Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1998, Pages 30, 111-112

The Ostrovsky Files—Part II

Commission Report Leaks Make Strong Case for Complicity of Shabak Officers in Rabin Assassination

By Victor Ostrovsky

On Nov. 5, 1995, a bullet fired by a Jewish zealot killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and shattered the peace process. The darkness that followed covered not just the Middle East, but the hearts of honest people the world over. Hopes for peaceful coexistence in this blood-soaked region faded once more.

At first there was anger and shock, and the blame for the murder was laid squarely at the feet of Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel's Likud Party, and his thugs, who had shamelessly accused Rabin of treason and of betraying Israel's security to perfidious terrorists.

Netanyahu, who had arrived at the center of the Israeli political arena with a shrouded personal history and questionable moral reputation, riding on the coattails of his dead brother, had the audacity to question Rabin's motivation. Netanyahu had seized control of the Likud Party by manipulation (initiating direct elections to choose party candidates for the Knesset, a method he now wants to change back as it no longer suits his needs). He was the same man who had participated shamelessly in demonstrations where his supporters carried Rabin's image in an SS uniform over the slogan "death to the traitor." He had inflamed Tel Aviv crowds with his promises to reverse the Oslo agreement and never to shake Arafat's hand. He did not even flinch when a mock coffin bearing Rabin's name was carried during one of his rallies only a few feet from where he stood shaking the hands of members of the chanting crowd.

Despite it all there was a link missing. True, there was little doubt that the killer drew his moral support from Netanyahu's declarations. There was little doubt that had the killer not known there existed an alternative to Rabin, willing to turn back the pages of history, there would be little point in killing the prime minister. But still there had to be more than that to accuse anyone of instigating the murder.

Further, for such an act to be successful there had to be a major flaw in the vast organization entrusted with protecting Israel's prime minister. There had to be a hole in the protective wall built around him by Israel's secret service, the Shabak. Or were reasonable people forced to conclude that the tragedy was simply the result of a series of unrelated misadventures?

Before Rabin's blood dried on the pavement, thousands of grieving Israelis found themselves out on the streets vowing to carry on the legacy of their fallen hero. They committed themselves not to let his dream die with him. They would hold on to the dream and not let his death be in vain. The killer was not going to stop the process and blow out the candle of hope.

Rabin's supporters were remorseful for sitting by idly as the warmongers of the Likud Party hounded the prime minister unrelentingly. They had demonstrated outside his house day and night, chanting, "Rabin traitor, Rabin murderer."

Labor Party leaders vowed that terror was not going to turn back the pages of history and that the peace process had gained a momentum that could not be stopped. But it was stopped—with the election of Binyamin Netanyahu in May 1996.

Background to Murder

The soil had been well cultivated to sprout the killer. The worst-case scenario had happened, and the pages of history were in fact turned back. Now the expectation of peace is but a fleeting memory, so far out of reach it is hard to believe it ever existed.

But it did. And until recently the things that took place to destroy it were only whispered about in back rooms of the security organizations.

Two years have passed since Rabin's murder, and increasingly it is clear that Rabin was not killed by a crazed zealot gunman alone. Rabin was murdered in a well-orchestrated assassination carried out by extremist right-wing officers of the Shabak. The man sitting in jail is only a puppet triggerman, the kind a clever agitator could get to do just about anything.

They killed Rabin because they knew that only he, with his military background and national stature, could beat Netanyahu. Labor could put forth no other leader to stop the young opportunist who would turn his facile tongue to any task that would advance his political career. With Rabin out of the way, Israel's dogs of war could scuttle the peace process and return "fortress Israel" to its glory.

They believed Netanyahu could drag his feet in endless and fruitless negotiations with the Palestinians over every inch of land, while at the same time cementing economic cooperation with the nations of the region to bolster Israel's economy.

More Than A Conspiracy Theory

A deluge of conspiracy theories follows just about every assassination of a national figure. In most cases the leader's own national security agency is blamed for the killing. More often than not these are just groundless speculations. In this scenario, however, there are far too many verified facts to be dismissed as accidental.

