Nov 1995: Bibi's Yigal Amir kills Yitzhak Rabin + Oslo deal

[TonyGosling]

Rabin’s death was Netanyahu’s victory: An explosive new film argues that Bibi is morally culpable for the 1995 assassination
How Bibi fed a climate of hate that killed off the last chance for peace and sparked 20 years of carnage and chaos
https://www.salon.com/2016/01/30/rabins_death_was_netanyahus_victory_a n_explosive_new_film_argues_that_bibi_is_morally_culpable_for_the_1995 _assassination/

In early November, 20 years to the day after the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing religious extremist, Amos Gitai's mesmerizing and disturbing new film “Rabin, the Last Day” premiered in Tel Aviv's symphony hall — about 200 yards from the spot where Rabin was shot. It’s no ordinary movie: “Rabin, the Last Day” is a disorienting mixture of drama, documentary and meticulous re-creation, and very little of it takes place on the last day of Rabin’s life. (The title ultimately takes on other meanings.) And in the context of Israel today, not to mention the context of the Middle East and the world, this was no ordinary movie premiere. Gitai is both a living legend of Israeli cinema and a highly controversial cultural figure, and with “Rabin, the Last Day” he seizes the third rail of Israeli politics with both hands.

I’m always dubious of all manifestations of the Great Man theory of history, in which destiny is shaped by the rise or fall of a single individual. But political assassinations, by their nature, are disruptive events meant to change the course of history, and even by that standard this one had far-reaching consequences. Rabin and his deputy, Shimon Peres, had gone much further than any previous Israeli leaders toward a permanent settlement of the “Palestinian question,” and with the Oslo Accords had agreed to the general outlines of a historic land-for-peace deal with Yasser Arafat. It’s too simplistic to claim that Rabin’s death undid all that at one stroke, but it certainly began the unraveling.


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If the Rabin assassination feels like a dim and incomprehensible memory to most Americans, it nonetheless affected our nation’s path into the 21st century in many ways. In retrospect, that was almost certainly the moment when the window for a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict came slamming down. Politicians around the world still have to pretend to believe in that possibility, but it's largely a charade. Their real attitude is much closer to Mitt Romney's famous (and apocryphal) line about kicking the can down the road. As Gitai drily told the French newspaper Le Monde in a recent interview, as things stand now, “to say that it would work to place two states side by side is highly theoretical.”

I found Gitai's film difficult to watch at first, but then I was completely addicted and even after 153 minutes I wanted to know more. He draws on numerous official sources, including the government commission that investigated the murder and police interviews with the assassin, a 25-year-old religious student named Yigal Amir. In an interview that opens the film, Peres, who was Rabin's lifelong rival, colleague and friend, is asked whether we would live in a different world now if Rabin had not been killed in 1995 — whether the Arabs and Israelis would have made peace. He answers with one syllable, and says it twice: “Ken. Ken.” Yes. Yes. None of that is knowable, of course, but the more you think about it the bigger the questions get. Would the 9/11 attacks have happened? Without that day, of course, the United States does not invade Iraq or Afghanistan, which means that ISIS never comes into existence.

But those intriguing hypotheticals are not the explosive element in “Rabin, the Last Day,” or the reason it was made a headline news event in Israel. Gitai comes pretty close to blaming Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Israeli prime minister, for Rabin's murder. In fairness, the filmmaker does not quite put it that way (and for legal reasons, probably can’t). The case he builds against Bibi is about influence and inference, a matter of moral responsibility rather than criminal culpability. In that French interview, he says that the film offered “the occasion to ask a question of Israeli society,” but never says exactly what question he had in mind.

This is not a conspiracy theory film, and Gitai never challenges the legal proposition that Amir was more or less a classic “lone nut” who went out to stalk Rabin of his own volition, without much planning or forethought. But Amir’s brand of nuttiness was not isolated and did not exist in a vacuum. Netanyahu was the head of the right-wing Likud party and leader of the parliamentary opposition in 1995. He did not pull the trigger or put the gun in Amir’s hand. He never advocated violence against Rabin or Peres as a way to stop the Oslo peace process, and did not condone the assassination after it happened.

