By Alan Perlman
November 4, 2005
It's been ten years since the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. On that fateful Saturday night, my wife and I were visiting our friends, Howie and Judy. Their son, who had been watching television upstairs, came running downstairs. "Abba (Father), Rosh HaMemshalah (the Prime minister) has been shot."
Stunned, we ran upstairs and watched as the broadcast alternated between one news clip showing police apprehending the shooter, and another news clip showing a blond eyewitness reassuring everyone "I saw the whole thing; Rosh HaMemshalah is okay." We watched those news clips replayed innumerable times as we waited for word on Rabin's condition. Then it came. The Health minister and the director of Ichilov hospital, where the mortally wounded Yitzhak Rabin was taken, announced that Rabin was dead.
I was in shock. I was not a fan of the Prime Minister. I had once been a supporter of the Oslo accords, back when my western logic told that if we gave the Palestinians land and removed their desperation, they would act responsibly. But at some point along the way, I could no longer deny that Oslo wasn't working. The Palestinians kept killing Jews, and the Prime Minister kept calling those victims "sacrifices for peace". This was not the peace I envisaged. In time, I became an ardent opponent of Oslo. Still, assassination was beyond the pale. Memories of the Kennedy assassination filled my mind. I was waiting to go home on a bus outside junior high school 185 in Queens, N.Y., when I heard the news. Then, as now, my entire world was shaken. Is nothing sacred, safe or unassailable? The true loss far went far beyond the loss of a leader. Things would never be the same.
The news clip of that reassuring woman suddenly disappeared from the screen. Who was she? What made her think Rosh HaMemshalah was okay? Newscasters never mentioned that clip again. It was as if it had never been broadcast.
I stayed home from work to watch (and record) Rabin's funeral. The mourning siren cut to the core like the blasts of the shofar, the ram's horn, on Rosh HaShanah. My most vivid visual memory of the funeral was of Eitan Haber, Rabin's assistant, taking out the song sheet that Rabin sang from minutes before the assassination. Rabin had attended a peace fest at Kikar Malchei Yisrael where he sang the "Song of Peace." Before descending the stage where the assassin awaited, Rabin folded the song sheet and placed it into his pocket. I cringed as Haber displayed for broadcast around the world this blood-soaked song sheet, now wrapped in plastic, with its single bullet hole clearly visible. I thought it a tacky, shameless display, and I all the more pitied the Rabin family which, with all they were suffering, were now compelled to gaze upon this bloodied song sheet.
It wasn't long before theories emerged that Yigal Amir did not kill Rabin, that during the shooting, someone shouted "srak, srak" (they're blanks, they're blanks). But earth shaking events, especially assassinations, are always magnets for conspiracy theories. Two months after the assassination, a bombshell of sorts hit the Israeli public. Someone happened to video tape the assassination from a rooftop, and the tape was broadcast on Israeli television. There it was, in black and white, Yigal Amir shooting Yitzhak Rabin. So much for conspiracy theories; the murder was caught on tape.
Following the broadcast, my friend, Howie, who is also our family physician, called me.
"Did you see the assassination tape?"
"Yeah."
"Amir didn't do it!"
"What? It was clear as day."
"Rabin's spine was shattered. He could not have just stood there. He would have been thrown forward and then crumpled into a heap."
I had to digest this. This was not a conspiracy theorist. This was my doctor giving me his medical opinion. I began looking at the evidence provided by the conspiracy theorists, chief amongst them, Barry Chamish. It was a rude awakening. The deeper I looked, the more problems I saw with the official account and announcements made long before anyone knew that the assassination was caught on tape.
Ridicule is the weapon of choice for those who seek to avoid issues and problems. Using ridicule, you simply dismiss, rather than confront, the person or idea. And so it was with the incongruities and anomalies surrounding the Rabin assassination. They were merely dismissed as conspiracy theory nonsense. In the Israeli press, there was a virtual, total blackout on what the conspiracy theorists had to say. Knesset members pressured Israel's main book distributor to ban Chamish's book "Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin." The distributor did not relent until threatened with a boycott. Attempts were made to prevent Chamish from speaking. In the few cases in which Chamish was given new coverage, it was to paint him as a crackpot. Chamish, of course, is not the issue. The facts regarding the assassination are the issue. Yet, not once in those ten years did a major Israeli newspaper present the public with most significant questions. It was all about ridicule.
The first major discrepancy emerged with the announcement of Rabin's death. The Health minister and the director of the hospital jointly announced that Rabin had suffered a wound to the chest, and a shattered spinal cord. The death certificate filled in by a surgeon who operated on Rabin further clarified that the chest wound came from Rabin being shot from the front. Furthermore, according to the Israeli police's Materials and Fibers Laboratory, Rabin had been shot from point blank range (that is, the revolver touched his clothing).
