Exactly 24 years after Yitzchak Rabin’s assassination, the murder is threatening to polarize Israel once again. The subject flared up again last week when Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a highly respected academic and former IDF intelligence officer, spoke at a Likud event and called for renewed investigations into the murder.
“The man who murdered Rabin’s name has the initials Y.R. (not Yitzchak Rabin),” Dr. Kedar said in his speech. “The person who stood behind the operation is apparently a leading political figure who wanted to kill Yitzchak Rabin because he (Rabin) wanted to abandon the Oslo Accords.”
Dr. Kedar called “to delete the headlines and publicize the false and secret documentation that don’t add up to the theory that the right killed Rabin.”
He noted that Amir has been kept in solitary confinement, isolated from relatives and the media alike. “He is sitting in prison in solitary confinement! Why in solitary?…So that he won’t reveal the truth to anyone.”
Dr. Kedar’s statement seemed to bolster a separate claim concerning Ariel Sharon’s death that has been labeled a conspiracy theory. Since his statement, there has been much conjecture that the initials Y.R. refer to Yoram Rubin, Rabin’s personal bodyguard who was slightly injured in the event.
Yoram Rubin was purported to be the common factor linking Yitzchak Rabin’s murder and Ariel Sharon’s death. This claim was made by Barry Chamish, a Canadian-born Israeli writer and investigative reporter, who published Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin? In 1998. In the book, he claims that Rabin was not killed by a lone gunman. Chamish suggests that Rabin was shot three times—with the fatal wound being fired from the front after Rabin was whisked away from the scene of the shooting with his personal bodyguard in the car.
Chamish documented that Rabin’s motorcade took 22 minutes to arrive at the hospital, even though he had a highly experienced chauffeur, and the streets were cordoned off. The distance between the crime scene and the hospital is a five-minute walk.
In his personal writings, Chamish noted that Rubin was the connection between the two-ill-fated prime ministers.
Dec. 19 Prime Minister Sharon shares drinks with Shimon Peres in the Knesset. Within half an hour, Sharon is driven to hospital unconscious. It took him a day before he could even spell his own name.
He was brought into the hospital by his bodyguard, Yoram Rubin. As a good chunk of Israel knows today, it was the Peres-Rubin team that murdered Yitzhak Rabin. When Rubin was shown on television news accompanying Sharon’s stretcher, suspicions spread throughout the country.
For two days, Sharon remained in hospital where he underwent intensive tests. We may ask, how did they miss the blood clot that struck Sharon barely two weeks later?
The timing of Sharon’s latest stroke is uncanny. It occurred one day after he was implicated in an enormous scandal.
At the time of his stroke, Sharon was struggling with the aftermath of his controversial decision to destroy the Jewish communities in Gush Katif and pull out the IDF.
In a Hebrew language video made in 2010, Chamish notes the absurdity that the Prime Minister of Israel was brought to the hospital by car after having a stroke.
“Sharon was brought into the hospital entirely confused, barely able to speak, and two days later they released him,” Chamish said. “No leader in the world is treated like that. He was driven to the hospital in a car [by Rubin]. Sharon’s last words were probably, ‘Where is the helicopter?’”
Rubin was also criticized by Haggai Amir, Yigal Amir’s brother, for changing his testimony about the actual murder of Rabin.
“If there was really a free press in Israel they would have investigated [Rubin] because he is probably the key to solving what happened,” Amir wrote on his Facebook page in 2012.
A precedent for political assassination being carried out by a close confidante is clearly described in the Bible in a manner disturbingly similar to what is alleged to have taken place with both Rabin and Sharon.
When [Ehud] had finished presenting the tribute, he dismissed the people who had conveyed the tribute. But he himself returned from Pesilim, near Gilgal, and said, “Your Majesty, I have a secret message for you.” [Eglon] thereupon commanded, “Silence!” So all those in attendance left his presence; and when Ehud approached him, he was sitting alone in his cool upper chamber. Ehud said, “I have a message for you from Hashem”; whereupon he rose from his seat.Reaching with his left hand, Ehud drew the dagger from his right side and drove it into [Eglon’s] belly. Judges 3:18-21
Dr. Kedar immediately became the target of heavy criticism and the university suspended Dr. Kedar from representing it at overseas conferences. This is the first time an Israeli university has censured a professor for remarks made outside of the university. The support for Dr. Kedar was equally overwhelming with thousands of students signing a petition criticizing the university’s decision.
