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- [00:00]
T-Mobile Salesperson
Oh, hey, welcome to gift wrapping.
- [00:02]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
Whoa.
- [00:02]
T-Mobile Salesperson
So is Saldana.
- [00:03]
T-Mobile Customer
Hey, can you wrap these please?
- [00:05]
T-Mobile Salesperson
Wow, iPhone 17s.
- [00:07]
T-Mobile Customer
You splurged at T Mobile. You can get four iPhone 17s on them. The new center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies. It's the perfect gift for everyone.
- [00:15]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
I'm the worst. I only got my mom a robe.
- [00:17]
T-Mobile Customer
Well, it's better than socks.
- [00:19]
T-Mobile Salesperson
So I have to trade in my old phone, right?
- [00:21]
T-Mobile Customer
No AT T Mobile. There's no trade ins needed when you switch. Keep your old phone or give it as a gift.
- [00:26]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
Incredible.
- [00:27]
T-Mobile Customer
In fact, wrap up my old phone too for my aunt Rosa.
- [00:30]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
Forget that.
- [00:30]
T-Mobile Customer
Aunt Liz will be jealous.
- [00:32]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
Sounds like my family drama.
- [00:33]
T-Mobile Customer
Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with. Hey, where are you going?
- [00:37]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
To T Mobile.
- [00:38]
T-Mobile Salesperson
The holidays are better. AT T Mobile get four iPhone 17s on us. No trade in needed when you switch plus four lines for just 25 bucks a line. And now T Mobile is available in US cellular stores with 24 monthly bill credits and 4 eligible board ins on essentials for well qualified customers bought or pay plus taxes fees and $35 device connection charge credits and depends if you pay off early or cancel. Contact Us Finance Agreement 256 GB. $830 required.
- [00:59]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
Visit t mobile.comhistory as it happens November 21, 2025 Assassinating Rabin killing Peace we.
- [01:08]
Yitzhak Rabin (Archive Footage)
Wish to open a new chapter in the sad book of our lives together. A chapter of mutual recognition, of good neighborliness, of mutual respect, of understanding. We hope to emb on a new era in the history of the Middle East.
- [01:31]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
Prime Minister Rabin even has suggested that, frankly, your total outright opposition to what's happening at the moment is so great, it's tantamount to being equal to that of Hamas, the extreme Islamic resistance.
- [01:43]
Benjamin Netanyahu
I'm sure there will be those who will try to paint us the Likud. Somewhere between Hamas and Hezbollah. That's a joke.
- [01:50]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
A young Jewish law student, an Israeli, worked his way to within a few feet of Yitzhak Rabin, raised a gun and fired three sh.
- [01:58]
Narrator/Documentary Voice
Peace must be and peace will be Prime Minister Rabin's lasting legacy.
- [02:07]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
Thirty Novembers ago, Israel experienced one of the worst days in the country's short history. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered in cold blood. Not by a Palestinian terrorist, but a fanatical Jew who said his God told him to do it. An assassination designed to kill the peace process. Thirty years later, the consequences are still felt by Israel, the Middle east, the world. That is next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [02:34]
T-Mobile Customer
In the middle East, Israeli settlers have.
- [02:36]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
Burned and defaced a mosque in a Palestinian village in the West Bank.
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T-Mobile Customer
There were more than 260 attacks in.
- [02:42]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
October and this year's Olive Harvest. In videos of one of the latest settler attacks, you can see that there.
- [02:47]
Are dozens of young men involved, many.
- [02:49]
Of them wearing masks, and they go.
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And carry out an afternoon attack on a Palestinian Bedouin village.
- [02:55]
I think Rabin is largely forgotten. And I think Rabin's legacy has been tarnished. And I think it's because he didn't succeed in getting to that peace agreement. In other words, he was killed before a final deal could be reached between Israelis and Palestinians.
- [03:22]
The scene on September 13, 1993, as hard as it may be to imagine happening today, was real. On the White House lawn, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian national leader Yasser Arafat shook hands after signing the Oslo accords with President Bill Clinton, triggering a peace process. After decades of bloodshed, here is Rabin.
- [03:46]
Yitzhak Rabin (Archive Footage)
Let me say to you, the Palestinians, we are destined to live together on the same soil, in the same land. We, the soldiers who have returned from battles stained with blood. We who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes, we who have attended their funerals and cannot look into the eyes of, of their parents. We who have come from a land where parents buried their children. We who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today in a loud and a clear voice. Enough of blood and tears, enough.
- [04:48]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
A little over two years later, Rabin would be dead, assassinated by Yagal Amir, a Jewish law student who believed Rabin was a traitor who deserved to die. A religious fanatic who embraced the kinds of ideas that Israel's current settler dominated government embraces.
- [05:05]
Narrator/Documentary Voice
Gunman slipped through and fired at point blank range. Police have the apparent assassin in custody. He's described as a law student in his 20s and as affiliated with radical Jewish settlers.