Anomaly: According to the above official documents and testimony, Rabin was shot from the front, at point blank range, and his spine was shattered. Yet the video clearly showed Amir never got to point blank range and shot only from the back. Furthermore, the video showed that Rabin didn't collapse, but instead remained standing after Amir fired, an impossibility (as noted by my doctor, Howie) if Rabin's spine was shattered. And still further, there was no blood at Kikar Malchei Yisrael, where Amir fired the gun, an impossibility given Rabin's wounds.
For most Israeli's, the video only confirmed that Amir murdered Rabin. For those looking more deeply and critically, the video confirmed that Amir could not have murdered Rabin. He had to have shot blanks. This would certainly explain the account of that eyewitness who reassured us that Rabin was okay.
But it leads into the obvious question. If Amir didn't shoot Rabin, who did?
By process of elimination, if Rabin wasn't shot at the site of the peace fest, but he arrived mortally wounded at Ichilov hospital, he had to have been shot on the way to the hospital. Could this be? Before looking at the evidence and anomalies, it is necessary to note that just as the President of the United States is guarded by the Secret Service, the Prime Minister is guarded by the Israel's famed internal security services, the Shin Bet (or Shabak, as it is often called).
Anomaly: As already mentioned, there was no blood at Kikar Malchei Yisrael but lots of blood in the car that brought Rabin to the hospital (Rabin required 21 units of blood). Clearly, Rabin began bleeding in the car.
Anomaly: The video showed an ambulance at the ready behind Rabin's car, but the trained Shabak agents chose to put Rabin into his car instead of the ambulance. And no medically trained ambulance attendants accompanied Rabin to the hospital. Why?
Anomaly: The distance from Kikar Malchei Yisrael to the hospital is approximately 600 meters (or yards) straight ahead ? less than a two minute drive. The Shabak agents took over 20 minutes to get Rabin to the hospital. The driver later said he got lost (this on a straight road with no turns). Yet, even if the driver did get lost, one might have expected him to radio for directions. But no, the driver chose to drive around for over twenty minutes with the mortally wounded Prime Minister in the car until he stumbled upon the hospital.
Anomaly: The agents did not radio the hospital that they were bringing in a severely wounded Prime Minister Rabin's arrival caught the hospital staff completely off guard.
The anomalies only make sense if Rabin was shot by a Shabak agent in his car. The shooting at point blank range, the lack of blood at the peace fest site but the enormous pool of blood in the car, the decision not to use the ambulance, and the twenty minute detour to the hospital; how else to ensure that Rabin was dead, or hopelessly wounded and unconscious before bringing him in?
But if this is the case, wouldn't a check of the agents' guns reveal the murder weapon?
Anomaly: Coincidentally, the gun of Rabin's bodyguard disappeared. The bodyguard recalled giving the gun to someone while in the hospital, but didn't remember to whom. As a result, the bodyguard's lost gun cannot be checked. Ah, such is life.
Of course, this leads to the next obvious question: Why would Shabak, or more specifically, a small cadre in Shabak, murder Rabin? Several suggestions have been put forward, and I find one in particular compelling. But to speculate about motive can only shift the focus away from what is knowable, so I will not speculate here. In fact, one does not need to know the motive to know that, based on the medical evidence and the video, Amir could not have shot Rabin, and that Rabin had to have been shot in his car.
I am not an agent or a front man for Barry Chamish, but there are many, many more anomalies, and Chamish details them in his book, "Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin?" and on his website at www.barrychamish.com. From his website, one can order his books and order a copy of the videoed assassination (with Chamish's commentary).
I will, however, cite one more anomaly ? one without great import, but an anomaly with special appeal to me simply because I hated Eitan Haber's tacky display of the bloodied song sheet. Anomaly: If Rabin folded his song sheet into quarters before he was shot (as Haber stated at the funeral), why did the displayed song sheet have only one bullet hole, instead of four uniformly placed bullet holes, one in each quadrant?
Sadly, the Israeli media and true Rabin devotees should be asking questions about the assassination and demanding the truth, but they do not. Many politicians on the Israeli Left profess their undying love for Rabin. Whether this love is real or not, one thing is clear: A Rabin assassination by a right-wing, religious Jew is ammunition too good to pass up, even if it means burying the truth. And for the last ten years, the Israeli Left has deftly wielded this assassination as a club against the Right, charging them with all manner of incitement and planned violence. It was most recently used in a campaign to vilify and demonize the Right for opposing Sharon's recent uprooting of Jews from Gaza.
Rabin's supporters are not asking the questions; instead, the questions come from those who opposed Rabin and Oslo. True, there is self-interest here. Those against whom the assassination club is constantly wielded would like to see it nullified. Nevertheless many, including myself, also find assassination anathema and feel that Rabin deserved better. And who knows? Perhaps now, ten years after the Rabin assassination, people may start reexamining what really happened that tragic night. We can only hope.
Views expressed by the author do not
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