Yitzhak Rabin

"WHO MURDERED YITZHAK RABIN?" Chapter One


copyright (c) 1998, 2006, by Mr. Barry Chamish
www.thebarrychamishwebsite.com


R&B Editor's Notes:


Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin?: The Root & Branch Information Services is serializing the book Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin?, by Mr. Barry Chamish, with permission of the author, to commemorate the upcoming eleventh anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin (November 4, 1995 -- November 4, 2006).


The Bible Says:

"How is the faithful city [Jerusalem] become a harlot. She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers. Your silver is become dross, your wine is mixed with water. Your princes are rebellious and companions of thieves; every one loves bribes, and follows after rewards; they judge not the fatherless, neither does the cause of the widow come to them.

Therefore, says the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: Ah, I will ease Me of My adversaries, and avenge Me of My enemies; and I will turn My hand upon you, and purge away your dross as with lye, and will take away all your allow; and I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counsellors as at the beginning; afterward you [Jerusalem] shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city. Zion shall be redeemed with justice, and they who return of her with righteousness.

But the destruction of the transgressors and the sinners shall be together, and they who forsake the Lord shall be consumed. For they shall be ashamed of the terebinths which you have desired, and you shall be confounded for the garden that you have chosen. For you shall be as a terebinth whose leaf fades, and as a garden that has no water. And the strong shall be as tow, and his work as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them".

[Yeshayahu/Isaiah 1:21-31]



YERUSHALIYIM, Israelite Tribal Territories of Judah and Benjamin, Kingdom of David and Solomon, United Israelite Kingdom of Judah and Joseph, Yom Revi'i, Day 19, Seventh Month ("Tishrei"), 5767 ("Wednes"-day, October 11, 2006), Root & Branch Information Services [mailto:rb@rb.org.il] [www.rb.org.il]:


It took almost two years for the American public to suspect a conspiracy was involved in the Kennedy assassination. It took less than two weeks before suspicions arose among many Israelis that Rabin was not murdered by a lone gunman.

The first to propose the possibility, on November 11 [1995], was Professor Michael Hersiger, a Tel Aviv University historian. He told the Israeli press, "There is no rational explanation for the Rabin assassination. There is no explaining the breakdown. In my opinion there was a conspiracy involving the Shabak. It turns out the murderer was in the Shabak when he went to Riga. He was given documents that permitted him to buy a gun. He was still connected to the Shabak at the time of the murder".

Hersiger's instincts were right but he believed the conspirators were from a Right wing rogue group in the Shabak. It wasn't long before suspicions switched to the Left. On the 16th of November [1995], a territorial leader and today Knesset Member Benny Elon called a press conference during which he announced, "There is a strong suspicion that Eyal and Avishai Raviv not only were connected loosely to the Shabak but worked directly for the Shabak. This group incited the murder. I insist that not only did the Shabak know about Eyal, it founded and funded the group".

The public reaction was basically, "Utter nonsense". Yet Elon turned out to be right on the money. How did he know ahead of everyone else?

Film director Merav Ktorza and her cameraman Alon Eilat interviewed Elon in January, 1996. Off camera he told them, "Yitzhak Shamir called me into his office a month before the assassination and told me, 'They're planning to do another Arlosorov on us. Last time they did it, we didn't get into power for fifty years. I want you to identify anyone you hear of threatening to murder Rabin and stop him'".

In 1933, a Left wing leader named Chaim Arlosorov was murdered in Tel Aviv and the Right wing Revisionists were blamed for it. This was Israel's first political murder and its repercussions were far stronger than those of the Rabin assassination, which saw the new Likud Revisionists assume power within a year.

Shamir was the former head of the Mossad's European desk and had extensive intelligence ties. He was informed of the impending [Rabin] assassination in October [1995]. Two witnesses heard Elon make this remarkable claim but he would not go on camera with it or any other statement. Shortly after his famous press conference and testimony to the Shamgar Commission, Elon stopped talking publicly about the assassination.

There are two theories about Elon's sudden shyness. Shmuel Cytryn, the Hebron resident who was jailed without charge for first identifying Raviv as a Shabak agent, has hinted that Elon played some role in the Raviv affair and he was covering his tracks at the press conference.

Ktorza and Eilat believe that pressure was applied on Elon using legal threats against his niece Margalit Har Shefi. Because of her acquaintanceship with Amir, she was charged as an accessory to the assassination. To back up their threats, the Shabak had Amir write a rambling, incriminating letter to Har Shefi from prison. The fear of his niece spending a decade in jail would surely have been enough to put a clamp down on Elon.

"Utter nonsense" turned into utter reality the next night [November 12, 1995] when journalist Amnon Abramovitch announced on national television that the leader of Eyal, Yigal Amir's good friend Avishai Raviv, was a Shabak agent code named "Champagne" for the bubbles of incitement he raised.

The Abramovitch announcement caused a national uproar. One example from the media reaction sums up the shock.

Ma'ariv wrote:


"Amnon Abramovitch dropped a bombshell last night, announcing that Avishai Raviv was a Shabak agent code named '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".


That same day, November 19, 1995, Yediot Ahronot reported details of a conspiracy that will not go away:


"There is a version of the Rabin assassination that includes a deep conspiracy within the Shabak. The Raviv affair is a cornerstone of the conspiracy plan. Yesterday, a story spread among the settlers that Amir was supposed to fire a blank bullet but he knew he was being set up so he replaced the blanks with real bullets. The story explains why after the shooting, the bodyguards shouted that 'the bullets were blanks'. The story sounds fantastic but the Shabak's silence is fueling it".