- [05:17]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
This is an AP video of Amir appearing in court shortly after the assassination. Amir defiantly says after every Palestinian terrorist attack, there are memorials like the one for Rabin with candles and stones every time the country is filled with them. They were victims of peace. Not willingly, but forced. Victims of peace. What kind of peace is this? He said, this is separation, not peace. This time, justice was done. I am nobody's messenger. I acted alone.
- [05:52]
Narrator/Documentary Voice
But I want the world to remember what Prime Minister Rabin said here at the White House barely one month ago. And I Quote, we should not let the land flowing with milk and honey become a land flowing with blood and tears. Don't let it happen now. It falls to us all, those in Israel, throughout the Middle east and around the world who yearn for and love peace to make sure that it doesn't happen.
- [06:30]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
The peace process did not die simultaneously with Yitzhak Rabin, but there had already been signs it might not succeed. Violence by spoilers on both sides.
- [06:40]
Now more about the American born and.
- [06:42]
Narrator/Documentary Voice
Educated gunman in today's murders. People who know him say he was dead set against the Israeli PLO peace process, filled with hate for Arabs and out for revenge.
- [06:53]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
Dr. Baruch Goldstein was born and raised in this Brooklyn, New York neighborhood. He was very religious with a wife and four kids and a passion for Israel. Eleven years ago, he emigrated to Israel. We may never know what turned Baruch Goldstein, a doctor, a healer, into a mass murderer. But there are some clues.
- [07:13]
Yitzhak Rabin (Archive Footage)
It's very difficult to stop a terrorist.
- [07:15]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
Coming to commit a suicide and to plant a bomb or whatever.
- [07:20]
Security branches are doing their utmost.
- [07:30]
The election of Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996. He had opposed the Oslo process and had attended a right wing rally sometime before Rabin's murder. That would go down in infamy.
- [07:41]
Well, it seems very difficult, surely, for you to engage in the peace process if in opposition you're prepared to take a stance like that on Sunday where you personally appeared above a slogan saying death to Arafat.
- [07:54]
Benjamin Netanyahu
You know, I found out about that slogan just today when a member of my party said to me, you know, they keep talking about the slogan. And I said, where is the slogan? He said, it was right under you. And I said, I wish I had known because I would have thrown it out.
- [08:08]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
But Netanyahu did not last long as Prime Minister Ehud Barak succeeded him in 1999 and continued to work with Arafat and Bill Clinton to complete the process begun in 1993.
- [08:19]
Narrator/Documentary Voice
After 14 days of intensive negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, I have concluded with regret that they will not be able to reach an agreement at this time.
- [08:29]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
Well, that was Camp David. In the last year of Clinton's presidency, Israelis and Palestinians have never been as close to resolving their conflict as they were in those heady days of the early 1990s, which is why the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin remains so important. To understand he was killed by someone who, like Israel's current leaders, view a Palestinian state not as the way to peace, but as a catastrophe for the state of Israel. Dan Effron was a Journalist for Reuters who attended the peace rally where rabin was killed 30 Novembers ago. Today he is the executive editor of Foreign Policy and the author of a remarkable book, Killing a the Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel. Our conversation next to Skip Ads Tap. Subscribe now in the show notes Dan Efron. Welcome to the podcast.
- [09:21]
Hi, Martin. Thanks. Thanks for having me on.
- [09:23]
It is your first time. We're delighted to have you. And there's nothing like an anniversary to focus our minds on a subject we're definitely still living with, the consequences of what happened in November 1995. Who was Yitzhak Rabin before he became prime minister of Israel the second time?
- [09:42]
Yeah, Yitzhak Rabin was a military man for decades. He made his career in the military and he rose the ranks until he became the chief of staff of the Israeli military, the head of the army, essentially. And I think it was 1964 when he became chief of staff. And then in 1967, there was that seminal event that really changed the course of the region. That was the Six Day War, the June War of 1967. That was when Israel captured the west bank and Gaza and the Sinai Desert and the Golan Heights. Rabin commanded the army. It was a big victory for Israel, and he was credited for that victory and eventually made his way into politics. There's a tradition of that in Israel, generals retiring and going into politics. He became prime minister in the 70s fairly quickly, didn't do well as prime minister his first time around, got caught up in a corruption scandal, a fairly minor corruption scandal, and had to resign. And there's a period where he's in the political wilderness, or something like the political wilderness. He's sort of in and out of governments in the 80s, and then he mounts a comeback and he wins an election as the head of the Labour Party in 1992. And that's the period we're talking about. That's the period of the book, and it's the period where he's prime minister trying to do these peace deals with Israel's neighbors.
- [11:04]
1992, labor had been out of power for quite a bit, right?
- [11:08]
Labor had been mostly out of power, but had taken part in these big unity governments, these broad coalition governments in the 80s for some of that period. And in that time when labor was sort of a junior partner in those coalitions, Rabin was in the government and he was the defense minister, the defense secretary is the way we would refer to it here. And in fact, he was defense Minister during the first Palestinian uprising, the first intifada that breaks out in 1987. And this is essentially Palestinians across all walks of life for the first time really staging big protests against Israeli occupation and demanding greater measures of freedom under Israeli military rule.
