Why Rabin’s murder matters

Earlier this month, we marked Yitzchak Rabin’s 30th yahrzeit, which was followed two days later by the secular anniversary of his assassination. It deserved far more attention than it received, because what is happening today in Israel and throughout the region is directly tied to what happened on that dark November night 30 years ago.

Sociologists, political scientists, scholars, and others, for good reason, call the Rabin assassination the only successful assassination in world history, because it is the only one that accomplished its purpose.

The motive behind Rabin’s murder was multifaceted: to kill the peace process itself, which it did; to eventually put people in power who would work to fulfill the ultranationalists’ dream of a “Greater Israel,” which it also did; and to make that dream come true, which is only steps away from the finish line.

Rabin had to die because he was a true “rodef shalom,” a true “pursuer of peace,” as envisioned by Psalm 34. (There’s an irony there, as will be seen.) On both the left and the right, Rabin was seen as the only leader likely to stay the course until real peace was achieved — not just any peace — and the only leader the Israeli public would trust to do so.

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To understand all of this, we must answer this question: Who killed Yitzchak Rabin?

On the surface, the question seems inane, because we’ve known the answer from almost the moment the bullets left the killer’s gun.

Rabin was shot by a 25-year-old law student named Yigal Amir, who fired three bullets with a Beretta semi-automatic pistol. Two bullets fatally wounded Rabin. The third bullet wounded a security guard.

There is one huge problem with that, however: Yigal Amir doesn’t fit the profile of an assassin. He was intellectually above average. At Bar-Ilan University, he studied not only law but also computer science, and he pursued both while also enrolled in Bar-Ilan’s Ludwig and Erica Jesslca Institute for Advanced Torah Studies. And he excelled in all three difficult study paths.

Because of Israel’s compulsory military service, Amir served in the IDF before going to Bar-Ilan. Only he wasn’t just in the IDF. He was in the elite Golani Brigade, one of the IDF’s most decorated infantry units, and no one gets to wear its distinctive brown beret unless they are highly motivated, highly disciplined, and critical thinkers.

When I asked who killed Yitzchak Rabin, I was really asking who turned this extremely rational human being into an assassin.

Amir later defended his act on halachic grounds, and this is where the irony I mentioned earlier comes in. Amir was a profoundly observant young man who was convinced that killing Israel’s prime minister was what God’s law required, and specifically the din rodef, the body of law that deals with how we must act when confronted by a rodef, a “pursuer,” bent on doing something evil. As ridiculous as it sounds, the “evil” Rabin was pursuing was peace, which somehow meant that he was putting Jewish lives in danger.

Most likely, ultranationalist rabbis were the ones who put that idea into Amir’s head. Some were suspected of doing so in 1995, but none were ever charged.

Amir said he killed Rabin because the prime minister had signed the Oslo Accords two years earlier, in 1993, and was resolutely following its incremental approach to full implementation. Amir acted, he said, because by killing Rabin, he was saving Jewish lives.

This was a gross distortion of Jewish law and was widely condemned by leaders of all Jewish streams except those on the ultranationalist religious right, which was and continues to be home to the most radical extremist views, including halachic views.

Amir, in fact, testified at his trial that the halachic views that these extremist rabbis were circulating were what motivated him to kill Rabin, although he has repeatedly declined to name any of these rabbis.

The views of one rabbi almost certainly influenced Amir, because Amir asked that this rabbi be allowed to counsel him almost immediately after being placed under arrest.

This rabbi was well known in Israel, not just for his extremist views, but because those views leaned heavily in favor of violence.

Just a year and a half earlier, on Purim day in 1994, one of the rabbi’s own congregants, an American oleh named Baruch Goldstein, walked into the Muslim prayer section of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and opened fire, quickly killing 29 worshippers before someone killed him.

Goldstein’s rabbi, who would become Amir’s counselor, went over the top in praising this mass murderer, calling him “a holier martyr than all the holy martyrs of the Shoah.”

Multiple sources, then and even now, report that this rabbi at one point issued a formal responsum, a teshuvah, declaring Rabin to be “a traitor worthy of death.” He was careful in how he worded that, most likely because an ultranationalist colleague, Rabbi Ido Elba (yes, that is his name) was sentenced to two years in prison a year earlier for using language considered inciteful.