Without the "Champagne" leak, this book would likely not be written. Despite all the conflicting testimony at the Shamgar Commission, the book would have been closed on Yigal Amir and the conspiracy would have been a success. But Abramovitch's scoop established a direct sinister connection between the murderer and the people protecting the prime minister.

So who was responsible for the leak? There are two candidates who were deeply involved in the protection of Eyal but probably knew nothing of its plans to murder Rabin. They are then-Police Minister Moshe Shahal and then-Attorney General Michael Ben Yair.

Shahal was asked for his reaction to the Abramovitch announcement. He said simply, "Amnon Abramovitch is a very reliable journalist". In short, Shahal immediately verified the Champagne story. Not that Shahal didn't know the truth, as revealed in the Israeli press:


Ma'ariv, November 24, 1995

"The police issued numerous warrants against Avishai Raviv but he was never arrested. There was never a search of his home".


Kol Ha Ir, January, 1996

Nati Levy: "It occurs to me in retrospect that I was arrested on numerous occasions but Raviv, not once. There was a youth from Shiloh who was arrested for burning a car. He told the police that he did it on Raviv's orders. Raviv was held and released the same day".


Yediot Ahronot, May 12, 1995

"When they aren't involved in swearing-in ceremonies, Eyal members relax in a Kiryat Araba apartment near the home of Baruch Goldstein's family. The police have been unsuccessfully searching for the apartment for some time".


Everyone in the media knew about the apartment, as did everyone in Kiryat Arba. It was in the same building as the apartment of Baruch Goldstein, the alleged murderer of 29 Arabs in the Hebron massacre of March, 1994. The police left it alone because Raviv used it for surveillance.

Raviv was also immune to arrest for such minor crimes as arson and threatening to kill Jews and Arabs in televised swearing-in ceremonies. But police inaction was inexcusable in two well-publicized incidents:


Yerushalayim, November 10, 1995

"Eyal activists have been meeting with Hamas and Islamic Jihad members to plan joint operations".


This item was reported throughout the country, but Avishai Raviv was not arrested for treason, terrorism and cavorting with the enemy. Less explainable yet was the police reaction to Raviv taking responsibility, "credit" as he called it, for the murder of three Palestinians in the town of Halhoul.

On December 11, 1993, three Arabs were killed by men wearing Israeli army uniforms. Eyal called the media the next day claiming the slaughter was its work. But Moshe Shahal did not order the arrest of Eyal members; rather, according to Globes (December 13, 1993):


"Shahal told the cabinet that heightened action was being taken to find the killers and to withdraw the legal rights of the guilty organization".


Supposedly, Shahal knew that Eyal was behind the murder. In fact, Shahal knew that Eyal was not responsible, he knew they took responsibility to blacken the name of West Bank settlers and he said nothing. After a week of international condemnation of the settlers, the army arrested the real murderers, four Arabs from the town.

At that point, Shahal should have had Raviv arrested for issuing the false proclamation on behalf of Eyal. But Shahal did not because he was ordered not to interfere with this Shabak operation.

As was Attorney-General Michael Ben Yair who was so terrified of what could be revealed at the Shamgar Commission that Ben Yair sat in on every session on behalf of the government and later approved, along with Prime Minister Peres, the sections to be hidden from the public.

After the assassination, it emerged that two Left wing Knesset members had previously submitted complaints against Eyal to Ben Yair. On March 5, 1995, Dedi Tzuker asked Ben Yair to investigate Eyal after it distributed inciteful literature at a Jerusalem high school. And on September 24, 1995, Yael Dayan requested that Ben Yair open an investigation of Eyal in the wake of its televised vow to spill the blood of Jews and Arabs who stood in the way of their goals. He [Ben Yair] ignored both petitions, later explaining, "Those requests should have been submitted to the army or the Defence Minister", who happened to be Yitzhak Rabin.

Both Shahal and Ben Yair were, probably unwittingly, ordered to cover up Eyal's incitements. But when one incitement turned out to be the murder of Rabin, one of them [Shahal and Ben Yair] panicked and decided to place all the blame on the Shabak.

Which one?

According to Abramovitch, "I have a legal background so my source was a high ranking legal official". It sounds like the winner is Ben Yair...which hardly exonerates him or Shahal for supplying Eyal with immunity from arrest or prosecution, without which the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin would not have been possible.

However, Ben Yair opened a police complaint against the "leak", and as late as June of 1996, reporter Abramovich was summoned to give evidence.

The leak thus came from a "traitor" in Ben Yair or Shahal's offices. And because there are Israelis who know the truth and are willing to secretly part with it, this book could be written.


(To be continued...)



Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach from Modi'in,


Mr. Barry Chamish

www.thebarrychamishwebsite.com
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The blood of Yitzhak Rabin cries out for justice.

The Conservative Voice questions:

Did Shimon Peres get away with murder?

A growing number of Israelis are questioning the role Shimon Peres played in the "staged assassination" of Yitzhak Rabin. It certainly appears Shimon Peres came to power over Rabin's dead body. Israel must reopen the Rabin file and settle all doubts.