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Israel: Relgious Extremism & Murder in the Name of God
Via NY Transfer News Collective All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Tim Murphy (activ-l) - Feb 7, 2007
ISSUES of the American Council for Judaism - Spring 1999
http://www.againstbombing.com/Rabinmurder.htm
Murder in the Name of God: Where Religious Extremism Can Lead
by Allan C. Brownfeld
The assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel on November 4,
1995 by an ultra-Orthodox religious zealot, Yigal Amir, brought the largely
unknown and unreported world of Israels religious extremists under public
scrutiny.
The assassin was not a lone psychotic gunman but, instead, was a young man
nurtured within Israels far-right religious institutions. After the murder,
he was hailed as a hero by many, not only in Israel but among kindred
spirits in the United States.
In this well-researched book, which includes an exclusive interview with
Amir, authors Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman, present the full story of the
people whose words and deeds made Rabins assassination possible: the rabbis
who condemned Rabin by invoking an arcane talmudic ruling; the politicians
who joined in a sophisticated campaign of incitement against him; the
militant West Bank settlers for whom the Oslo peace agreement spelled
betrayal; and the security agents who saw what was coming but failed to
prevent it.
Michael Karpin is one of Israels leading journalists and served for many
years as editor in chief of Mabat, Israeli televisions prime-time news
broadcast. Ina Friedman, an American-born editor, journalist and translator
is a correspondent in Israel, where she has lived since 1968, for the Dutch
daily Trouw. In this book, they have provided us with more than the story of
an assassination. It is a powerful indictment of Israeli societys failure
to look at itself honestly and its unwillingness to bring its own worst
enemies to justice. For all of us, it is a lesson in where the dangerous
combination of religious fundamentalism, ultra-nationalism and
ethno-centrism can lead.
Eerie Ceremony
Two weeks before the assassination, Victor Cygielman, the correspondent of
the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, sat down at his computer in Tel
Aviv to sum up the developments of the past months. He began by describing
the eerie ceremony in which a small group of religious fanatics had stood
before Rabins house on the eve of Yom Kippur and intoned the mystical Pulsa
da-Nura, a kabbalistic curse of death. He wrote of the explicit "contract"
put out on Rabins life by rabbis who invoked the talmudic concept din
rodef, the sentence pronounced on a Jewish traitor. Cygielman cited the
handbill passed out at a mass demonstration in Jerusalem on October 5
showing Rabin in an SS uniform. "The stage was set for the murder of the
prime minister," he said. A technical problem caused a weeks delay in the
publication of Cygielmans piece, and it didnt appear until Thursday,
November 2. Two days later Yitzhak Rabin was dead.
Authors Karpin and Friedman note that assassin Yigal Amir "believed that
there is only one guideline for fixing the borders of the Land of Israel:
the Divine Promise made to the Patriarch Abraham, To your descendants I
give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river
Euphrates (Genesis 15:17). Today these borders embrace a large part of the
Middle East, from Egypt to Iraq... zealots read this passage as Gods
Will and Gods Will must be obeyed, whatever the cost. No mortal has the
right to settle for borders any narrower than these. Thus, negotiating a
peace settlement with Israels neighbors is unthinkable. After all, the
manifest destiny of the Jewish people has not been realized, say the
zealots, so what is the basis for making peace? The order of action must be
reversed: First the territorial conquests must be completed, so as to bring
the Divine Promise to fruition. Yet even after their territorial demands are
satisfied, the zealots doubt whether it will be possible to reconcile with
the Arabs. Esau hates Jacob, says the Talmud, and you cannot make peace
with those that hate you."
Hard Core Zealots
The hard core zealots are roughly divided into two groups, the authors point
out: vigilantes and ideologues, those who believe in direct action and those
who devote themselves to philosophizing. Among the vigilantes Amir holds in
high esteem is Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the physician from the settlement of
Kiryat Arba, adjoining Hebron, who gunned down twenty-nine Palestinians at
morning prayer in the cave of the Patriarchs on February 25, 1994. Among the
ideologues he especially admires is Noam Livnat of the Joseph Still Lives
yeshiva (Od Yosef Chai) in Nablus. "Gathered there each day are among the
most fanatic religious settlers in the West Bank," the authors write. So
rabid are the students in this yeshiva that at the beginning of 1996, Rabbi
Yoel Bin-Nun, himself a religious settler, warned his colleagues: "Theres a
potential for murder in the yeshiva... Do not accord it your protection."
The yeshivas patron, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg, repeatedly expressed a
doctrine of racism. He declared that, Jewish blood and gentile blood are
not the same." He defended the act of one of the yeshivas students who
opened indiscriminate fire on Arab laborers standing alongside a highway
near Tel Aviv in 1993, and he subsequently lauded Baruch Goldstein for
massacring Arabs in Hebron. He explains that he differentiates between the
murder of a gentile and that of a Jew because the Torah places a "light
prohibition" on the former and a "grave" one on the latter.
It was Baruch Goldsteins assault upon Arab worshipers in Hebron that
galvanized Yigal Amir: "The Hebron massacre was a milestone for Yigal Amir.
>From that morning he concentrated his efforts on achieving the spiritual
readiness that Goldstein had displayed. He too aspired to be an agent of
God, an emissary of his people."
Goldsteins Funeral
Amir told the authors that he traveled to Kiryat Arba to attend Goldsteins
funeral and meet the community in which he had lived, "I wanted first of all
to get to know them... So I went there and saw all the thousands who were
at the funeral. I saw the love they had for him, and I understood that this
is no simple matter. I spoke with the people and began to understand that
they were not simply fanatic extremists. They are people who are fighting
very hard for the nation, for whom values are very important... It began
after Goldstein. Thats when I had the idea that its necessary to take
Rabin down."
Amir came to know the zealots in Kiryat Arba and Hebron. He grew close to
Rabbi Moshe Levinger, a leader of the settler movement who had been
convicted of killing a Palestinian and who had pronounced Rabin responsible
for the Goldstein massacre. When the Oslo Agreement was signed in Washington
on September 13, 1993, Amir, watching the proceedings on television, thought
to himself, "If theres no choice, it will be necessary to take Rabin down."
For years, the authors show, the Israeli government turned a blind eye to
religious extremism, even when it led to violence. In the middle of 1984, a
number of covert cells dubbed the Jewish Underground were discovered.