But the leitmotif that runs through “Rabin, the Last Day” is that the Israeli religious right viewed the Rabin-Peres government as illegitimate, and the potential land-for-peace deal it had struck with Arafat and the PLO as treasonous. Radical rabbis that Amir knew and trusted had proclaimed the Jewish equivalent of a fatwa against Rabin: He was a traitor to the Jewish people, worse than the most anti-Semitic gentile, and his life was forfeit. Whatever Netanyahu's personal convictions may have been, he fostered that environment of hatred and intolerance and was its principal beneficiary.

In the film, we see Netanyahu speaking at rallies where his supporters held up posters calling for the deaths of Rabin, Peres and Arafat and the extermination or expulsion of all Arabs on Israeli-held land. He surely saw the homemade images of Rabin in a keffiyeh, or Palestinian-style headscarf, and the other images, the ones depicting Rabin wearing an SS officer's uniform. He saw people staging a mock funeral for Rabin, carrying a coffin through the streets. He saw all those things and said nothing about any of them. Indeed, he embraced that situation as a political opportunity.

Asked by the reporter for Le Monde whether he was making a “terrible charge” against Netanyahu, Gitai did not quite answer yes or no. “This man has unlimited personal ambition, to the point that he is willing to endanger certain essential ingredients of Israeli society,” he responded. “Under his reign, extremely problematic racist tendencies have emerged. At the same time, his capacity to turn everything toward partisan ends risks destroying the collective project that is Israel. That project of creating a place of refuge for the Jews was the political conclusion of a long chain of suffering. It was not a religious project.”

Many people on all sides of the issue would disagree with various aspects of that, I’m sure. (We’re talking about the Middle East, which means that nobody will ever agree about anything.) The Israeli religious right would insist that there was a strong religious component to their nation from the beginning. Palestinians and their supporters in the European and American left, on the other hand, might say that there was an element of racism in the State of Israel all along, and that Gitai is clinging to a romantic vision of Israeli identity that has been long discredited. There is some plausibility to both of those counter-arguments, but whether or not you and I find Gitai’s political arguments acceptable on all levels is beside the point.

Gitai is indeed making the case in “Rabin, the Last Day,” as he has throughout his career, for an alternative vision of Israel’s past and Israel’s future. Although the Israeli right often depicts him as a left-wing dissident artist beloved by European radicals, his patriotic credentials are beyond dispute. He learned his craft shooting footage in the Israeli military, and survived a helicopter crash after being downed by a Syrian missile during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Gitai’s first response in the Le Monde interview, when he is asked why he wanted to make a film about Rabin’s assassination 20 years after the fact, begins this way: “My dear country, which I love very much, is not doing so well.”

The existence of this film, and the furious debate it has spawned, stands as proof of Gitai’s fundamental argument that the belligerent nationalism of Bibi Netanyahu is not the only Israel. Discussion of Israel in American politics is so distorted — mostly by the bipartisan agreement that no aspect of Israeli foreign policy may be questioned — that progressives often focus almost exclusively on Israel’s military misdeeds and its flawed human rights record. When it comes to things like the recent military campaign in Gaza, that’s both understandable and necessary. But turn the question around for a minute: Is it even remotely conceivable that a film this scathing and self-critical, a film that asks essential questions about the nature of national identity, could be made in Egypt or Jordan or Syria or the Palestinian territories, and then have its public premiere in the largest concert hall of that nation’s largest city?

That tradition of intellectual openness even in times of adversity, of rigorous and (if you’ll forgive the cliché) rabbinical self-scrutiny, is very much under attack. “Those who contributed to the climate of hate that led to the assassination of Rabin today flirt with power,” Gitai told Le Monde. “The danger is that everything that created the original character of Israeli society will finally disappear.” But history, as Gitai and his film both suggest, is a dialectical and paradoxical process that ultimately obeys its own laws. By killing Yitzhak Rabin and the two-state solution, Gitai suggests, the Israeli extreme right has ensured that the only possible outcome, decades or generations from now, will be precisely what it wants to resist: “One state, with equal rights for all its citizens, whatever their religion or their origin.” What lies between then and now? He has no doubt about that, and the pattern is familiar: “Lots of blood will flow, certainly.”