- [11:56]
China was not driven by the plo. Arafat and the PLO were in exile. This was very much a grassroots protest movement and not nearly as violent or militarized as the second intifada. Rabin was no dove is what I'm getting at here. He had something called the break their bones policy. He was pretty harsh. Cracking down on the uprising, right?
- [12:17]
Yeah, the Israeli response to the first intifada, which, yeah, largely was not kinetic. These were commercial strikes, big protests, thousands and thousands of Palestinians in the streets, some rock, throwing, some petrol bombs, but mostly not kinetic. And yet the Israeli response was aggressive. And this was really the first organized protest against the occupation. I think the Israelis took it seriously and were worried that this could be troublesome for Israeli policy. And so the Israeli response involved deportations, mass arrests, cracking down on general strikes, and then in cases where Palestinians were throwing stones or throwing petrol bombs, engaging physically and exerting violence on Palestinian protesters. And yeah, there was. I don't know if it was a formal or informal policy of breaking the bones of protesters. Some people attribute that policy to Rabin. In fact, one of the people I interviewed actually said he heard Rabin at some point speak to the military and say, this is what the policy should be. Others say it wasn't Rabin's policy. It was something that was attributed to him, but it was part of the culture of the time and he was the Defense Minister at the time.
- [13:32]
And we'll move on from his biography here, but a couple of more important and relevant points before we get to the Oslo years. He was considered a hero, correct, because of his leadership in the Six Day War, June 1967, in a country that venerates its military leaders. He was also the first Israeli born prime minister, right?
- [13:52]
Yeah, that's right. He was born in Palestine before 1948, before the founding of Israel. So other Israeli politicians before him were people who were born in Europe or elsewhere. He was venerated as a war hero because of the 1967 war and Israeli generals and especially generals who reached the rank that he did have a very high profile in Israel. People know their names. People have photos of the chief of Staff on their wall. Certainly in the 60s and 70s, Rabin was seen as a big war hero in 67.
- [14:28]
How did he feel about the occupation that Followed.
- [14:32]
I don't know that Israelis had kind of well defined feelings, at least in the first years after 1967. I think some Israelis thought that this territory that Israel had captured could be used as a bargaining chip with the Arab states. You know, Israel would give the land back and in exchange would get peace deals with Egypt and Syria and Jordan and other countries. That didn't happen. Arab states were not interested in negotiating with Israel. And then within, I would say the first months or years after 67, after the military occupation began, you see these movements of Israelis outside the government, but also sometimes inside the government, Israelis saying, well, this territory is part of the Promised Land, part of biblical Israel, and it's territory we shouldn't part with and should hang onto.
- [15:25]
Because Rabin was no fan of the settlers. Quoting your book here on page 68 in the memoir he published in 1979. So 12 years after 67, Rabin wrote the settlers had undermined Israel's long term well being by deliberately planting themselves in Palestinian populated areas. He described them as a cancer in the body of Israeli democracy. And he still felt that way in the 1990s. Right?
- [15:56]
Yeah. Rabin was no fan of the settlers. He certainly wasn't on the other side of the map. He certainly wasn't a leftist. I don't think of Rabin as a humanist. So his opposition to the idea of maintaining Israeli rule over the Palestinians or hanging on to the west bank in Gaza, it didn't evolve out of some humanist ideas about Palestinians and the rights that they should be accorded. It was much more pragmatic. In other words, I think Rabin saw this situation of keeping millions of Palestinians under military rule as unsustainable. Yes. And that's what drove him.
- [16:33]
He saw that as the source of the friction of the violence and of a problem that would not end until something was done about it. So, speaking of which, who was Igal Amir? He was not a settler, but he was opposed to negotiations over the west bank, among other things. Who was Yigal Amir?
- [16:52]
Yeah. Galimir is a young man in his 20s, around the time of the Oslo process. So around the time that Rabin is getting elected in 1992 and starting to make these peace moves. Galimir is in his early 20s and he's in law school. He's a young law student and he's not a settler, but he comes from that milieu. He grows up in a religious environment, in a religious home. He goes to school in religious seminaries. And he is very, very religious and also very extreme. In his political views, specifically about what Israel should do with the west bank in Gaza, he refers to the west bank by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria. And for Igal Amir and many people on the right or the religious right in Israel at the time and today, the idea of giving up any territory to Palestinians or to other Arabs really was heresy. It went against the Bible in that.
- [17:51]
They share something in common with Hamas. I hope you don't mind that analogy. There obviously are differences between the two. But no compromise over the land. It's ours because our God said it belongs to us.
- [18:04]
Yeah, no compromise. Often rooted in religious texts. Yes. And then also minorities within their own societies who have, let's say, outsized power to obstruct any attempt at reconciliation.