Composed of 27 people, including prominent figures in Gush Emunim, the
settler movement, the Underground had planned to execute a number of
terrorist actions against Palestinians. The first of these operations
targeted the mayors of three West Bank cities. Bombs that exploded in their
booby-trapped cars severely maimed two of the mayors; one, Bassam Shaka of
Nablus, had both legs blown off. The second operation was a "raid" on the
campus of the Islamic University in Hebron, during which indiscriminate
gunfire resulted in the deaths of three Palestinian students. The third
operation, in which members of the Underground planted bombs on Arab buses
in Jerusalem, was thwarted as the devices were being set. Under
interrogation some of the terrorists confessed to the most ambitious plan of
all: a plot to blow up the Mosque of Omar (Dome of the Rock) on the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem, to clear the way for building the Third Temple.
"Fine Young Men"
Yitzhak Shamir lamented the excessive zeal of "these fine young men."
Knesset members from the Likud and the National Religious Party dissociated
themselves from the terrorists actions but formed a lobby to have them
pardoned. In return for expressing remorse, half the members of the
Underground were granted pardons by President Chaim Herzog. "The double
standard thus tacitly established applied not only to Jews and Arabs but to
Jews living on opposite sides of the Green Line, which divided Israel from
the territories," write the authors.
The ultra-Orthodox world from which Yigal Amir came, in which he was
educated and nurtured, has contempt for the idea of Israel as a secular
democratic state with equal rights for all of its citizens. Karpin and
Friedman report that the Orthodox view on the dichotomy between Israels
self-definition as both a Jewish and democratic state "has consistently been
that a Jewish state must, by definition, be ruled by Jewish religious law as
interpreted by rabbinical scholars. Israels secular founders had never even
entertained that idea. They established the state as a democracy governed by
civil law and undertook, in the Declaration of Independence, to ensure
complete equality of social and political rights to all inhabitants
irrespective of religion, race or sex and to guarantee freedom of
religion, conscience, language education and culture. But as a concession
to the religious parties, they agreed to a certain blurring of the formal
division between the authority of church and state. Thus in the early
1950s an arrangement was reached whereby matters affecting a citizens
personal status essentially meaning marriage, divorce and burial was
controlled exclusively by clerics. For Israels Jews this means they are
controlled by the Orthodox religious establishment, and over the years this
arrangement has played havoc with the civil rights of countless citizens."
Religious or Civil Law
During the past decade the division over which system of law religious or
civil should prevail has grown, with the religious right demanding that
democratic values be subordinated to Jewish law and the secular left
demanding that a bill of rights be legislated. On the right there are also
calls for an end to equal political rights for non-Jews. Since the signing
of the Oslo Agreement, some have demanded that any government decision
fateful to the countrys future should require a "Jewish majority" to be
ratified by the Knesset. The implication is that votes cast in the Knesset
by parties representing Israels Arab citizens should simply be
disqualified.
Professor Shlomo Ben-Ami, an historian and leading intellectual in Israels
Labor Party, describes the gravity of Israels cultural divide: "The ties
that hold Israel together as a united society have long been in a tragic
process of disintegration. What we have here is not a society but cells
inimical to one another in a state of potential civil war. Israel will not
be able to stand this way before an enemy or confront the difficult
challenge of peace."
When a Gallup Poll done by the Israeli newspaper Maariv on the second
anniversary of the murder of Yitzhak Rabin asked whether the country was
closer to unity or civil war, more than twice as many respondents, 56
percent compared with 21 percent, answered the latter. Four months later the
Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research asked Israelis to rate the issues
on which there is "a high chance of violence breaking out. Almost
four-fifths (79 percent) of the respondents cited relations between the
secular and the religious camps, with friction between left and right coming
in a close second (70 percent). Noting that the messianic strain in Israeli
life is growing increasingly militant, many see little room for compromise.
Hebrew University sociologist Moshe Lissak has gone so far as to
characterize the secular Jewish state established in 1948 as "largely a
fleeting episode."
Death A Legitimate Goal
The rhetoric of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox political groups preceding the
assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the authors declare, "made it clear that
Rabins death was a legitimate, even a religious goal."
Eyakim Haetzni, a 67 year old lawyer, founder of the Yesha Council, the
voice of the West Bank settler movement, a former Knesset member from the
defunct radical right Tehiya Party, was one of three former Knesset members
who signed an open letter in November 1993 calling upon soldiers and police
to defy orders to evacuate settlements and warning that relinquishing any
territory to the Palestinians would spark a civil war. In March 1995 he
again tried to spur the army to revolt by telling the head of the Israel
Defense Forces Central Command, during a heated meeting with settlers in
Hebron: "In Hitlers Germany there were officers who understood that their
government was leading the German people to oblivion, and they stood up and
threw down their insignia and paid for it with their lives. Here the
government is leading the people to oblivion."
HaEtzni also harped on the alleged parallel between Rabins government and
the collaborationist Vichy regime in France during World War II: "Those
loyal to the Greater Land of Israel have the right to declare a government
that gives up territory is an illegal one, just as De Gaulle declared the
Vichy Government illegal." He even drew a direct parallel between Rabin and
Vichy leader Marshal Henri-Philippe Pitain, saying: "We will treat (the
signing of the Oslo Agreement) as collaboration with the Nazis was treated
in occupied France... This is an act of treason, and its unavoidable
that the day will come when Rabin is tried for this act as Pitain was."
Vicious Crusade
The ultra-Orthodox weekly Hashavna ("The Week") was used by its publisher,
Asher Zuckerman, to wage a vicious crusade against Rabin. The magazine
regularly called the prime minister "a Kapo," "an anti-Semite," "ruthless,"
and "a pathological liar." The weekly, which is read by close to 20 percent
of the ultra-Orthodox community, published a symposium on the question of
whether Rabin deserved to die and the appropriate means of executing him. It
also described the prime minister as mentally ill and suffering from
alcoholism. "Senior figures," a lead article stated in March 1993, "report
signs of deterioration in the emotional condition of Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin."
Members of the Likud establishment expressed similar views. Hashavna
published an interview with Ariel Sharon, who spoke of the Oslo peace policy
as "graver than what Pitain did," adding, "Its hard to use the word
treason when speaking of Jews, but theres no substantive difference.
Theyre sitting with Arafat and planning how to deceive the citizens of
Israel." In March 1995, Zuckerman wrote of a talk he had with Likud Chairman
Benjamin Netanyahu. He quotes Netanyahu as saying: "Rabin charges that hes
called a terrible word murderer. But with all the unpleasantness (implied
by that term) he has no reason to complain. Whoever is aware of the fetters
he placed on soldiers hands have led directly to the murder of a large
number of Jews has difficulty refraining from use of the terrible word
murder."