“Rabin, the Last Day” is now playing at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema in New York. It opens Feb. 5 in Phoenix, March 11 in Los Angeles and Santa Fe, N.M., and April 14 in Washington, with other cities and home video to follow.

[TonyGosling]

Israel’s Netanyahu is no stranger to scandals
https://apnews.com/85a526c4f48541cfa2bafb2013559067/Israel's-Netanyahu -is-no-stranger-to-scandals

JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fighting for his political life after being accused of taking bribes from billionaire supporters, is no stranger to scandal.

Over a three-decade political career, Netanyahu has been accused of everything from accepting improper gifts to spending too much public money on ice cream to wasting tens of thousands of dollars on a custom-fitted bed for a five-hour flight to London. Close confidants and even family members have also come under suspicion.

With cat-like deftness, Netanyahu has always managed to escape prosecution. But the latest scandal may be the most serious threat yet to his lengthy rule.

Police announced late Tuesday that there was sufficient evidence to indict Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in a pair of cases.

In the first, he is suspected of accepting nearly $300,000 in gifts, including champagne and fancy cigars, from Hollywood mogul Arnon Milchan and Australian billionaire James Packer. In exchange, Netanyahu allegedly lobbied U.S. officials on Milchan’s behalf in a visa matter and helped promote his business affairs in Israel.

In the second case, he is suspected of offering preferential treatment to a newspaper publisher in exchange for favorable coverage.

Netanyahu has angrily rejected the accusations and denounced what he describes as an overzealous police investigation.

In a televised address Tuesday night, he said he had faced 15 investigations over the years, all of which, he claimed, amounted to “nothing.” He similarly predicted the latest uproar would pass.

For the time being, Netanyahu’s job remains secure, with his coalition lining up behind him as opponents urge him to step aside. His attorney general, Avihai Mandelblit, will now review the evidence and make the final decision on whether to press charges — a process that is expected to take months. That means Netanyahu faces a difficult period ahead as his every move will be clouded by the looming investigation.

Here is a look at some of the scandals that have plagued Netanyahu, his family and his confidants over the years.

___

INFLUENCE PEDDLING

During his first term in office in the 1990s, Netanyahu was suspected of engineering the short-lived appointment of a crony as attorney general in exchange for political support from the Shas party. Prosecutors called Netanyahu’s conduct “puzzling,” but stopped short of filing charges.

___

GIFTS AFFAIR

During that same stint as prime minister, Netanyahu and his wife Sara were suspected of taking gifts he received from world leaders — items considered state property. The Netanyahus also were suspected of accepting favors from a contractor. Both cases were closed without charges.

___

TRAVEL EXPENSES

Netanyahu was suspected of double billing travel expenses and using state funds to cover travel for his family in the 2000s, while he was finance minister and opposition leader. After a lengthy investigation, the attorney general dismissed the case.

___

HOUSEHOLD HELP

Sara Netanyahu has faced repeated allegations of mistreating household help. During their first term in office, the family’s nanny said she was fired by Netanyahu’s wife for burning a pot of vegetable soup. The young woman said she was thrown out of the family’s home without her clothes or passport, and later was ordered to pick up her belongings dumped outside the front gate. Netanyahu’s office said the woman was fired because she was prone to violent outbursts.

More recently, a Jerusalem labor court awarded $30,000 in damages to a former employee of the first lady who claimed he faced yelling and unreasonable demands. Last month, a recording emerged of Sara Netanyahu screaming at an aide as she complained that a gossip column about her did not mention her educational credentials.

___

HEY, BIG SPENDER

In 2016, an official expense report found that Netanyahu spent more than $600,000 of public funds on a six-day trip to New York, including $1,600 on a personal hairdresser. Three years earlier, he was chided for spending $127,000 in public funds for a special sleeping cabin on a flight to London. Netanyahu said he was unaware of the cost and halted the practice. He also halted purchases at his favorite Jerusalem ice cream parlor that year after a newspaper reported his office ran up a $2,700 bill, mostly for vanilla and pistachio.

