Two nearly identical frames from the Ynet video, purporting to show the first and third shots from Yigal Amir, with mismatched "shot" sound effects -- apparently fired at the exact same moment!
Even though three shots are supposedly fired, they all supposedly occur inside the same freeze-frame
As Israelis mark the twelve year Jewish-calendar anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination with memorial services, a crude attempt at deception has been disseminated by Israel's most popular news publication in an apparent effort to distort and cover up what really happened on November 4, 1995.
Abetting what appears to be a deliberate attempt to re-edit history, ynet, the web site of Israel's leading newspaper Yediot Aharonot, has published an article with an embedded video clip (Check it out before it is removed!) in which, under the claim of supposed technological "enhancement" there is clear evidence of crude manipulation to add the appearance of one or more additional shots supposedly made by convicted assassin Yigal Amir.
The clip purports to show "Video of Rabin's murder as never seen before." Indeed it does, because it adds sound and light effects to the original video, evidently intending to explain away the medical fact, based on pathology reports, that Rabin was shot three times, not two, with the apparent killing shot coming from the front.
Even a cursory examination of the clip reveals a slipshod effort to manipulate the video, which is available in its entirety as broadcast weeks after the murder by Channel Two, and still archived on Google Video (and embedded below). (The real-time replay of the shooting as originally broadcast can be seen at about 8:20 into the video. There, too, the video is frozen in the crucial moment, the sound of two or three shots occur during the freeze, but only one muzzle-flash.)
The Kempler video from which the latest clip is excerpted is widely considered to be suspect. No one in the media, nor independent experts, have ever been given access to the unedited tape of Ronnie Kempler, an "amateur videographer" and Israeli "civil servant" whose role in the filming and in the remarkable focus on Yigal Amir before the shooting has been a subject of much discussion.
Nor has the Kempler video ever been shown in an uninterrupted stream. At the critical moment in the video, at the moment Rabin is shot, there is a freeze-frame, not continuous motion. In that video there are three shots heard during the freeze-frame but only one muzzle-flash is seen.
In the current "enhancement" of the clip, that freeze frame is actually replicated, with one additional instance of muzzle-flash and -- all without showing any slightest movement by either Amir, Rabin, or any of the surrounding people. There is no muzzle-flash shown for the supposed second shot, even though the flashes from supposed shots one and three are clear. The third supposed muzzle-flash image seems a crude piece of image manipulation, and the supposed third shot is actually heard before the third muzzle-flash is shown!
The only difference seems to be some distortion on the left side of the image which appears to be intentional. There is absolutely no indication of any forward movement that would be expected in the interval between three shots. The frame does not move for all three shots! Indeed, watching the video carefully, the people in the frame appear to move slightly backward (!) when the freeze frame (supposedly containing three shots!) ends and the slow-motion movement resumes. The time stamp on the lower right shows about two elapsed seconds between the two frames. Even if the slow-motion is taken into account, time could not have stood perfectly still!
YnetNews claims: "Twelve years after, new technology enables viewers to get a clear view of what transpired on November 4, 1995: The three bullets that changed history."
The emphasis on three bullets is significant. Eyewitnesses reported only one or two shots fired at the time, and ballistics experts questioned whether the weapon allegedly used by Amir was capable of issuing three shots in the required time. There were also, famously, reports of a Rabin bodyguard shouting "Srak! Srak!" ("Blanks! Blanks!") at the time.
But sure enough, three bullets were discovered during the autopsy, along with evidence that the fatal bullet was not fired from the back but from the front.
The facts have contributed to the belief by 28% of the Israeli population (and 46% of the religious Jewish public), according to a recent survey published in the Maariv daily (second in popularity to Yediot Aharonot), that Yigal Amir was not the murderer of Rabin.
A stream of books and articles have appeared claiming that Amir, his current claims to the contrary, was a patsy set up to shoot blanks while the real killing was done by factions within Rabin's own protection unit of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency.
Some have gone so far as to finger Rabin's long-time rival and second-in-command, current President Shimon Peres, who inherited Rabin's mantle after his murder, as being the man behind the plot.
While authorities have tried to dismiss claims of a conspiracy as the fantasies of lunatics, the accumlating facts and the continuing effort to distort the historical evidence will only add fuel to the fire of controversy and may succeed in finally reopening an investigation into the unanswered questions surrounding the assassination.
The crude video forgery begs the question of who is behind its dissemination? Yediot Aharonot is not a small-time blogger or an amateur in the evaluation and presentation of video. It has a reputation to maintain, and the crudeness of this fakery -- on so sensitive a subject as the Rabin assassination and on its memorial day -- would embarrass a high school video student. Therefore, the questions need to be asked: Who supplied this "enhancement"? How was the original prepared for publication? Who was involved in the editorial review process?
The Kempler video is a key piece of evidence in the Rabin murder, and it has been, since its revelation, in the custody of the government of Israel. It stands to reason, therefore, that any "enhancement" of the original video would have had to require the cooperation of elements within the current Israeli government. And what possible reason would the present government have for perpetuating the cover-up of the true circumstances of the murder? And why would Yediot Aharonot lend a hand to such an embarrassing distortion of the evidence?
The crudeness of the forgery undercuts the dramatic tone of its piece:
"Suddenly out of the darkness the image appeared. The door of the prime minister's car had already been opened. Rabin approached the back seat; the first shot was sounded, then another and another. " The only problem is that they all were sounded in the exact same video frame with only a crude additional muzzle-flash image added after, not before, it should have been seen.
"The Ynet piece concludes as follows: Yitzhak Rabin's last steps were captured by the lens of Ronny Kempler's camera. Now, thanks to new technology, for the first time viewers can see exactly what happened at the square on that night: The unbearable ease in which the prime minister was murdered from point-blank range."
Unfortunately, that is not at all what the video shows: it shows the unbearable ease with which the Israeli public -- at least the bare-majority that still believes the official government line about the "lone gunman Yigal Amir" -- can be duped.
President Peres, in his memorial statement, did not refer to Rabin's killer by name, instead calling him "the son of iniquity," saying: "He shot Yitzhak in the back and killed him. He shot the nation in the heart and traumatized it."
But if indeed Rabin was not shot in the back, certainly not three times by Amir, then the nation deserves at last to know who is the unnamed "son of inquity" who was really behind the murder?
President Peres, who after inheriting the Premiership in 1995 refused to let the Israeli police investigate the murder but instead allowed the Shin Bet to solely investigate its own failure, or worse, can now help alleviate that still-festering national trauma by allowing the case to be re-opened and the suppressed questions about the Shin Bet role, and his own, to be answered for that part of the public not satisfied by crude and childish video games.
Indeed, it may be that this latest crude effort to distort the historical record may offer a fresh and promising lead to identify and bring to justice at last those who have been sanctimoniously misleading the country for so many years, and getting away with murder.
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