By the critical summer of 1995 Hashavna went so far as to charge that Rabin
and Peres "are leading the state and its citizens to annihilation and must
be placed before a firing squad." In the issue published on Friday, November
3, 1995, the day before the assassination, Zuckerman (under the pen name A.
Barak) offered his readers the forecast that, "The day will come when the
Israeli public will bring Rabin and Peres into court with the alternatives
being the gallows or the insane asylum. This nefarious duo has either lost
its mind or is flagrantly treasonous."
Sanction To Murder
The authors show how a group of Orthodox rabbis gave religious sanction to
the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. These rabbis, both in Israel and abroad,
revived two obsolete precepts din rodef (the duty to kill a Jew who
imperils the life or property of another Jew) and din moser (the duty to
eliminate a Jew who intends to turn another Jew in to non-Jewish
authorities.)
By relinquishing rule over parts of the Land of Israel to the Palestinian
Authority, these rabbis argued, the head of the Israeli government had
become a moser. And by branding Rabin, they effectively declared open season
on his life. Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, an Orthodox rabbi critical of those who
embarked upon this enterprise, declared that, "Hundreds of people heard the
word rodef in connection with the late prime minister months before and
around the time of the murder. The fact that these discussions leaked out
and inspired a heated public debate in the religious community turned the
obsolete notions of rodef and moser into household words."
>From the beginning of 1995 onward, the popularization of the words rodef and
moser nourished the belief in religious circles that a consideration of
whether or not they should be applied to Rabin was legitimate. Orthodox
rabbis in Israel and the U.S. were consulting one another about whether
Rabin fell into the category of a rodef or a moser. In the U.S. hundreds of
Orthodox rabbis signed a statement declaring that he did.
Permissible To Kill
Two students of Rabbi Shmuel Dvir, a teacher in the Har Etzion Yeshiva in
Gush Etzion, subsequently reported that he told them it was definitely
permissible to kill Rabin under the provision of din rodef. A third
described Dvirs desire to execute the act personally. "If Rabin comes to
visit Gush Etzion, I myself will climb on a roof and shoot him with a
rifle," Dvir boasted.
It was not only obscure militant rabbis who engaged in such agitation, the
authors point out. They cite the case of Rabbi Nachum Rabinovich, one of the
most respected halachic authorities in the occupied territories. The
64-year-old Canadian-born scholar holds a doctorate in mathematics, has
served in rabbinical posts in Canada and the U.S., and headed the Orthodox
rabbinical seminary in London before immigrating to Israel. In an article
published in the Jerusalem Post in July 1993, two months before the signing
of the Oslo accord, Rabinovitch compared the position of the Rabin
Government with those of the Judenrate in Nazi-occupied Europe. He also
exploited the concept of moser, introducing it not as a direct charge
against Rabin but as a warning to his government against trying to force the
Israeli people into becoming collaborators in its designs. In a column
entitled "Generals, Jews and Justice," published in the Jerusalem Post in
December 1993, Rabinovitch quoted Maimonidess definition of a moser as "he
who delivers his fellow into the hands of gentiles to kill him or beat him;
and he who delivers his fellows property into the hands of goyim..." He
recommended that settlers plant explosive devices along the paths of their
communities to deter Israeli soldiers from entering them. He justified the
suggestion by comparing the Israeli Government to the Nazis.
Agitation in U.S.
Within Orthodox circles in the U.S. the same agitation against Yitzhak Rabin
followed the signing of the Oslo Agreement. "Soon after Oslo," the authors
write, "Rabins opponents in the American Jewish community began branding
him a traitor and a rodef; it was not long before they advanced to calling
him a Nazi. By the summer of 1995 the invective showered on the prime
minister and his government had become so savage that Israels consul
general in New York, Colette Avital, could restrain herself no longer.
Avital knew that right-wing and Orthodox Jews were providing the extremists
in Israel with inspiration and a great deal of money... She felt it was
her duty to warn the prime minister what was going on... Supporters of
peace in New York seemed unable to utter more than a murmur of protest as
Orthodox rabbis and right-wing radicals called for the disposal of the prime
minister of Israel. Avital was appalled."
The World Likud (an extension of the Israeli party) swamped Orthodox
synagogues in the U.S. with leaflets assailing the Israeli government. Rabbi
Mordechai Friedman, head of the Orthodox American Board of Rabbis, took up
the banner by charging in radio and t.v. interviews that, "Rabins democracy
is persecuting the settlers" and that, "The Israeli Army has been
transformed into the ultra radical left wing Rabin/Peres militia." Rabbi
Moshe Tendler, a professor at Yeshiva University and respected authority on
the halacha, informed the media that according to Jewish religious law
anyone perceived as a rodef should be killed.
On June 19, 1995, addressing a convention of the International Rabbinical
Coalition for Israel, an organization of Orthodox rabbis dedicated to saving
the occupied territories for Israel, Rabbi Abraham Hecht, head of the
Rabbinical Alliance of America, declared that surrendering any part of the
biblical Land of Israel is a violation of Jewish religious law and, thus,
assassinating Rabin, and all who assist him, is both permissible and
necessary. The authors note that, "Some of the rabbis supported Hecht and
actually signed a statement that in their view Rabin was a rodef. Others
were stunned by his pronouncement of such a dictum in public, visited his
Brooklyn office and implored him to retract the statement. But Hecht was
adamant. I do not represent myself but the Jewish law, he told them, and
the concession of territory is a grave crime in Judaism."
Extreme Action
Rabbi Hecht would not be silenced. In August 1995 he used the platform of
the Jewish Press to publish an open letter "to all the Rabbis in the U.S.A."
confirming that, "The Torah permits the most extreme action against those
who would harm fellow Jews." He also issued a declaration that the Israeli
officers sent to the U.S. to explain the Oslo peace plan "are not wanted
here and we must be prepared to expose them for what they are: enemies of
the Jewish state and the Jewish people." On October 9, 1995, New York
Magazine asked Hecht how he would feel if someone were to conclude from his
June statement that he was entitled to murder Rabin, Hecht replied: "I
wouldnt feel at all... Rabin is not a Jew any longer... All I said
was that according to Jewish law, any person... who willfully, consciously,
intentionally hands over human bodies or human property or the human wealth
of the Jewish people to an alien people is guilty of the sin for which the
penalty is death. And... it says very clearly, if a man kills him, he has
done a good deed."