This rabbi also helped draft a letter to other rabbis, posing this question: “What is the proper sentence for this evil government and its prime minister?” The letter added that Rabin and his government would all be “accomplices to murder” if the Oslo process continued to move forward.

That rabbi’s views almost certainly influenced Amir. His views most definitely influence some of the most extreme actions taken by the current Netanyahu government, beginning with the disastrous attempt to overhaul the judiciary and exploding geometrically (and to some degree justifiably) after October 7th.

That’s because this rabbi is Dov Lior, long a leading light of the far-right branch of the religious Zionist camp, who takes great pride in being referred to as the “spiritual leader” of the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party. That is the party that is headed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Given Amir’s intellectual acumen, I doubt that he was an easy mark for whoever it was who turned him into a killer based on what even he had to see was questionable interpretations of Jewish law. There had to be some other influence, one that would convince Amir that the country was behind him — and there was, albeit perhaps too coincidentally and too concurrently.

From Oslo on, the political atmosphere in Israel became charged in the extreme by a hate-filled campaign led mainly by the secularist factions among the ultranationalists, and the disgraceful rabble-rousing behavior of one of the Knesset’s opposition parties, the Likud, and especially the incendiary words and actions of its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Killing Rabin was very much a part of that campaign. During the months leading up to his assassination, posters began appearing all over Israel. Some featured Rabin wearing Yasir Arafat’s keffiyeh. Others showed him wearing a Nazi SS uniform and some even pictured him looking like Adolf Hitler. The message that this poster sent was that Rabin was a traitor to the State of Israel and the Jewish people, and he wanted them all dead.

Posters, however, weren’t enough. In July 1995, a mock funeral was held on a street in Jerusalem. It featured a coffin and a hangman’s noose that were meant to represent a metaphorical or literal death wish for Rabin. There were also chants of “Death to Rabin” and “Rabin is a traitor.” Right-wing groups, together with the Likud, had organized it.

The mock funeral and the events surrounding it set off alarms at the Shin Bet. Carmi Gillon, the Shin Bet chief at the time, met with Netanyahu and warned him that Rabin’s life was in imminent danger. He pleaded with Bibi to tone it down before it was too late, but Bibi refused.

On October 5, 1995, just one month before Rabin was murdered, there was another huge anti-Rabin rally, this one held in Jerusalem’s Zion Square. It featured inflammatory rhetoric, including chants of “Death to Rabin,” and there were more of those images portraying him as a Nazi. Netanyahu, who delivered a fiery speech of his own at that rally, which at times became somewhat violent, claims that he never heard any of the chants nor saw any violence. Videos of the event and his speech make both statements a lie.

In June 1996, just seven months after Rabin’s murder, Bibi began his journey that eventually led to his becoming Israel’s longest serving prime minister.

We need to pray that he doesn’t also turn out to be Israel’s last prime minister.

On October 22, the Knesset held preliminary votes on two bills proposing the annexation of parts or virtually all of the West Bank. Both bills passed, one by a margin of one vote, 25 to 24, the other by the “overwhelming” vote of 32 to 9.

If these bills ever become law, it very likely would lead to a new Mideast war — and it’s one Israel is very likely to lose because President Trump has warned that Israel will no longer have his support. Translated, that means Israel would not be able to replenish its stock of weapons as they get used up.

Bibi insists he opposes both bills, which is another lie. If he were truly opposed to them, he wouldn’t have ordered Likud’s MKs to withhold their votes. Otherwise, they would be dead by now. One would have been defeated 55 to 25. The other would have gone down 40 to 32. Instead, on his orders, the bills are “frozen” in committee until Bibi decides what his real position is.

Let me be clear. No one told Yigal Amir to kill Yitzchak Rabin. The “authors” of that tragedy hoped that someone would get the message they were sending, and someone did. They had a long-range plan, and it has succeeded so far. There is just one more step needed to complete their plan. We here in the U.S., for the most part at least, ignored the 30th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination. Before it is too late, we dare not ignore its seismic ramifications.

Shammai Engelmayer is rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is www.shammai.org.