- [18:19]
Yeah. As I read your book, I was fascinated at that dynamic because the Oslo Accords were unpopular in general on, say, the Israeli right. But of that portion of society, I mean, how many people could have been considered extremists? It seems like it was a small number.
- [18:37]
Certainly it was a lot smaller than it is today. In other words, Israel was a more centrist country, a more centrist society. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the idea of coexistence after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. You remember that scene at the White House lawn? President Clinton, Rabin, Arafat Clinton kind of nudging the two of them together. And it's a little bit hard to conceive of today because of all the things that have happened since and certainly the things that have happened in the past two years. But there were joint patrols among Israeli and Palestinian soldiers on the west bank as part of the Oslo process. There were groups that were meeting each other from the ground up that were victims of violence on one side, victims of Palestinian violence, sitting down and meeting with victims of Israeli violence. So it was a kind of top down thing and also a bottom up thing. And at least in the first year, I would say that there was a lot of excitement in Israeli society about Oslo.
- [19:43]
Yeah. It helped open up Israel to other countries after some relative isolation. Your book is remarkable in its detail, how you retrace Yagalomir's steps day to day. The detail about Rabin's daily routine and what he was up to and how these two figures intersect ultimately in November of 1995. Rabin, of course, had never heard of and knew who Yagalomir was. But Amir was obsessed with this man to the point where he was willing to kill him. Rabin was unpopular on that in that segment of Israeli society. But most people weren't willing to kill the man, even if they would say something like, oh, Rabin's a traitor. He deserves to die. About Oslo, Rabin initially wasn't very optimistic about this. Right.
- [20:28]
Rabin didn't initiate the Oslo process. There were other people in lower levels of government who were engaging in what, what we think of as Track 2 negotiations, essentially unofficial negotiations. At some point, those negotiations in Oslo started to feel real to these people. And they brought in Israel's Foreign Minister Peres. Shimon Peres told him about it. And at some point, Paris brought the package of things to Rabin. And this was this pivotal moment because Rabin could have said no, because there was a rivalry, a long standing rivalry between Rabin and Paris. So for that reason alone, Rabin could have turned it down. But he saw something in the process that felt like it had potential and said yes to the Oslo process, but reluctantly. I think he was very suspicious of the plo. And the leader of the plo, Yasser Arafat, worried about whether compromising on territory would be undermining Israel's security. Rabin was all about security as a military man, you know, I would say he went into it reluctantly. There was a kind of, let's see what happens.
- [21:38]
For obvious reasons, he detested Arafat. The scene from 1993 at the signing on the White House lawn. I've played these clips in my podcast many times. Or Rabin is on the lawn giving his remark, saying how difficult this would be, how difficult it would be to swallow for so many Israelis, so many Jewish families who have lost loved ones to terrorism over the decades.
- [22:00]
Yitzhak Rabin (Archive Footage)
It is certainly not easy for the families of the victims of the wars, violence, terror, whose pain will never heal. For the many thousands who defended our lives in their own and have even sacrificed their lives for our own, for them, this ceremony has come too late. Today on the eve of an opportunity, opportunity for peace and perhaps end of violence and wars. We remember each and every one of them with everlasting love.
- [22:48]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
But eventually Rabin and Arafat have, if not a warm relationship. They're able to work together. They actually establish some trust. Right?
- [22:57]
Yeah, it took some time, but they established what I would think of as a, as a working relationship. And I think it was in part because these two men were founders of their movements, of the founding generation of the Israeli and Palestinian national movements. And I think that Rabin certainly knew that if there was a way to get Palestinians to make compromises, it would be by getting this revered leader of The Palestinians to sign on the dotted line, to renounce violence, to accept the state of Israel.
- [23:30]
Because this is related to the bigger picture about spoilers. Almost immediately after the Oslo signing, violence starts to happen. And that leads to people in the middle who are willing to have negotiations and be conciliatory saying, wait, why are we doing this? You know, every time we extend our arm, we're repaid with a suicide bomber or a shooting incident, or Baruch Goldstein, who opened fire on Muslims who are worshiping at a holy site in 1994 and killed 29 of them. And then there is Hamas suicide bombings. So Arafat's important here because there was this issue with him. Is he capable of stopping the spoilers whether he wants to or not. There's also the question of whether he had the power to do it right, because he didn't control everything, and he wasn't even in Gaza until when? 94.
- [24:16]
That's right. You know, the Oslo process was designed as a staged process, and it was negotiations that were going to take place over years. Every few months, there would be a new partial agreement that would establish the parameters of the next stage. And I think that the negotiators, at least on the Israeli side, some of them in retrospect, see that as the flaw in the process. What it meant was it dragged the process out and it allowed time for the hardliners, the extremists on both sides, to play the role of spoilers. And it doesn't take much. A little bit of violence on both sides can really turn Israelis and Palestinians against the process. And that's what happened in 94 and 95. Not all Palestinians, maybe not even a majority. Same with the Israelis. But they were teetering. If you looked at opinion polls Among Israelis in 1995, for instance, after periods of Palestinian attacks on Israelis, it was about 50. 50. About half the country still supported the Oslo process, still supported Rabin. But half the country, including people who, you know, maybe had been supporters of Oslo, were starting to oppose it. We're starting to say this is. This isn't a peace process. It's a process that has delivered violence.