After Yigal Amir acted upon the ultra-Orthodox agitation to remove Yitzhak
Rabin from the scene and thereby bring the peace process to an end, he was
hailed as a hero in many quarters. A resident of the ultra-Orthodox
stronghold of Bnei Brak stood before t.v. cameras and declared: "There is no
mourning here. Yitzhak Rabin was not one of us." In Tapuach and Yishar, two
West Bank settlements, pictures of Amir were hung on the walls at parties
celebrating the "miracle." When word of the assassination reached the large
West Bank settlement of Ariel, participants at a political assembly stood up
and applauded. In the Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea in Jerusalem, young men
embraced one another on hearing the news. In the Orthodox study group at
Bar-Ilan University, in which Amir had been a participant, students called
him "a saint."
Support For Amir
A question in the 1996 high school matriculation examination in citizenship
prompted many essays indicating support for Yigal Amir and his motives. Two
of the teachers grading these exams spoke out about the answers of students
from religious high schools and sought to publish them. But the Ministry of
Education and Culture, then headed by Minister Zevulun Hammer of the
National Religious Party, forbade them to do so. Bar-Ilan University
sociologist Nissan Rubin, himself of moderate political views, declared:
"Theres a feeling among the religious public that Rabins death was a
miracle. Citing ancient Jewish myths of miraculous rescue... Just as the
Jews were always saved from destruction at the last minute an allusion to
the parting of the Red Sea during the Exodus and to the 11th hour rescue of
the Jews from Persia from the wicked Haman, so now people are saying a
miracle has occurred."
The depth of Israels cultural divide may be seen in the fact that Yigal
Amir and those who embraced his act of murder are not a small, isolated
fringe, but a large segment of Israeli society. Hebrew University
sociologist Moshe Lissak states that, "Yigal Amir grew out of the
mainstream, not the margins. What is referred to as the ideological fringe
is actually very broad. Were speaking of a variety of groups social
networks some of which speak and write on a high level. They share a good
degree of common ground, and they live and act in contiguous circles. They
are not isolated or reclusive elements, and there is a big difference
between them and the Kahanist thugs."
Murderer Came From Among Us
Rabbi Yehudah Amital, the founder of Meimad, a small movement of politically
moderate religious nationalists, said that, "The murderer came from among
us, out of religious Zionism and Judaism, and we cannot say that our hands
have not shed this blood. Rather than be a tempering influence, many of our
rabbis have been a radicalizing one, creating a political dogma and a public
mood that made the murder possible. Political extremism has been dressed up
as religion. Not only did the Prime Ministers murderer come from among us,
but Baruch Goldstein, the murderer in the Cave of the Patriarchs, did too.
That the religious community brushed off that slaughter... shows that its
moral sensibility is flawed... The decline began when the rabbis chose to
turn a blind eye to the attacks on Arabs that eventually led to acts of
murder..."
Authors Karpin and Friedman report that, "Historians are likely to
characterize the post-Rabin period as a time of deep anxiety. There are many
indications that racist and separatist philosophies are gaining ground,
especially among... the national religious population. One particularly
troubling development is the recent waves of verbal assaults on the High
Court of Justice by religious circles... Knesset Member Aharon Cohen of
the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, which in the past decade has grown from a
marginal political force to a major power, characterized the courts
justices as foreign priests of modern primitive idolatry. Shass spiritual
mentor, former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, went a step further in
urging all Israelis to boycott secular courts which are not for Jews, and
agree to be judged only before rabbinical tribunals."
In the wake of the assassination, the authors argue, Israeli society refused
to properly confront the forces which brought it about. The commission
headed by Meir Shamgar to investigate Rabins murder "held back from
scrutinizing the factors responsible... In effect, the report reduced the
murder of the prime minister from a complex historical event to a simple
lapse in security arrangements... Justice Shamgar had taken a similarly
restrictive approach to circumstances two years earlier when he had chaired
the commission investigating Baruch Goldsteins massacre... In that
instance too the panel confined itself to a strict elucidation of the facts
and performance of the security personnel, rather than an examination of the
religious, social and political conditions that had fueled the attack."
Security Failure
Israeli security, the authors point out, is indeed a subject of legitimate
criticism. They write of its "failure to acknowledge the new circumstances
triggered by the Oslo Agreement: the possibility that the nationalist and
messianist indoctrination of Orthodox youth, for more than twenty years,
would lead at least some of them to reject the principle of democratic rule
and resort to the use of force."
Shabak, Israels security agency, concentrated on a potential threat to
Rabin from Arab extremists, not their Jewish counterparts. In fact, the
authors write, "Shabak misread the climate of violence. It did not know, for
example, that there was talk of murdering the prime minister at the Sabbath
conclaves organized for Bar-Ilan students by Yigal Amir. It was unaware that
rabbis had issued judgments of din moser and din rodef. It did not maintain
surveillance over most of the groups of zealots that were known to be
gathering in settlements and yeshivas... The media, no less than the
Shabak subscribed to the axiom that no Jew would go to the lengths of
murdering another Jew for political or ideological ends. The notion was too
grotesque to contemplate. Throughout the summer the media had routinely
covered the wave of right-wing demonstrations but barely noticed the
indictment against Rabin personally had reached intolerable proportions.
Most of the vitriolic statements were unearthed only after the assassination..."
Silence of Those In Authority
The silence of those in positions of authority in Israel about the gathering
storm of religious fanaticism preceding the assassination helped to create
the atmosphere in which such an event could occur. Similarly, the silence of
major Jewish organizations and prominent spokesmen in the United States in
the face of the promotion of hatred and violence on the part of those in the
Orthodox community who were willing to go to any lengths to bring the peace
process to a halt tells us a great deal about the lack of moral courage
which masquerades as leadership.
Much of the research for this important book was done in connection with the
documentary film "The Road To Rabin Square," which was the first attempt to
present an in-depth picture of the campaign of incitement that preceded the
assassination.
Discussing the achievement of authors Karpin and Friedman, the respected
Israeli author Amos Elon writes that, "Murder In The Name Of God does two
things: It offers an excellent account of the sinister cabal staged by
reckless politicians, bogus rabbis and other mystagogues on both sides of
the Atlantic that led to the religious murder of Yitzhak Rabin. At the
same time, Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman draw a frightening picture of a
sick society (and a deeply flawed political system) that allowed this cabal
to mature, and today sits by in equanimity as Israel is pushed back from the
brink of peace to the black hole of history."
