leaders," Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said. "The Shin Bet is very concerned about this."

Diskin spoke at the weekly meeting of the Israeli Cabinet, and his statement was released by another meeting participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the session was closed.

Opening the meeting, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned of growing lawlessness among West Bank settlers. Groups of settlers have clashed repeatedly with Israeli police, soldiers and Palestinians in the past week over the evacuation of an unauthorized outpost they set up in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Alongside law-abiding settlers, Olmert said, "there is also a significant group of people that has cast off all authority and behave in a way that threatens the correctness of the rule of law, not only in the area they live in, but in the overall atmosphere of the state of Israel, and that is unacceptable and we are not willing to live with it."

Olmert said the government would establish a special team entrusted with enforcing the law among settlers.

Rabin's assassination on Nov. 4, 1995, continues to reverberate.

On Friday, two Israeli TV stations pulled telephone interviews with his assassin, Yigal Amir, after they were roundly condemned for giving him exposure.

In excerpts of the interviews, Amir's first, he said he had been inspired to commit the assassination by criticism of Rabin's peace moves that he heard from ex-military politicians like Ariel Sharon, Israel's former prime minister. Sharon has been in a coma since suffering a stroke in January 2006.

Settlers and Palestinians clashed again in Hebron on Sunday when hundreds of Palestinians held a protest against the presence of Israeli troops and settlers in the city. The Palestinians scuffled with Israeli soldiers, and settlers pulled down three Palestinian flags hung by the protesters and burned one of them.
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Postby MinM » Sun Nov 02, 2008 3:19 pm

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 excerpted from Ms. Amir’s article:

A Mother’s Defense, by Guela Amir
(Published in George Magazine, March 1997 edition, p. 138)

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)
http://www.jfkmontreal.com/jfk_jr_&_rabin.htm
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Postby MinM » Sun Nov 15, 2009 12:30 am

The Raw Story | Clinton says Rabin killing torpedoed Mideast peace
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Former US president Bill Clinton on Saturday said he believes there would have been a comprehensive peace in the Middle East a decade ago if Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin not been assassinated.

"In the last 14 years, not a single week has gone by where I do not think of Yitzhak and miss him terribly," Clinton said ahead of the opening of a museum and centre in Tel Aviv dedicated to Rabin.

"Nor has a single week gone by when I have not reaffirmed my conviction that had he not lost his life on that terrible November night, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement for peace in the Middle East."

Rabin was shot dead on November 4, 1995 by a Jewish extremist opposed to a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Clinton's comments come as the peace process begun by Rabin, Clinton and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat lies in tatters amid so far fruitless efforts by US President Barack Obama to get both sides back to the negotiating table.

He urged Israelis and Palestinians to put aside the wrongs of the past for the good of the future, calling on them to learn from the "wisdom" of Rabin's life.

Rabin is revered as a national hero in Israel, both for his legendary career as army chief and for peace efforts in the 1990s that earned him a Nobel peace prize shared with Arafat and current Israeli President Shimon Peres.
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Re: Rabin's killer interviewed (influenced by right, militar

Postby MinM » Wed Jul 30, 2014 11:14 pm

A few years prior to discovering this message board I had already discovered the Rigint Blog.

Jeff wrote this piece 8-years ago today...
Jeff » Fri Oct 31, 2008 12:36 pm wrote:Monday, July 31, 2006
The Violent Bear It Away
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...And even for the Middle East, which has seen so many wars, this war is an odd one. Israel's actions appear counter-intuitive, even by its hard-right's own measure of "national security." Its self-immolation of any credible claim to a just cause virtually assures tragedy for itself and its people. Its goading Syria and Iran into a general war by turning Lebanon into a slaughterhouse means the Israeli state has become, itself, a suicide bomber; an engine of apocalypse. But for whom, and for what?