___

QUESTIONABLE SPENDING

Israel’s attorney general announced last fall that he is considering charging Sara Netanyahu with graft, fraud and breach of trust for alleged overspending of over $100,000 in public funds on private meals at the prime minister’s official residence. At the same time, the attorney general dismissed allegations that the Netanyahus used government money to buy furniture for their private beach house and used state funds to pay for medical care for Sara Netanyahu’s late father.

___

NETANYAHU’S SON

Last month a recording surfaced of Netanyahu’s eldest son, Yair, joyriding with his wealthy buddies to Tel Aviv strip clubs in a drunken night out in a taxpayer-funded government vehicle. The 26-year-old Netanyahu has drawn criticism over the years for living a life of privilege at taxpayers’ expense, hobnobbing with ultra-rich donors and making crude social media posts, all while never holding down a job.

___

CABINET MINISTER

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a Netanyahu confidant, was suspected in a long-running corruption case of illicitly receiving money and laundering it through shell companies in eastern Europe. In 2012, Israel’s attorney general dismissed the most serious charges, saying the case would be virtually impossible to prove. A report at the time said he noted that key witnesses lived outside the country, that Lieberman’s lawyer had invoked the right to remain silent, and that two key witnesses had died while a third had disappeared. Lieberman was indicted on lesser graft charges. That case forced him to step down as foreign minister, but he was ultimately cleared and returned to the post a year later.

___

NETANYAHU’S WHIP

David Bitan, one of Netanyahu’s closest allies, resigned as coalition whip in December due to suspicions that he accepted bribes as a municipal politician. Bitan has invoked his right to remain silent during repeated police interrogations.
by Taboola

[TonyGosling]

Will Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s protégés prosecute him?
23rd February 2018 Home, Highlights, Israel
Mandelblit and Alsheikh - By Uri Avnery
http://www.redressonline.com/2018/02/will-israeli-prime-minister-netan yahus-proteges-prosecute-him/

Pity the almond tree, especially when it is in full bloom.

The bloom of the almond is, in German, Mandelblüt. That is also the name the Israel’s chief legal officer, called “the legal advisor of the Government”.

The legal advisor is appointed by the government, but is supposed to be completely independent. He is in practice the Attorney-General, the person who has the final say about indicting people, especially the prime minister. That is now his unhappy lot.

Now Mandelblit (as we pronounce his name in Hebrew) is in an impossible position. The prime minister has been officially accused by the police on two counts of bribery. Now Mandelblit must decide whether to put him on trial.

Bite the hand that feeds you?

But Binyamin Netanyahu has been his benefactor for a long time, pushing his career to the top. Do you bite the hand that has fed you? Or do you shirk your duty?

An awful choice.

Avichai Mandelblit was born in Tel Aviv into a right-wing family. His father was a member of the Irgun and a rightist party stalwart. Avichai (“My Father Lives”, meaning God) adopted religion at the age of 25 and put a kippah on his head.

After studying law, he served in the army as a military judge in the occupied Gaza Strip and other military jobs, until he became the chief legal officer of the army. From there it was but a short jump to the job of “government secretary”, the right-hand man of the prime minister, who happened to be Binyamin Netanyahu.

When the office of “Legal Adviser of the Government”, an official with immense power, became free, Netanyahu looked around for a candidate. And who did he see? Yes, quite right – the good, loyal Mandelblit.

On the horizon there were looming already all kinds of criminal suspicions. The crucial position of legal advisor was becoming very important. So, choosing the religious, right-wing lawyer was a clever move.

How clever? Well, we will soon know.

Netanyahu has not always made the cleverest choices.
“You help me keep my job, and I give you the job you desire”

Almost at the same time as he chose the chief legal advisor, he also chose a new chief of police.

His choice was a total surprise. He did not pick one of the senior policemen, each of whom had years of experience behind him, but a completely anonymous person. And not anonymous by accident: he was the No. 2 of the internal security service, Shin Bet.