We would probably never have learned the secret details of the events that preceded the assassination, and of the players who participated in it, had it not been for Netanyahu's compulsion to deflect the blame from himself by laying it at the doorstep of the Shabak.

It is the prime minister of Israel, who inherited the leadership after causing the assassination, who has provided the missing links. In November, after his blunder in Amman, Netanyahu ordered secret segments of the findings of the Shamgar Commission that investigated the assassination of Rabin (the Israeli equivalent of the Warren Commission) made public in order to prove the responsibility of the Shabak for the murder. In fact, the committee's findings are astonishing.

While Rabin was on the stage, at the outdoor peace rally where he died, he was not wearing a bulletproof vest even though there were widely known threats against his life. The fact that Rabin personally refused to wear a vest does not remove the responsibility from the head of Shabak. The latter should have made it clear to his prime minister that without the vest he could not be protected and thus the head of Shabak would have to resign. That, however, did not take place.

While Rabin was on the stage there was an area behind it that was considered a secure zone. That area should have been kept empty of anyone who was not part of the entourage or a member of the security detail.

Rabin's car was parked within the secure zone. The standard procedure in such events is that when the police are informed by radio that the prime minister is on his way down from the stage, they increase their vigil and inform the prime minister's driver that his passenger is on his way. Then they clear the road for the PM's car.

All this is designed so that the PM spends as little time as possible exposed to danger, and moves as quickly as possible into his bullet-proof car and out of the danger zone.

For some reason that no one can explain to this day, Yigal Amir, carrying a gun and with no clearance tag, was allowed to enter the secure zone and was not challenged by the police or other members of the security service who were present. In fact, according to an amateur video taken of the secure zone (and which captured the entire assassination on tape), Amir was seen walking back and forth and raised enough suspicion for the photographer to zoom in on him and follow him around for several minutes. Rabin's driver later testified that the drivers, too, were suspicious of Amir.

Then, when Rabin started to make his way down, the police did not get the message that he was coming and his sudden appearance in the security zone surprised them. But not the killer.

Amir followed the prime minister, drew his gun and shot Rabin from behind at point-blank range, pointing his gun in such a way that even if Rabin had been wearing a bulletproof vest it would have made no difference.

Then, as Yigal Amir was firing the fatal shots, someone in the immediate vicinity shouted, "Blanks, blanks!"

These words, heard by many in the secure zone, including Mrs. Leah Rabin, the PM's wife, are the most troubling bit of evidence pointing to Shabak's involvement in the chain of events.

Seconds later, after the assassin was wrestled to the ground, Mrs. Rabin was whisked away to a separate location by her Shabak bodyguards, who told her it was all just a training exercise. It was some time later that she was taken to the hospital where her husband lay dead.

Shabak's Modus Operandi

To understand the significance of these events, one has to understand the modus operandi of the Shabak. When dealing with potential terrorists, as was the case with the Jewish underground in Israel's earliest days and again since Israel's occupation of the West Bank, the Shabak will allow or even encourage the terrorists to take action. That is regarded as a controlled release of hostile energy.

The assumption is that there is a subcurrent in the population that is militant in its nature and that, sooner or later, will produce an act of terror. As there is no way for the security services to be everywhere at all times, they infiltrate the movement and then bring about the anticipated terrorist action when and where it is most convenient for the security services to act.

As they are "in on the act," the security service, i.e. the Shabak, can replace the real bullets with blanks or, as in the case of the Jewish underground, replace live explosives with duds. The Shabak believes that in doing so it creates the cause for an arrest while preventing an actual act of terrorism.

In the case of the Rabin assassination, however, Shabak seems to have been much more involved than it now cares to admit.

The key player in this dreadful chain of events was an extremist right-wing activist named Avishai Raviv. The Shabak recruited Raviv after Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach Party, to which Raviv belonged, was outlawed in Israel. Raviv, code-named Champagne, was instructed to start an activist right-wing cell and to gather the free-lance elements of the outlawed party around him.