"[Israeli] Defense officials told the [Jerusalem] Post last week that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria." And Haaretz quotes Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah as saying on Saturday that the "Israelis are ready to halt the aggression because they are afraid of the unknown. The one pushing for the continuation of the aggression is the US administration." And then there are a pair of Mephistopholean characters named Cheney and Netanyahu.

It's often presumed that Israel leads American policy in the Middle East, and that's frequently been true, which is why this war is strikingly and disturbingly different. The United States is actually egging on Israel to press the attack regardless of the cost Israelis may be expected to bear for the fresh blood its armed forces shed. George Bush spoke arguably his most frightening and truthful words last Friday, when he admitted that it's not the White House intention to create "a sense of stability." It's by instability - by creating "failed states" in the Balkans, Central Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere - that End-Time criminals stand to gain the most. That may be little surprise to those of us who know the playbook, but our humanity still can't help but be shocked by their unbridled delight in the "opportunities" now presented by the "new Middle East."

In the mid-90s, there was talk of a different, new Middle East.

On the evening of November 4, 1995, in Tel Aviv's Kings of Israel Square, Yitzhak Rabin spoke these words:

There are enemies of peace who are trying to hurt us, in order to torpedo the peace process. I want to say bluntly, that we have found a partner for peace among the Palestinians as well: the PLO, which was an enemy, and has ceased to engage in terrorism. Without partners for peace, there can be no peace. We will demand that they do their part for peace, just as we will do our part for peace, in order to solve the most complicated, prolonged, and emotionally charged aspect of the Israeli-Arab conflict: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict...

http://rigint.blogspot.com/2006/07/viol ... -away.html
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Re: Rabin's killer interviewed (influenced by right, militar

Postby justdrew » Wed Jul 30, 2014 11:36 pm

waitaminute....

I swear I've read that Yigal Amir was walking around a free man today. That is not true. Am I confusing him with someone else? a temple mount shooter or someone? OR is there propaganda out there claiming Yigal was freed, etc...
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Re: Rabin's killer interviewed (influenced by right, militar

Postby 8bitagent » Thu Jul 31, 2014 5:49 am

justdrew » Wed Jul 30, 2014 10:36 pm wrote:waitaminute....

I swear I've read that Yigal Amir was walking around a free man today. That is not true. Am I confusing him with someone else? a temple mount shooter or someone? OR is there propaganda out there claiming Yigal was freed, etc...


I don't know, but I know John Hinckley Jr is pretty much a free man. Not sure you get to almost kill the president and permanently paralyze a ss agent and then be a free man without some heavy Bush family connections.
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Re: Rabin's killer interviewed (influenced by right, militar

Postby MinM » Tue Aug 05, 2014 8:56 am

8bitagent » Thu Jul 31, 2014 4:49 am wrote:
justdrew » Wed Jul 30, 2014 10:36 pm wrote:waitaminute....

I swear I've read that Yigal Amir was walking around a free man today. That is not true. Am I confusing him with someone else? a temple mount shooter or someone? OR is there propaganda out there claiming Yigal was freed, etc...


I don't know, but I know John Hinckley Jr is pretty much a free man. Not sure you get to almost kill the president and permanently paralyze a ss agent and then be a free man without some heavy Bush family connections.

Image The Washington Times @WashTimes · Reagan's would-be assassin to be granted unsupervised visits with his family. http://admin.washingtontimes.com/news/2 ... f/?preview

USA TODAY ‏@USATODAY: Where is he now? John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan and James Brady (AP photo): http://usat.ly/XAhKVH
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Re: Rabin's killer interviewed (influenced by right, militar

Postby MinM » Sun Jul 12, 2015 1:08 pm

@haaretzcom: Great mystery behind Yigal Amir film: Why did his wife fall in love with Rabin's shooter? http://htz.li/2TL
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Re: Rabin's killer interviewed (influenced by right, militar

Postby MinM » Sat May 13, 2017 10:03 pm

@haaretzcom May 12

For Rabin, a breakthrough with Syria could peel it away from #Iran, while cutting it off from its proxy, #Hezbollah
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