Roni Alsheikh did not want the job. He wanted to be the chief of the Shin Bet. But Netanyahu almost compelled him. He promised to appoint him Shin Bet chief if he – Netanyahu – were still prime minister in four years time. That was a not-so-subtle hint: you help me keep my job, and I give you the job you desire.

The new police chief was an enigma. He is of Yemenite descent, rather unusual for Israel’s elite. He does not look like a police officer. A joker once called him “a barrel with a mustache”. He does not talk in public – as befits a person who has spent most of his life in the secret service.

With these two loyalists in place, Netanyahu had nothing to fear. A number of criminal suspicions popped up, but nobody believed that anything would come of them. Netanyahu was just too clever.

What were the suspicions about?

1. A billionaire with large business interests in Israel for 10 years provided him with Cuban cigars of the most expensive kind, as well as “pink” champagne and some jewelry for the lady, all in all about a quarter of a million dollars. An Australian billionaire chipped in.

2. There was a deal with the boss of the second largest newspaper in Israel to enact a law clipping the circulation of the No. 1, in return for favourable coverage. The adoring coverage of newspaper No. 1 was assured anyhow. It belongs to Sheldon Adelson, an American casino billionaire, and its sole purpose is – quite openly – to glorify Netanyahu.

A third matter concerns suspicions of bribes from a German shipbuilder, which produces submarines for Israel’s atomic weapons. It’s a multibillion deal. Suspicions run high but have not yet been aired publicly.

What? The chief of police a man of integrity?… This is a moral problem: if Netanyahu appointed him in the belief that he is a man of no conscience, and then it turns out that he is a man of conscience – does this mean that he only pretended to have no integrity, which might be an act of no integrity?

No serious person in Israel expected anything to come of any of these affairs. With the hand-picked chief legal officer and the chief of police safely in place, how could it?

And then, two weeks ago, a bomb exploded. The taciturn policeman suddenly appeared on TV, and hinted that the police were about to publish recommendations to indict Netanyahu for bribery in the first two affairs.

What? The chief of police a man of integrity? What is the world coming to? This is a moral problem: if Netanyahu appointed him in the belief that he is a man of no conscience, and then it turns out that he is a man of conscience – does this mean that he only pretended to have no integrity, which might be an act of no integrity? Work it out.

Can a similar terrible thing happen now with the legal adviser? Can he suddenly turn out to be a man of integrity too? Sooner or later he must decide whether to indict Netanyahu or not.

Poor man.

When the police chief hinted on TV about the coming police decision to recommend indictment, my first impulse was to rush and clean the air-raid shelter at my home.
“Nothing like a military emergency to divert attention from your misdeeds…”

When you are prime minister and in deep domestic trouble, the first thing you think about is a military crisis. Nothing like a military emergency to divert attention from your misdeeds towards the national interest.

And lo and behold – two days after the TV announcement about the police recommendations, the Iranians were so kind as to provoke a crisis.

An Iranian spy drone entered Israeli airspace from Syria and was promptly shot down. In response, the Israeli air force sent its planes to bomb Iranian positions in Syria. An Israeli plane was shot down – a very rare occurrence indeed, and fell near a kibbutz. Both crewmen bailed out and one was severely injured.

The criminal business was swept off the table. Everybody spoke about the coming war. But then Vladimir Putin intervened and put an end to that nonsense.

No war this time. The police published their findings and recommended that Netanyahu be put on trial on two counts of bribery. The entire country was glued to their TV sets. Everything else was forgotten.

Netanyahu did what he does best. He made a live statement on TV. He accused his accusers of all kinds of misconduct. These scoundrels, he more than intimated, were ready to risk the very existence of Israel, just out of spite against him. But not to worry, he has no intention of resigning, even temporarily.

Looking us straight in the eye, shining with honesty, he promised us that he will not forsake us. Since he is the only person on Earth able to ensure our safety, he will remain at his post and protect us, come what may.

This made me very afraid indeed. Far be it from me to insinuate that he might start a war just to divert attention from his indictments. In a war, people get killed. Jewish boys (and girls) of Jewish mothers. Would a patriot like Netanyahu do such a dastardly thing as starting an unnecessary war just to divert attention?