He was given almost total immunity from prosecution for any illegal actions he might take, and he was provided with funds to carry out the plan. His first creation was an organization called YFJ, for "Young Fascist Jews." That organization advocated the expulsion of all Arabs from the undivided land of Israel and carried out occasional raids on Arab villages under the cover of darkness. During such raids, car tires were slashed and any Palestinians the raiders encountered would be beaten.

However, since the organization attracted only what the Shabak regarded as small potatoes, it eventually was dismantled.

Raviv went on working, however. This time, attempting to be more sophisticated, he created a new organization called Aiyal, an acronym for National Jewish Organization.

It was informer Raviv and his group who printed and distributed the infamous poster of Rabin in an SS uniform. They also were the ones who carried the mock coffin with Rabin's name on it during the Likud rallies. In fact, Netanyahu admitted recently, he remembers seeing Raviv standing by the speaker's podium inflaming the crowds with hateful rhetoric during an earlier election campaign appearance.

One of Raviv's new recruits was Yigal Amir, who had been working for the security services for several years before the assassination. He also had undergone security and weapons training by the Shabak prior to his stint as a Hebrew teacher in an eastern European country.

He had been sent there under the auspices of the Native organization, a Mossad front group created in the midst of the Cold War as an underground railway for Jews from the Soviet bloc who wanted to immigrate to Israel.

Amir and Raviv became almost inseparable companions. There are several witnesses who swear Amir told Raviv on more than one occasion that he wanted to kill Rabin, and that Raviv agreed it was a good idea.

All of these are details released from the secret part of the commission's report. Raviv's handlers, however, deny he told them about Amir's plans.

From my personal experience with Israel's secret organizations, however, I am quite sure Raviv confided in his handler. The handler, in turn, reported the information to his boss who, in turn, brought it up in the weekly policy meeting of the Shabak's top brass.

There, I believe, it was decided that Champagne should encourage Amir to carry out his plan and that Champagne should be the one to provide Amir with the weapon and the opportunity, thus creating a controlled release of hostility.

They agreed that once this action had been attempted but prevented there would be many more funds allocated to the protection of national leaders. Further, the Shabak's warning that there could be a Jewish assassin would no longer fall on deaf ears.

From this point things started to go awry. Someone in that meeting saw the opportunity to clear the way for the Likud to return to government. All that had to be done was replace the blanks Amir would have in his gun (he would believe he had real bullets) with real bullets and the job would be done.

Amir was instructed by Raviv to appear at a given time with the gun at the secure zone where someone—still unknown—let him in. It was probably the same man who believed it was all an exercise and who shouted "blanks, blanks!" when he heard the shots. Unfortunately, they were the real thing, and an era came to an end.

It appears that history can be turned back, and what appeared to be light at the end of the tunnel was extinguished by the winds of religious and nationalistic fanaticism.

In the two years since the assassination Netanyahu has bludgeoned the peace accord. But still he shook Arafat's hand and grudgingly returned most of Hebron to the Palestinians, while trying hard to scuttle the rest of the Oslo peace plan.

But there remain those Israeli right-wingers who have already tasted blood and have discovered a method to make murder work to their advantage.

They already have called Netanyahu a traitor and worse. In late November, several zealots, Netanyahu's former supporters, were arrested while hanging posters of him wearing Arab headgear. I hope he sleeps well at night.

And just to make a point...

What would you think if you heard that Lee Harvey Oswald had worked for the FBI at one point, and that he was getting his instructions from a known FBI informant who was on the FBI payroll when Kennedy was killed? And that the informant had been instructed by the FBI to agitate and bring about an act of terror that the FBI could control by switching the bullets with blanks. And then you heard that one of the secret service officers guarding the president had shouted "blanks, blanks!" as the assassination occurred, and that the president's wife had been told it was an exercise.

Would you still believe the lone gunman theory? That's exactly what Israelis are asked to believe in the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.