- [25:32]
Greater amounts of violence, because the spoilers knew by doing what they were doing, they could derail the whole thing. And to Yagal Amir killing Rabin himself, he believed that would be it for the Oslo process, because this traitor, in his view, was going to give away land to people who don't deserve it. The Palestinians, in Amir's view.
- [25:51]
Yeah. Amir viewed Rabin as unique in terms of his moment in History, because he had been a military man, because he had been a war hero, and because he was the chief of staff when Israel captured these very territories, the west bank and Gaza, that were now up for negotiation, that he had the status in Israeli society to say, israel can afford to give back at least parts of this territory and still maintain its own security. So he had this stature that allowed him to proceed to Yigal Amir. That meant that if you get rid of Rabin, if you get him out of the way, it would be much harder for other Israeli leaders to get Israelis on board for these kinds of deep, territorial compromises.
- [26:38]
Page 130 of your book, you quote Rabin. I am prepared to fight them, Hamas to the finish, because they're the enemies of Israel, the enemies of peace. But I must also consider what next? What is the solution? Should it be separation between the Palestinians and Israel, or a continued blurring of the line, continuing to create the conditions that led to fanaticism among the Palestinians in the first place? You quote him as saying, Rabin admitted. You go on to say there was little Israel's security agencies could do against a lone suicide bomber bent on destruction, or, in the case of Amir, a gunman. But, you know, you also make the point in your book that it's wrong to look at somebody like Yagal Amir, who's still in prison today, still alive, as, like, a lone wolf. He was a product of a certain climate. And at this time, you know, these. These are the people, in my view, who are running the Israeli government today, the religious nationalist extremists, the settlers. At the time, Amir was consulting with rabbis about this, right. Am I allowed to kill the prime minister of Israel? And some of the rabbis at the time said, yes.
- [27:44]
Apparently, some of the rabbis said, yes.
- [27:46]
A minority.
- [27:46]
That's right.
- [27:47]
A very small minority, but still, Yeah.
- [27:49]
I mean, we don't know exactly. Amir was interrogated about this issue. He didn't name names. He sort of alluded to the idea that he had rabbinical authority. But certainly he was living in a milieu that saw Rabin as a traitor and referred to Rabin as a traitor, and even talked about certain religious edicts that allow people to kill traitors who are exposing Jews to danger. And that's the way he viewed Rabin, and that's the way he viewed the Oslo process. This would be a calamity for the Jewish people. It would end up killing many Jews and compromising on core tenets, core religious tenets. And therefore, it was not only allowed, it was not only allowable to kill him, but it was actually a mitzvah. It was the right thing to do.
- [28:38]
You mentioned two words here, two terms, Din rodef and din moser. Pardon my poor pronunciation. Won't you explain what those are briefly?
- [28:47]
Yeah. Those are essentially religious edicts that talk about circumstances in which a person is allowed to kill another person. And in both cases, the rationale, what justifies allowing that killing is the person is opening up Jews to danger, either by handing them over to the enemies or by allowing some circumstance where somebody might kill members of a Jewish community, maybe the entire community. And rabbis use these two edicts to talk about this idea that Rabin, it wasn't quite as literal as people should go out and kill him, but that there might be a religious justification to stopping Rabin, even at the price of his own death.
- [29:32]
There was a concern about the rhetoric as well.
- [29:35]
Narrator/Documentary Voice
Right.
- [29:35]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
Comparing Rabin to all Arafat cartoons or pictures of him that were altered to make him look like an Arab wearing the Arab scarf, the Palestinian scarf. Comparing him to Nazis as well.
- [29:47]
Yeah. In large protests by the right, by people who are opposed to the Oslo process. It was, I would say, even common to see people holding up posters of Rabin dressed in a kafiyeh or Rabein dressed in an SS uniform. And that was part of this campaign, part of this incitement against Rabin that preceded the murder.
- [30:11]
It gives you an idea of just how vehemently people would oppose what maybe to you and I, is a solution. The two state solution is a catastrophe for them. But how did Rabin feel about this? I mean, he saw it. He was a hard guy to read, and I read your book, but he seemed to be a hard guy to read.
- [30:28]
I think Rabin, to the extent that he was briefed on intelligence reports about what's going on on the Israeli right or the far right, and the possibility of violence, internal violence, civil war, violence directed at him. I think he largely was skeptical when his protection, when his bodyguards would ask him to wear a bulletproof vest, he didn't like that. Mostly he said no, rejected it, didn't.
- [30:57]
Want to go in the armored car either. That they bought for him.