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Israel: Relgious Extremism & Murder in the Name of God
Via NY Transfer News Collective All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Tim Murphy (activ-l) - Feb 7, 2007
ISSUES of the American Council for Judaism - Spring 1999
http://www.againstbombing.com/Rabinmurder.htm
Murder in the Name of God: Where Religious Extremism Can Lead
by Allan C. Brownfeld
The assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel on November 4,
1995 by an ultra-Orthodox religious zealot, Yigal Amir, brought the largely
unknown and unreported world of Israels religious extremists under public
scrutiny.
The assassin was not a lone psychotic gunman but, instead, was a young man
nurtured within Israels far-right religious institutions. After the murder,
he was hailed as a hero by many, not only in Israel but among kindred
spirits in the United States.
In this well-researched book, which includes an exclusive interview with
Amir, authors Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman, present the full story of the
people whose words and deeds made Rabins assassination possible: the rabbis
who condemned Rabin by invoking an arcane talmudic ruling; the politicians
who joined in a sophisticated campaign of incitement against him; the
militant West Bank settlers for whom the Oslo peace agreement spelled
betrayal; and the security agents who saw what was coming but failed to
prevent it.
Michael Karpin is one of Israels leading journalists and served for many
years as editor in chief of Mabat, Israeli televisions prime-time news
broadcast. Ina Friedman, an American-born editor, journalist and translator
is a correspondent in Israel, where she has lived since 1968, for the Dutch
daily Trouw. In this book, they have provided us with more than the story of
an assassination. It is a powerful indictment of Israeli societys failure
to look at itself honestly and its unwillingness to bring its own worst
enemies to justice. For all of us, it is a lesson in where the dangerous
combination of religious fundamentalism, ultra-nationalism and
ethno-centrism can lead.
Eerie Ceremony
Two weeks before the assassination, Victor Cygielman, the correspondent of
the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, sat down at his computer in Tel
Aviv to sum up the developments of the past months. He began by describing
the eerie ceremony in which a small group of religious fanatics had stood
before Rabins house on the eve of Yom Kippur and intoned the mystical Pulsa
da-Nura, a kabbalistic curse of death. He wrote of the explicit "contract"
put out on Rabins life by rabbis who invoked the talmudic concept din
rodef, the sentence pronounced on a Jewish traitor. Cygielman cited the
handbill passed out at a mass demonstration in Jerusalem on October 5
showing Rabin in an SS uniform. "The stage was set for the murder of the
prime minister," he said. A technical problem caused a weeks delay in the
publication of Cygielmans piece, and it didnt appear until Thursday,
November 2. Two days later Yitzhak Rabin was dead.
Authors Karpin and Friedman note that assassin Yigal Amir "believed that
there is only one guideline for fixing the borders of the Land of Israel:
the Divine Promise made to the Patriarch Abraham, To your descendants I
give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river
Euphrates (Genesis 15:17). Today these borders embrace a large part of the
Middle East, from Egypt to Iraq... zealots read this passage as Gods
Will and Gods Will must be obeyed, whatever the cost. No mortal has the
right to settle for borders any narrower than these. Thus, negotiating a
peace settlement with Israels neighbors is unthinkable. After all, the
manifest destiny of the Jewish people has not been realized, say the
zealots, so what is the basis for making peace? The order of action must be
reversed: First the territorial conquests must be completed, so as to bring
the Divine Promise to fruition. Yet even after their territorial demands are
satisfied, the zealots doubt whether it will be possible to reconcile with
the Arabs. Esau hates Jacob, says the Talmud, and you cannot make peace
with those that hate you."
Hard Core Zealots
The hard core zealots are roughly divided into two groups, the authors point
out: vigilantes and ideologues, those who believe in direct action and those
who devote themselves to philosophizing. Among the vigilantes Amir holds in
high esteem is Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the physician from the settlement of
Kiryat Arba, adjoining Hebron, who gunned down twenty-nine Palestinians at
morning prayer in the cave of the Patriarchs on February 25, 1994. Among the
ideologues he especially admires is Noam Livnat of the Joseph Still Lives
yeshiva (Od Yosef Chai) in Nablus. "Gathered there each day are among the
most fanatic religious settlers in the West Bank," the authors write. So
rabid are the students in this yeshiva that at the beginning of 1996, Rabbi
Yoel Bin-Nun, himself a religious settler, warned his colleagues: "Theres a
potential for murder in the yeshiva... Do not accord it your protection."
The yeshivas patron, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg, repeatedly expressed a
doctrine of racism. He declared that, Jewish blood and gentile blood are
not the same." He defended the act of one of the yeshivas students who
opened indiscriminate fire on Arab laborers standing alongside a highway
near Tel Aviv in 1993, and he subsequently lauded Baruch Goldstein for
massacring Arabs in Hebron. He explains that he differentiates between the
murder of a gentile and that of a Jew because the Torah places a "light
prohibition" on the former and a "grave" one on the latter.
It was Baruch Goldsteins assault upon Arab worshipers in Hebron that
galvanized Yigal Amir: "The Hebron massacre was a milestone for Yigal Amir.
>From that morning he concentrated his efforts on achieving the spiritual
readiness that Goldstein had displayed. He too aspired to be an agent of
God, an emissary of his people."
Goldsteins Funeral
Amir told the authors that he traveled to Kiryat Arba to attend Goldsteins
funeral and meet the community in which he had lived, "I wanted first of all
to get to know them... So I went there and saw all the thousands who were
at the funeral. I saw the love they had for him, and I understood that this
is no simple matter. I spoke with the people and began to understand that
they were not simply fanatic extremists. They are people who are fighting
very hard for the nation, for whom values are very important... It began
after Goldstein. Thats when I had the idea that its necessary to take
Rabin down."
Amir came to know the zealots in Kiryat Arba and Hebron. He grew close to
Rabbi Moshe Levinger, a leader of the settler movement who had been
convicted of killing a Palestinian and who had pronounced Rabin responsible
for the Goldstein massacre. When the Oslo Agreement was signed in Washington
on September 13, 1993, Amir, watching the proceedings on television, thought
to himself, "If theres no choice, it will be necessary to take Rabin down."
For years, the authors show, the Israeli government turned a blind eye to
religious extremism, even when it led to violence. In the middle of 1984, a
number of covert cells dubbed the Jewish Underground were discovered.