Surely not. But when he has to make a fateful decision in a crisis, between two meetings with his lawyers, will his head be completely clear?
Time to evade?

How long can this go on? Experts assess that Mandelblit, in his desperation, can draw his decision out for a year. He must think. Thinking takes time,

There was this Polish nobleman who called his Jew and told him: “I love my dog dearly. Jews are clever people. You can teach my dog to speak. Do it. Otherwise I shall kill you!

“No problem,” the Jew answered. “But teaching a dog to speak is a very difficult task, It takes time. I need two years.”

“Good,” the nobleman said. But if you don’t do it, I shall kill you!”

When the Jew’s wife heard this, she started to wail. “You know you can’t teach the dog to speak!” she cried.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “Two years is a long time. In two years the dog will be dead, or the nobleman will be dead, or I shall be dead.”

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Yigal Amir

Who exactly was he working for?

[TonyGosling]

AG approves Knesset run by Yigal Amir’s wife
Mandelblit weighs in after Labor MK calls for banning Mishpat Tzedek, a political party founded to advocate for the freedom of Rabin’s assassin
By TOI STAFF and RAOUL WOOTLIFF
28 January 2020, 1:18 pm 4
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ag-approves-knesset-run-by-yigal-amirs-w ife/


Larissa Trimbobler-Amir, wife of Yitzhak Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir, arrives at the Central Elections Committee to register a new party for her run in the upcoming Israeli elections, January 14, 2020. (Yonathan Sindel/Flash90)
Larissa Trimbobler-Amir, wife of Yitzhak Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir, arrives at the Central Elections Committee to register a new party for her run in the upcoming Israeli elections, January 14, 2020. (Yonathan Sindel/Flash90)
A political party established by wife of prime ministerial assassin Yigal Amir should not be barred from running for Knesset, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit told the Central Elections Commission on Tuesday.

Amir assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin at a peace rally 24 years ago.

Mandelblit was responding to a petition by Labor MK Itzik Shmuli to ban Mishpat Tzedek (Fair Trial), which is headed by Larissa Trimbobler-Amir and calls for a retrial for the convicted killer and “all other innocent people unjustly incarcerated.”

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Every party allowed to run receives taxpayer-funded radio and television advertising time, a situation Shmuli said is unacceptable for those linked to Amir. He accused the party of seeking “to get him released from prison and disseminate his poisonous hate.”


Yigal Amir, the convicted assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, seen during a court hearing in Tel Aviv, November 1, 2007. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
He asserted that its platform was in violation of article 7A of Basic Law: The Knesset, which disqualifies parties that support “armed struggle, by a hostile state or a terrorist organization, against the State of Israel.”

Mandelblit disagreed with Shmuli’s stance, telling the commission that Trimbobler-Amir had signed an affidavit stating that the party was not justifying the murder of Rabin but, rather, that it sought to secure Amir’s release through a retrial.

Amir, now 49, is serving a life sentence for the assassination of Rabin. He remains in solitary confinement, though he got married while in prison in 2004 after a protracted legal struggle.

The case against Amir was clear-cut: He was caught on video raising a gun to Rabin. He calmly confessed to the police, reenacted the crime for them and never recanted his testimony.




Larissa Trimbobler-Amir, wife of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, Yigal Amir, arrives at the Central Elections Committee to register a new party for her run in the upcoming Israeli elections, January 14, 2020. (Yonathan Sindel/Flash90)
Still, fringe conspiracy theories have emerged positing a number of possibilities other than Amir being the assassin. The theories rely on some purportedly ambiguous facts surrounding the night of the murder: claims that the bullets were blanks, witnesses who say they didn’t see blood at the scene, and an abnormally long drive to a very nearby hospital.

Previous attempts to have Amir freed based on the conspiracy theories have fallen flat.

Both the court that convicted Amir and the subsequent Shamgar Commission established to investigate the chain of events leading up to the assassination rejected the conspiracy claims and concluded that Amir was guilty of murder.

Trimbobler-Amir, who has long campaigned to free her husband, said earlier this month that “only we can do it, not the politicians, they don’t care.”