- [31:00]
That's right. At some point, they imported an armored Cadillac, the kind that American presidents that were driven around in here in the United States. He didn't like it. It felt too expensive, too rich, too cumbersome. And also, this was a different time in Israel. Certainly Netanyahu these days has all the measures, all the protections around him that you would see in other countries in The United States as well. Rabin used to walk in the morning from his apartment in Tel Aviv to the tennis court a few blocks away, where he liked to play tennis on a Saturday morning, escorted by one bodyguard. And he didn't even like the bodyguard trailing too closely. That is the kind of thing that changed in 1995 after the assassination. It changed quickly and very, very dramatically.
- [31:50]
Yeah, Yagal Amir and his brother were casing the neighborhood. There were three times where Amir almost brought himself to kill or take a shot at Rabin, but he didn't manage to, or, you know, the circumstances didn't work out in his favor. During this key time, 94 into 95, the internal security services are not just worried about Hamas and Palestinian violence. They start to turn their attention more and more towards this vehemence on the Israeli right, among the settlers, among the nationalist, religious segment of society. They even get a tip there's an internal security service called, I think Shabbar Shabak, some Yemeni guy, a guy of Yemeni extraction with curly hair. It's not really a specific description of the man, but there's a tip that's passed along to the authorities that this guy wants to shoot the Prime Minister. But it doesn't go, and it doesn't go far enough. I don't want to say it didn't go anywhere, but it didn't go far enough.
- [32:46]
You know, I had access to the transcripts of the interrogation of Igal Amir when I was writing the book where he describes, because he's of course, very proud of the murder and proud of having stalked Rabin for a two year period. So he describes the places he went where he knew that Rabin was going to appear or speak in public or something like that. And he describes why on these earlier incidents, somehow he doesn't quite get a chance to get close enough until that rally in 95. But along the way, intelligence does pick up tidbits, maybe not specifically about what he's doing, but about currents on the far right who might assassinate Rabin. And even as the intelligence is talking about it, even as the Secret service people around Rabin are aware of this. And I interviewed some of those Secret Service people who protected Rabin. The dominant thinking was that the threat posed to Israelis and to Israeli politicians, specifically that threat emanated from the Arab side, from Palestinians and from Arabs. And so, you know, these bodyguards told me that when they scanned an audience, they were looking for Arabs. When they talked about threats, they were looking for threats that were emanating from the west bank from Palestinian communities. It was very hard to absorb the idea that an Israeli Jew might be a threat to an Israeli prime minister.
- [34:15]
And Amir's friends heard him repeatedly bluster about how he wanted to kill Rabin. Except for one, who you identify in the book, they didn't take him seriously. You know, I've been thinking about this since reading the book and preparing to speak to you. You know, how would I react if I knew somebody who was talking about this all the time? I'd like to think I would report that person to the FBI. But I guess when you're in that milieu and there are a lot of people ranting and raving about Rabin every day, he's a traitor. He's a this and that, maybe you don't take somebody like Yagal Amir seriously.
- [34:48]
I think that was the issue. I think Amir was a bluster. I think he was a little bit of a blowhard. He talked about himself a lot. He liked to bring a gun to the university and show it off. And I think people thought, oh, this is this guy's. There's a lot of talk here and no action. And I think they also thought that if they did report him, and really he was just a big talker, they would get him in trouble, of course, in retrospect. And I interviewed people who talked about the regret that they felt for not reporting it.
- [35:20]
So another connection to today, Benjamin Netanyahu. It's 1995. He attends and speaks at a rally. This is prior to the peace rally where Rabin was shot. Netanyahu, a member of Likud, he's at this rally, a ferocious rally on the right with some of the imagery we discussed before. Rabin's a Nazi. The people who are behind Oslo are traitors. Leah Rabin, Yitzhak Rabin's wife, and many others accused Netanyahu of fueling this climate of incitement. What's your judgment there? Was Netanyahu responsible for fueling the incitement?
- [35:56]
Yeah, I have a kind of nuanced take on this. So I was at the rally where Rabin was assassinated. I was not at that rally that preceded it. It was a few weeks earlier, if I'm not mistaken. And it was a rally of the right against Oslo. That's right. Netanyahu spoke at that rally. And just to frame this, Netanyahu was somewhat of a newcomer to Israeli politics. A year later, he would already be Israeli prime minister. And then we, of course, think of him as the dominant political figure of the last 30 years. In Israeli politics that is still in the future for him. But at this point he's a guy who's got a lot of political potential. That's how people see him. But they also view him as a bit of a lightweight. He's a guy, have spent a lot of years in the United States, his English is very polished. People view him in Israel a little bit as the American interloper in Israeli politics. And I think to make his bones as a candidate, as a rising politician, his rhetoric is very aggressive and violent against Rabin at times. There's no doubt about that. I think when people talk about incitement, it certainly includes some of the things that he said about Rabin, against Rabin in that period. I will say that I interviewed people in Yugal Amir family extensively, including his brother who's a co conspirator. I couldn't interview Gallimir. Israel doesn't allow prison cell interviews. But I got a real sense for Amir, for the assassin. A single minded guy, very self assured. I don't think he needed to hear Netanyahu talk about the dangers that Rabin posed to Israel in order to feel that he's allowed to kill Rabin. I think he very much believed that. He knew the Bible, he knew the verses, he was aware of what is taught in the seminaries and that based on that idea alone, he was authorized to go out and kill Rabin.