Composed of 27 people, including prominent figures in Gush Emunim, the
settler movement, the Underground had planned to execute a number of
terrorist actions against Palestinians. The first of these operations
targeted the mayors of three West Bank cities. Bombs that exploded in their
booby-trapped cars severely maimed two of the mayors; one, Bassam Shaka of
Nablus, had both legs blown off. The second operation was a "raid" on the
campus of the Islamic University in Hebron, during which indiscriminate
gunfire resulted in the deaths of three Palestinian students. The third
operation, in which members of the Underground planted bombs on Arab buses
in Jerusalem, was thwarted as the devices were being set. Under
interrogation some of the terrorists confessed to the most ambitious plan of
all: a plot to blow up the Mosque of Omar (Dome of the Rock) on the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem, to clear the way for building the Third Temple.
"Fine Young Men"
Yitzhak Shamir lamented the excessive zeal of "these fine young men."
Knesset members from the Likud and the National Religious Party dissociated
themselves from the terrorists actions but formed a lobby to have them
pardoned. In return for expressing remorse, half the members of the
Underground were granted pardons by President Chaim Herzog. "The double
standard thus tacitly established applied not only to Jews and Arabs but to
Jews living on opposite sides of the Green Line, which divided Israel from
the territories," write the authors.
The ultra-Orthodox world from which Yigal Amir came, in which he was
educated and nurtured, has contempt for the idea of Israel as a secular
democratic state with equal rights for all of its citizens. Karpin and
Friedman report that the Orthodox view on the dichotomy between Israels
self-definition as both a Jewish and democratic state "has consistently been
that a Jewish state must, by definition, be ruled by Jewish religious law as
interpreted by rabbinical scholars. Israels secular founders had never even
entertained that idea. They established the state as a democracy governed by
civil law and undertook, in the Declaration of Independence, to ensure
complete equality of social and political rights to all inhabitants
irrespective of religion, race or sex and to guarantee freedom of
religion, conscience, language education and culture. But as a concession
to the religious parties, they agreed to a certain blurring of the formal
division between the authority of church and state. Thus in the early
1950s an arrangement was reached whereby matters affecting a citizens
personal status essentially meaning marriage, divorce and burial was
controlled exclusively by clerics. For Israels Jews this means they are
controlled by the Orthodox religious establishment, and over the years this
arrangement has played havoc with the civil rights of countless citizens."
Religious or Civil Law
During the past decade the division over which system of law religious or
civil should prevail has grown, with the religious right demanding that
democratic values be subordinated to Jewish law and the secular left
demanding that a bill of rights be legislated. On the right there are also
calls for an end to equal political rights for non-Jews. Since the signing
of the Oslo Agreement, some have demanded that any government decision
fateful to the countrys future should require a "Jewish majority" to be
ratified by the Knesset. The implication is that votes cast in the Knesset
by parties representing Israels Arab citizens should simply be
disqualified.
Professor Shlomo Ben-Ami, an historian and leading intellectual in Israels
Labor Party, describes the gravity of Israels cultural divide: "The ties
that hold Israel together as a united society have long been in a tragic
process of disintegration. What we have here is not a society but cells
inimical to one another in a state of potential civil war. Israel will not
be able to stand this way before an enemy or confront the difficult
challenge of peace."
When a Gallup Poll done by the Israeli newspaper Maariv on the second
anniversary of the murder of Yitzhak Rabin asked whether the country was
closer to unity or civil war, more than twice as many respondents, 56
percent compared with 21 percent, answered the latter. Four months later the
Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research asked Israelis to rate the issues
on which there is "a high chance of violence breaking out. Almost
four-fifths (79 percent) of the respondents cited relations between the
secular and the religious camps, with friction between left and right coming
in a close second (70 percent). Noting that the messianic strain in Israeli
life is growing increasingly militant, many see little room for compromise.
Hebrew University sociologist Moshe Lissak has gone so far as to
characterize the secular Jewish state established in 1948 as "largely a
fleeting episode."
Death A Legitimate Goal
The rhetoric of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox political groups preceding the
assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the authors declare, "made it clear that
Rabins death was a legitimate, even a religious goal."
Eyakim Haetzni, a 67 year old lawyer, founder of the Yesha Council, the
voice of the West Bank settler movement, a former Knesset member from the
defunct radical right Tehiya Party, was one of three former Knesset members
who signed an open letter in November 1993 calling upon soldiers and police
to defy orders to evacuate settlements and warning that relinquishing any
territory to the Palestinians would spark a civil war. In March 1995 he
again tried to spur the army to revolt by telling the head of the Israel
Defense Forces Central Command, during a heated meeting with settlers in
Hebron: "In Hitlers Germany there were officers who understood that their
government was leading the German people to oblivion, and they stood up and
threw down their insignia and paid for it with their lives. Here the
government is leading the people to oblivion."
HaEtzni also harped on the alleged parallel between Rabins government and
the collaborationist Vichy regime in France during World War II: "Those
loyal to the Greater Land of Israel have the right to declare a government
that gives up territory is an illegal one, just as De Gaulle declared the
Vichy Government illegal." He even drew a direct parallel between Rabin and
Vichy leader Marshal Henri-Philippe Pitain, saying: "We will treat (the
signing of the Oslo Agreement) as collaboration with the Nazis was treated
in occupied France... This is an act of treason, and its unavoidable
that the day will come when Rabin is tried for this act as Pitain was."
Vicious Crusade
The ultra-Orthodox weekly Hashavna ("The Week") was used by its publisher,
Asher Zuckerman, to wage a vicious crusade against Rabin. The magazine
regularly called the prime minister "a Kapo," "an anti-Semite," "ruthless,"
and "a pathological liar." The weekly, which is read by close to 20 percent
of the ultra-Orthodox community, published a symposium on the question of
whether Rabin deserved to die and the appropriate means of executing him. It
also described the prime minister as mentally ill and suffering from
alcoholism. "Senior figures," a lead article stated in March 1993, "report
signs of deterioration in the emotional condition of Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin."
Members of the Likud establishment expressed similar views. Hashavna
published an interview with Ariel Sharon, who spoke of the Oslo peace policy
as "graver than what Pitain did," adding, "Its hard to use the word
treason when speaking of Jews, but theres no substantive difference.
Theyre sitting with Arafat and planning how to deceive the citizens of
Israel." In March 1995, Zuckerman wrote of a talk he had with Likud Chairman
Benjamin Netanyahu. He quotes Netanyahu as saying: "Rabin charges that hes
called a terrible word murderer. But with all the unpleasantness (implied
by that term) he has no reason to complain. Whoever is aware of the fetters
he placed on soldiers hands have led directly to the murder of a large
number of Jews has difficulty refraining from use of the terrible word
murder."