The murder was the result of political and religious polarization in Israel. Yigal Amir, a religious 25-year old law student at Bar-Ilan University was convicted of shooting and killing Rabin at a rally in the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv. Authorities claimed Amir was motivated by his opposition to the Oslo Accords and they cited an obscure religious law as his justification for killing another Jew.
Rabin’s decision to make an agreement with Yasser Arafat, the head of the terrorist Palestinian Liberation Organization, was controversial at the time and in the wake of continued Palestinian violence was quickly losing any popular support it might have had. Israel was gearing up for elections the next year and Rabin’s Labor Party was well-behind in the polls due to Rabin signing the Oslo Accords. Support for the Labor Party was consolidated after the assassination but opposition to the tragically misnamed “Peace Process” was so strong that Labor, under Shimon Peres, lost the elections seven months later.
Rabbi Yosef Dayan was strongly opposed to creating a Palestinian state inside of Israel and, under the direction of a council of rabbis, participated in reciting the Pulsa Di Nura, a Kabbalistic ceremony in which the destroying angels are invoked to block heavenly forgiveness of the subject’s sins. The group of rabbis met for the ceremony against then-Prime Minister Rabin less than one month before he was struck down. The rabbi declined to discuss the Pulsa Di Nura, merely emphasizing that it was the result of long and serious consideration by a group of respected rabbis.
“It is not the Jewish way to kill,” the rabbi noted. “But neither is it the Jewish way to reward murderers by giving away the Land of Israel that was entrusted to us by God.”
“Dr. Kedar is a recognized speaker of truth who was never criticized until he called for a renewed investigation into the murder of Rabin,” Rabbi Dayan told Breaking Israel News. “The overblown reaction shows that he touched a nerve and emphasizes the importance of what he said.”
After the murder of Rabin, Rabbi Dayan and a group of rabbis took it upon themselves to investigate the murder but found themselves stymied by the government’s refusal to answer basic questions.
“The government report claimed that Rabin was shot in the back as he exited his car,” Rabbi Dayan said. “This conflicts with the autopsy report, or at least one version since there are several versions that are contradictory. If he were shot in the back, his jacket would clearly show this. The government has refused to publish photos of his jacket.”
The rabbi noted that a sheet of paper with the lyrics of “Song of Peace” Rabin had prepared to read at his speech was produced, stained with blood. The image of the lyrics became a symbol for the murder as part of the call to continue in the Oslo Process.
“The paper was in his front pocket,” Rabbi Dayan said. “If Rabin was shot in the back, how did the paper get soaked with blood? The pathologists said the bullets remained in the body. These are simple questions. It should not be forbidden to ask.”
“You don’t need to be a pathologist or police detective to see that there are holes in the official story,” Rabbi Dayan said. “Of course, real conclusions can only be made after a proper investigation. But that is precisely what Dr. Kedar called for and precisely what the powers-that-be are saying is forbidden. If the government really did a proper investigation then it should not be forbidden to ask questions. They should have the answers already.”
“Dr. Kedar is merely asking for the truth about Rabin’s murder,” Rabbi Dayan said. “The university and the government should also want this. It is inconceivable that they would object so strongly to a call for answers to basic questions.”
In fact, many from outside the government have asked questions for which the official investigation has no answers.
“Perhaps the worst outcome of the murder was the hatred among the Jews that it left in its wake,” Rabbi Dayan said. “Religious Jews were seen as fanatics and accomplices to murder by the secular. I know religious Jews who removed their kippah so as not to be targeted by this hatred. This is the first time in history that Torah was seen as a tool for death. It was a lie but this blood libel continues to this day in the anti-Torah political arena.”
Shockingly, a television interview last week intended to set aside the conspiracy theories that resulted in these questions being justified. Israel’s Morning Show interviewed Nachum Shachaf, a physicist whose investigations have led him to question the government’s explanations. The panel also featured Dvir Kariv, a representative sent by the Shabak (Israel’s Secret Service) who claims that Yigal Amir was the assassin. Following Shachaf’s claims a video of the murder was manipulated, Kariv admitted that this was indeed the case.
In fact, this schism in Israeli society still exists and is still being politicized. “Incitement” a fictionalized film depicting Amir before the assassination was released on November 4, the 24th anniversary of the murder. The film was selected to represent Israel at the Oscars in the best foreign film category despite drawing criticism for its biased and questionable presentation of such an important historical event. Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Culture Minister Miri Regev criticized the film’s inaccurate claim that Rabin was branded a Nazi at a rally in support of yet-to-be Prime Minister Netanyahu. It was later revealed that the posters depicting Rabin in a Nazi uniform were produced by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, as a false flag to be used against the right-wing.