- [37:51]
Benjamin Netanyahu
The Israeli government is telling the Israeli people, look, we're not going to create a Palestinian state. We want autonomy. Unfortunately, what we're seeing is that from the Gaza example, Gaza is in fact in all but a name now, a Palestinian state. And the same is likely to happen in the west bank, which, as you know, dominates Israel. Israel without the west bank is 10 miles wide on a narrow coastal plain where 75% of our people huddle along a very crowded Mediterranean shore. Yasser Arafat has said time and again, surely not on British television, that what he intends to do, as he said today in Jericho, by the way, is to establish a state with Jerusalem as its capital and then to proceed to phase two to liquidate this truncated, vulnerable Israel. And this is what we oppose to. We don't oppose peace, we want peace. What we'd like to see is autonomy and not a state and something that we can defend.
- [38:58]
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Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
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Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
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Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
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Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
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Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
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- [40:55]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
$830 required Visit T mobile.com these withdrawals that were taking place under the Oslo time frame or the Oslo architecture really didn't touch the settlers. Rabin, who comes to be a big supporter of the peace process when it gets underway, he was afraid to do even the smallest evacuation of the settlers. What explained their power? Why were they so afraid to touch the settlers? And you know, forget about it. Today there's what, almost a million settlers on the west bank at that time there weren't that many.
- [41:25]
Right? It's a much smaller community. 130,000 settlers in the West Bank. Jewish settlers in the west bank at the time. But Very well organized politically, and they wield political power beyond their numbers. But it's a little more complicated than that. Rabin, at the beginning of the Oslo process and throughout the two year period of negotiations, never lets on about the end game. He never articulates what he hopes would be the end of the negotiation. Will Israel withdraw entirely from the west bank and Gaza and allow Palestinians to create a state of their own? Will it be something less than a state? Will it be a partial withdrawal? All those things he keeps very close to his vestige. I think he feels that by divulging any of it, you lose some of your leverage in the negotiating room, in the negotiating table. And I think, again, this is one of the things that negotiators point to as a mistake in retrospect. You have to know what you're going for, and you have to drive toward that goal aggressively, assertively, from the get go. And because of this, what he says to the settlers is, until we reach a final deal, I'm not going to withdraw, I'm not going to evacuate your communities, any of them, even the extremist ones, even the ones that were built provocatively directly adjacent to Palestinian cities and communities as an attempt to hem in these Palestinian communities, I'm not going to touch those settlements until we reach a final deal. And perversely, what happens is part of the Oslo process allows Palestinians to control their own cities and to police their own cities. And so the settlers say, well, now there are armed Palestinians in these cities that we used to drive through in order to get to our settlements. And Rabin says, well, you know what? I will build bypass for that. Go around the Palestinian cities so you can get to your settlement without going through them. But these bypass roads make it so easy to get from Israel proper to the settlements that it leads to a kind of growth of the settler community.
- [43:27]
Not religious or nationalist fanatics, just ordinary Israelis who want cheap property. So. And they go, exactly. Yeah. So you were at the 95 rally where Rabin was shot. Do you remember it? Well?
- [43:39]
I do remember it well. I was a journalist for Reuters and our bureau was in Jerusalem, but I was the one reporter who lived in Tel Aviv. And the rally was in Tel Aviv. And so I was asked to attend. And ordinarily, for foreign correspondents, rallies internally are not a big news event. But precisely because it wasn't entirely clear whether in 95, Rabin still had the support of the majority of Israelis for his peace agreements, that rally was seen as a litmus test. And there was a Lot of speculation, a lot of question in the weeks leading up to the rally, would he get a big crowd? And in fact, Rabin himself was concerned that it would end up being small and it would reflect this kind of waning support for his diplomacy. But the opposite was true. And it was very clear from the beginning. I remember walking to the rally and seeing Israelis in very large numbers streaming to the square from all the side streets. That square where the rally was taking place was completely packed, over 100,000 people, probably a good deal more than 100,000 people. And then a kind of joyous celebration of these agreements. Israel had just signed the second stage of the Oslo courts, Oslo 2. That meant a deeper Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank. It also meant Israelis and Palestinians were taking one more step towards some kind of reconciliation. And for Israelis who supported that deal, it was a joyous moment, certainly throughout the evening, until the very end when Rabin was shot.
- [45:23]
Yeah, you know, there's a video of this Frontline, the PBS documentary. You're actually in that documentary. They have video of Rabin walking off the stage, as you said, and you could see Yagalomir in a blue shirt come right behind him and shoot him in the back. I mean, there was hardly any security around. So is it too simple to say that the peace process died with Yitzhak Rabin?