By the critical summer of 1995 Hashavna went so far as to charge that Rabin
and Peres "are leading the state and its citizens to annihilation and must
be placed before a firing squad." In the issue published on Friday, November
3, 1995, the day before the assassination, Zuckerman (under the pen name A.
Barak) offered his readers the forecast that, "The day will come when the
Israeli public will bring Rabin and Peres into court with the alternatives
being the gallows or the insane asylum. This nefarious duo has either lost
its mind or is flagrantly treasonous."
Sanction To Murder
The authors show how a group of Orthodox rabbis gave religious sanction to
the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. These rabbis, both in Israel and abroad,
revived two obsolete precepts din rodef (the duty to kill a Jew who
imperils the life or property of another Jew) and din moser (the duty to
eliminate a Jew who intends to turn another Jew in to non-Jewish
authorities.)
By relinquishing rule over parts of the Land of Israel to the Palestinian
Authority, these rabbis argued, the head of the Israeli government had
become a moser. And by branding Rabin, they effectively declared open season
on his life. Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, an Orthodox rabbi critical of those who
embarked upon this enterprise, declared that, "Hundreds of people heard the
word rodef in connection with the late prime minister months before and
around the time of the murder. The fact that these discussions leaked out
and inspired a heated public debate in the religious community turned the
obsolete notions of rodef and moser into household words."
>From the beginning of 1995 onward, the popularization of the words rodef and
moser nourished the belief in religious circles that a consideration of
whether or not they should be applied to Rabin was legitimate. Orthodox
rabbis in Israel and the U.S. were consulting one another about whether
Rabin fell into the category of a rodef or a moser. In the U.S. hundreds of
Orthodox rabbis signed a statement declaring that he did.
Permissible To Kill
Two students of Rabbi Shmuel Dvir, a teacher in the Har Etzion Yeshiva in
Gush Etzion, subsequently reported that he told them it was definitely
permissible to kill Rabin under the provision of din rodef. A third
described Dvirs desire to execute the act personally. "If Rabin comes to
visit Gush Etzion, I myself will climb on a roof and shoot him with a
rifle," Dvir boasted.
It was not only obscure militant rabbis who engaged in such agitation, the
authors point out. They cite the case of Rabbi Nachum Rabinovich, one of the
most respected halachic authorities in the occupied territories. The
64-year-old Canadian-born scholar holds a doctorate in mathematics, has
served in rabbinical posts in Canada and the U.S., and headed the Orthodox
rabbinical seminary in London before immigrating to Israel. In an article
published in the Jerusalem Post in July 1993, two months before the signing
of the Oslo accord, Rabinovitch compared the position of the Rabin
Government with those of the Judenrate in Nazi-occupied Europe. He also
exploited the concept of moser, introducing it not as a direct charge
against Rabin but as a warning to his government against trying to force the
Israeli people into becoming collaborators in its designs. In a column
entitled "Generals, Jews and Justice," published in the Jerusalem Post in
December 1993, Rabinovitch quoted Maimonidess definition of a moser as "he
who delivers his fellow into the hands of gentiles to kill him or beat him;
and he who delivers his fellows property into the hands of goyim..." He
recommended that settlers plant explosive devices along the paths of their
communities to deter Israeli soldiers from entering them. He justified the
suggestion by comparing the Israeli Government to the Nazis.
Agitation in U.S.
Within Orthodox circles in the U.S. the same agitation against Yitzhak Rabin
followed the signing of the Oslo Agreement. "Soon after Oslo," the authors
write, "Rabins opponents in the American Jewish community began branding
him a traitor and a rodef; it was not long before they advanced to calling
him a Nazi. By the summer of 1995 the invective showered on the prime
minister and his government had become so savage that Israels consul
general in New York, Colette Avital, could restrain herself no longer.
Avital knew that right-wing and Orthodox Jews were providing the extremists
in Israel with inspiration and a great deal of money... She felt it was
her duty to warn the prime minister what was going on... Supporters of
peace in New York seemed unable to utter more than a murmur of protest as
Orthodox rabbis and right-wing radicals called for the disposal of the prime
minister of Israel. Avital was appalled."
The World Likud (an extension of the Israeli party) swamped Orthodox
synagogues in the U.S. with leaflets assailing the Israeli government. Rabbi
Mordechai Friedman, head of the Orthodox American Board of Rabbis, took up
the banner by charging in radio and t.v. interviews that, "Rabins democracy
is persecuting the settlers" and that, "The Israeli Army has been
transformed into the ultra radical left wing Rabin/Peres militia." Rabbi
Moshe Tendler, a professor at Yeshiva University and respected authority on
the halacha, informed the media that according to Jewish religious law
anyone perceived as a rodef should be killed.
On June 19, 1995, addressing a convention of the International Rabbinical
Coalition for Israel, an organization of Orthodox rabbis dedicated to saving
the occupied territories for Israel, Rabbi Abraham Hecht, head of the
Rabbinical Alliance of America, declared that surrendering any part of the
biblical Land of Israel is a violation of Jewish religious law and, thus,
assassinating Rabin, and all who assist him, is both permissible and
necessary. The authors note that, "Some of the rabbis supported Hecht and
actually signed a statement that in their view Rabin was a rodef. Others
were stunned by his pronouncement of such a dictum in public, visited his
Brooklyn office and implored him to retract the statement. But Hecht was
adamant. I do not represent myself but the Jewish law, he told them, and
the concession of territory is a grave crime in Judaism."
Extreme Action
Rabbi Hecht would not be silenced. In August 1995 he used the platform of
the Jewish Press to publish an open letter "to all the Rabbis in the U.S.A."
confirming that, "The Torah permits the most extreme action against those
who would harm fellow Jews." He also issued a declaration that the Israeli
officers sent to the U.S. to explain the Oslo peace plan "are not wanted
here and we must be prepared to expose them for what they are: enemies of
the Jewish state and the Jewish people." On October 9, 1995, New York
Magazine asked Hecht how he would feel if someone were to conclude from his
June statement that he was entitled to murder Rabin, Hecht replied: "I
wouldnt feel at all... Rabin is not a Jew any longer... All I said
was that according to Jewish law, any person... who willfully, consciously,
intentionally hands over human bodies or human property or the human wealth
of the Jewish people to an alien people is guilty of the sin for which the
penalty is death. And... it says very clearly, if a man kills him, he has
done a good deed."