- [45:46]
It probably is a simplification. I don't know that had Rabin survived, the situation would have developed into a full blown peace agreement. It's very hard to know. And I think this is what we contend with as we go back and try to understand historical moments. Where would it have gone had this thing happened or had this thing not happened? I'm quite sure that it's been 30 years that in all the years since, there hasn't been a moment where Israelis and Palestinians were closer than they were at the time. And I don't think there have been Israeli and Palestinian leaders who had the stature to do it since then, as Rabin and Arafat did. So that was, in retrospect, that was probably the moment. It was either going to happen then or it was going to become a lot harder. And if you look at the opposition on both sides, the settlers, the religious right in Israel on the Israeli side, the hardliners on the Palestinian side, Hamas and others, they were fairly small. They were minorities in their respective communities. It's really only later that the settlement movement becomes very big and very powerful. And same with Hamas.
- [47:03]
Over the years, as I mentioned, Yugal Amir was not a settler but the ideas are just his attitude, his worldview that he subscribed to. That is the worldview of the people in charge of the Israeli government today, is it not?
- [47:16]
Well, I'll say some of the people who were involved in those protests, those big protests at the time, including some of the most provocative things that were said and done on the right and the far right during the Rabin era against Rabin, are in the government or were in the government now for some period of time alongside Netanyahu. And we're talking about people who are much more extreme, much more militant than Netanyahu. Part of what we have seen is a kind of mainstreaming of the far right in Israel. That's been a slow process over decades, but it was accelerated in the last couple of years as Netanyahu brought these far right parties into his coalition.
- [47:56]
And is Amir a hero to some people?
- [47:59]
Certainly to some people. Polls over the years have talked about 25% of Israelis, 30% of Israelis think he should be released from prison or view what he did, at least as something that was necessary in order to prevent calamity. If not outright enthusiastic about the assassination.
- [48:19]
What'S Rabin's legacy like today? I know he was not a dove, but he was willing to take chances to do what was right, to end a problem that he correctly identified the sources of the fanaticism on the Palestinian side. Is he still revered today or even talked about much?
- [48:37]
I think Rabin is largely forgotten. And I think Rabin's legacy has been tarnished. And I think it's because he didn't succeed in getting to that peace agreement. In other words, he was killed before a final deal could be reached between Israelis and Palestinians. And in some ways, I have thought about what are analogies between the assassination in Israel and political situations in the United States. And I do think a fair bit about the assassination of Lincoln. And I've asked myself, why is Lincoln regarded as one of our best presidents? And Rabin in Israel has largely been forgotten. And I think it's because Lincoln managed to end the war and win the war and then was killed and Rabin was assassinated before he could win the peace. You know, for Israelis who didn't like Oslo, they can say it never would have worked. And for Israelis who did, who supported it, it just never came to fruition.
- [49:38]
Yeah, the peace process is in disrepute today on both sides of the divide. The subtitle of your book is the Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel. Israel was being remade, remarkably unimaginable based on the decades of hostility between Jews and Palestinians. But it's been remade in the wrong direction, I would say. And that goes again for both sides of the divide. The two sides are as far apart as they've ever been on a two state solution. I mean, what state would the Palestinians get with Gaza in rubble? Not to be preachy here, Dan, but Gaza is in rubble and there are, as I said before, close to a million settlers. It's probably more like 800,000 on the West Bank. There is no state to be had.
- [50:20]
It's certainly hard to imagine, certainly post October 7th. I mean, that's a pivot that has changed things very dramatically. But, you know, assassinations aren't often successful even when the target is killed, because they tend to create a backlash against the assassin. They tend to actually create support for the person who is killed. That didn't happen with Rabin, at least not a lasting rallying around the peace process and around Rabin's ideas. It happened for a few months, but then Netanyahu is elected and the country shifts. And it's been this gradual shift over 30 years since then. And so I think of the Rabin assassination in historical terms, not just in Israel, but in the history of assassinations as one of the most successful ones.
- [51:05]
Narrator/Documentary Voice
Now it falls to all of us who love peace and all of us who loved him, to carry on the struggle to which he gave life and for which he gave his life. He cleared the path and his spirit continues to light away. His spirit lives on in the growing peace between Israel and her neighbors. It lives in the eyes of the children, the Jewish and the Arab children, who are leaving behind a past of fear for a future of hope. It lives on in the promise of true security. So let me say to the people of Israel, even in your hour of darkness, his spirit lives on. And so you must not lose your spirit. Look at what you have accomplished. Making a once barren desert bloom, building a thriving democracy in a hostile terrain, winning battles and wars, and now winning the peace which is the only enduring victory. Your prime minister was a martyr for peace, but he was a victim of hate. Surely we must learn from his martyrdom that if people cannot let go of the hatred of their enemies, they risk sowing the seeds of hatred among themselves.
- [52:35]
Martin DeCaro (Host/Interviewer)
On the next episode of History as it Happens, we'll return to the subject of political lineages, the Party of Lincoln with Jim Oaks. That is next. As we report History as it Happens, make sure to sign up for my newsletter. It is free. Just go to Substack and search for history as is it. It happens.
- [52:55]
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