After Yigal Amir acted upon the ultra-Orthodox agitation to remove Yitzhak
Rabin from the scene and thereby bring the peace process to an end, he was
hailed as a hero in many quarters. A resident of the ultra-Orthodox
stronghold of Bnei Brak stood before t.v. cameras and declared: "There is no
mourning here. Yitzhak Rabin was not one of us." In Tapuach and Yishar, two
West Bank settlements, pictures of Amir were hung on the walls at parties
celebrating the "miracle." When word of the assassination reached the large
West Bank settlement of Ariel, participants at a political assembly stood up
and applauded. In the Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea in Jerusalem, young men
embraced one another on hearing the news. In the Orthodox study group at
Bar-Ilan University, in which Amir had been a participant, students called
him "a saint."
Support For Amir
A question in the 1996 high school matriculation examination in citizenship
prompted many essays indicating support for Yigal Amir and his motives. Two
of the teachers grading these exams spoke out about the answers of students
from religious high schools and sought to publish them. But the Ministry of
Education and Culture, then headed by Minister Zevulun Hammer of the
National Religious Party, forbade them to do so. Bar-Ilan University
sociologist Nissan Rubin, himself of moderate political views, declared:
"Theres a feeling among the religious public that Rabins death was a
miracle. Citing ancient Jewish myths of miraculous rescue... Just as the
Jews were always saved from destruction at the last minute an allusion to
the parting of the Red Sea during the Exodus and to the 11th hour rescue of
the Jews from Persia from the wicked Haman, so now people are saying a
miracle has occurred."
The depth of Israels cultural divide may be seen in the fact that Yigal
Amir and those who embraced his act of murder are not a small, isolated
fringe, but a large segment of Israeli society. Hebrew University
sociologist Moshe Lissak states that, "Yigal Amir grew out of the
mainstream, not the margins. What is referred to as the ideological fringe
is actually very broad. Were speaking of a variety of groups social
networks some of which speak and write on a high level. They share a good
degree of common ground, and they live and act in contiguous circles. They
are not isolated or reclusive elements, and there is a big difference
between them and the Kahanist thugs."
Murderer Came From Among Us
Rabbi Yehudah Amital, the founder of Meimad, a small movement of politically
moderate religious nationalists, said that, "The murderer came from among
us, out of religious Zionism and Judaism, and we cannot say that our hands
have not shed this blood. Rather than be a tempering influence, many of our
rabbis have been a radicalizing one, creating a political dogma and a public
mood that made the murder possible. Political extremism has been dressed up
as religion. Not only did the Prime Ministers murderer come from among us,
but Baruch Goldstein, the murderer in the Cave of the Patriarchs, did too.
That the religious community brushed off that slaughter... shows that its
moral sensibility is flawed... The decline began when the rabbis chose to
turn a blind eye to the attacks on Arabs that eventually led to acts of
murder..."
Authors Karpin and Friedman report that, "Historians are likely to
characterize the post-Rabin period as a time of deep anxiety. There are many
indications that racist and separatist philosophies are gaining ground,
especially among... the national religious population. One particularly
troubling development is the recent waves of verbal assaults on the High
Court of Justice by religious circles... Knesset Member Aharon Cohen of
the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, which in the past decade has grown from a
marginal political force to a major power, characterized the courts
justices as foreign priests of modern primitive idolatry. Shass spiritual
mentor, former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, went a step further in
urging all Israelis to boycott secular courts which are not for Jews, and
agree to be judged only before rabbinical tribunals."
In the wake of the assassination, the authors argue, Israeli society refused
to properly confront the forces which brought it about. The commission
headed by Meir Shamgar to investigate Rabins murder "held back from
scrutinizing the factors responsible... In effect, the report reduced the
murder of the prime minister from a complex historical event to a simple
lapse in security arrangements... Justice Shamgar had taken a similarly
restrictive approach to circumstances two years earlier when he had chaired
the commission investigating Baruch Goldsteins massacre... In that
instance too the panel confined itself to a strict elucidation of the facts
and performance of the security personnel, rather than an examination of the
religious, social and political conditions that had fueled the attack."
Security Failure
Israeli security, the authors point out, is indeed a subject of legitimate
criticism. They write of its "failure to acknowledge the new circumstances
triggered by the Oslo Agreement: the possibility that the nationalist and
messianist indoctrination of Orthodox youth, for more than twenty years,
would lead at least some of them to reject the principle of democratic rule
and resort to the use of force."
Shabak, Israels security agency, concentrated on a potential threat to
Rabin from Arab extremists, not their Jewish counterparts. In fact, the
authors write, "Shabak misread the climate of violence. It did not know, for
example, that there was talk of murdering the prime minister at the Sabbath
conclaves organized for Bar-Ilan students by Yigal Amir. It was unaware that
rabbis had issued judgments of din moser and din rodef. It did not maintain
surveillance over most of the groups of zealots that were known to be
gathering in settlements and yeshivas... The media, no less than the
Shabak subscribed to the axiom that no Jew would go to the lengths of
murdering another Jew for political or ideological ends. The notion was too
grotesque to contemplate. Throughout the summer the media had routinely
covered the wave of right-wing demonstrations but barely noticed the
indictment against Rabin personally had reached intolerable proportions.
Most of the vitriolic statements were unearthed only after the assassination..."
Silence of Those In Authority
The silence of those in positions of authority in Israel about the gathering
storm of religious fanaticism preceding the assassination helped to create
the atmosphere in which such an event could occur. Similarly, the silence of
major Jewish organizations and prominent spokesmen in the United States in
the face of the promotion of hatred and violence on the part of those in the
Orthodox community who were willing to go to any lengths to bring the peace
process to a halt tells us a great deal about the lack of moral courage
which masquerades as leadership.
Much of the research for this important book was done in connection with the
documentary film "The Road To Rabin Square," which was the first attempt to
present an in-depth picture of the campaign of incitement that preceded the
assassination.
Discussing the achievement of authors Karpin and Friedman, the respected
Israeli author Amos Elon writes that, "Murder In The Name Of God does two
things: It offers an excellent account of the sinister cabal staged by
reckless politicians, bogus rabbis and other mystagogues on both sides of
the Atlantic that led to the religious murder of Yitzhak Rabin. At the
same time, Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman draw a frightening picture of a
sick society (and a deeply flawed political system) that allowed this cabal
to mature, and today sits by in equanimity as Israel is pushed back from the
brink of peace to the black hole of history."
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