On November 9 Geula Amir told Israel Television that she noticed something strange in her son over the last half year. "I saw it on his face, the skinniness,". "He started to lose hair a bit. He was serious... We thought he had a problem with women. We thought that he is seeing someone and didn't want to tell us, so that he is eating himself inside."

But Geula Amir, a dynamic and willful woman, kept up a cheerful front. Malka Farkas, her neighbor, saw her on the street two days before the shooting. Geula Amir told Farkas that her daughter was getting married and that her son, Yigal, is doing well at law. "She was happy and said, 'What good children I have,'" says Farkas.

At 14, Yigal Amir began attending the New Colony, a high school in northern Tel Aviv that prepares boys for a life of strict black suits and sacred learning. He was a son of immigrants from Yemen in a school dominated by Jews of Lithuanian descent, but he managed to bridge one of Israel's great social divides, between the European and Middle Eastern Jewish communities. Students called him the "Yemenite genius", and teachers began urging him toward the rabbinate. Yigal Amir spent two years studying Talmud at Kerem D'Yavne Yeshiva, an hour south of Tel Aviv. At Kerem, Amir combined Jewish studies with service in the Israeli army. In C Company, 13th Battalion, of the Golani Brigade, his fellow soldiers called Amir "Big Head" as a mark of his zeal. He carried a rocket-propeller grenade launcher, a heavy load they gave to men with Amir's strong and wiry build.

After a year and a half in the Golani Brigade, Amir returned to Kerem D'Yavne to conclude his studies. But Amir planned to also combine a dual program in Bible studies and law. Just as Amir started his second year, Rabin stunned the world by shaking the hand of Yasser Arafat at the end of the Oslo accords. By around that time Amir�s political involvement and anti-government demonstrations had began. And when Baruch Goldstein, an American-born Jewish settler, gunned down 29 Muslims at pra yer in Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs in February 1994: "We had a very harsh argument," one classmate recalls. "I said Goldstein was a vile murderer, and Yigal said he's a martyr. He said it's to shake the Arabs, to show them that if they launch attacks on Jews and the government takes no action - here, someone did."

At one of the Bar Ilan demonstrations, in May 1994, Amir met Nava Holtzman. He was smitten. Slender and poised, she came from a wealthy religious family and shared Amir's politics. Until then he had always told friends he could not find a woman who met all his requirements: The beautiful ones were not smart enough, he said, and so on. Secular women, of course, were out of question. Holtzman had everything. They began attending lectures together and took a chaperoned trip to see Sinai. In their Orthodox circles, an unmarried couple did not kiss or hold hands - "no physical contact at all, to put it delicately," one friend says - but the public attachment they formed amounted to a declaration of intent. Friends said that Amir planned to marry her. But suddenly, in October, Holtzman broke off the relationship. The following summer she married Shmuel Rosenblum, one of Amir's best friends. The breakup happened to coincide with a newly intensified wave of Islamic militant terror attacks, beginning with a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed 23.  Amir threw himself even harder into anti- government protest - including for the first time illegal roadblocks and refusals to obey police orders to disperse. One can only surmise in what emotional turmoil Amir found himself, what with the break of his personal relationship with Nava and the political confusion that gripped the country. One friend privy to the trials and tribulations that he was going through was Margalit Har-Shefi, a fellow colleague at Bar Ilan.

The government went to great lengths to hush down Amir�s involvement with Nativ and his mission in Russia. Writes Barry Chamish:

Founded in 1953 - most likely by Shaike Dan ont the PM's innstruction - to help and rescue Jews from behind the Iron Curtain, the Liaison Department had become a nest of spies over the years. As the daily newspaper Haaretz reported a few weeks after Rabin was killed: "The Liaison Department conducts its own diplomacy and has its own private agenda". The Nativ bureau was actually active in almost the entire Communist Block, countries like the USSR, Romania and others. Often, agents attached to the official Israeli embassies and consulates in these countries recruited local Jewish activists through whom money and other aide was funneled to the poor local jewery. Example: even if a Jewish family did get permission to emigrate to Israel � normally after countless requests and many years of waiting � most actually lacked the resources to buy their own travel tickets. Through the network of the local activists, the Israeli Embassy literally provided the currency to those people to enable them to travel. Most if not all these activities were monitored by the local intelligence services and quite a few of the recruited local Jews found themselves interrogated, tortured and imprisoned for lengthy periods, often without trial. They were later recognized by the State of Israel as �Asirey Tzion� � Prisoners of Zion. Throughout the years a number of Israeli agents with diplomatic immunity in these countries had been expelled. On the wider scheme of things, it is clear that the local intelligence services weren�t that concerned with the money changing hands but more with the possibility that this relatively benign activity could be a cover up for a deeper, more sinister one of espionage.

Q:  �We�d like to hear something about your mission to the Soviet Union in 1992. There are a thousand and one speculations about this period.. What did you do there?

Amir:  �The Liaison Office is not so secret anymore. Once it was a secret. They looked for people who would organize Zionist activities and Hebrew teachers. All sorts of things. They turned to my military unit to propose people. Every two months people changed there. I went with a friend of mine, Avinoam Ezer. When we arrived there, they were working with 15 year old and tried to persuade them to make aliah to Israel. I thought they were wrong and its better to work with more mature students. So I went out into the street wearing my kippa and I was a real attraction. In the end I gathered around me about 100 students in social activities. It was a huge success.

Q:  �Where there any security people?�

Amir:  �You are jumping ahead�.

Amir:  �Nothing. Not at all. Just a short security training. What are you insinuating? We didn�t have weapons. Just tear gas.�

So Amir did undergo at least a short security course with the GSS. He had tear gas with him on his mission to Riga.  For what purpose?  And why was the government eager to play down Amir involvement with Nativ to the point of denying he event travelled to Russia? A plausible reason is that being involved with Nativ establishes Amir�s connections with the Shabak. It was the GSS that gave him clearance to travel to Russia and it was the GSS that trained him at least in �a short security course�. It was only when the BBC made it public that Amir�s passport had the clear CCCP visa imprinted on it that the government was forced to make a sharp U turn.

Contrary to what has widely been reported in the media, Yigal Amir was not the fully co-operating suspect he was portrayed to be. At least during the period preceding his trial and to an extend during the judicial proceedings too, his behavior resembled nothing of the self-confessed murderer the public was persuaded to believe. Although he was kept in solitary confinement for over a month, when word reached him - apparently through his solicitor - that a bodyguard had died, his behavior changed dramatically. His behavior cannot be explained unless Amir himself realised that what he was being told by the GSS behind closed doors together with what he knew himself cannot be reconciled any longer with facts that were happening outside prison.

So what news had reached Amir to unsettle him to the point of starting to fear for his own life?

LONDON OBSERVER (via the 12/5/95 WASHINGTON TIMES):  "The breach in security around Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin on the fateful night of November 4 was so monumental that, almost immediately after the assassination, a theory that one of the bodyguards must have been in on the plot spread like wildfire across the shocked nation.  Even before the reve;lations that the accused killer, Yigal Amir was trained by the Shin Bet security service, a respected Israeli historian, Michael Har-Segor, hinted at Shin Bet complicity in the slaying.  He wrote that, since ancient history, 'praetorian guards' have been the ones who have organized most assassinations of political leaders.  Then, exactly 10 days after Mr. Rabin's death, detectives found a 27 year old former Shin Bet investigator lying with a bullet in his head & a gun in his hand in his parents' home in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan.  Police quickly closed the case, ruling that the man, said to have had mental problems, committed suicide.  But some sources close to the Rabin investigation insisted that the dead man was actually a Shin Bet officer on Mr. Rabin's bodyguard detail and that he may have been 'helped' to commit suicide - possibly to cover up an assassination plot that goes far beyond Amir. 

Amir, supposedly without access to the outside world since the killing, should not have known about the theory of the bodyguard's complicity - a theory that, by shifting part of the blame to the Shin Bet, partially exonerates the extreme right militant groups.

'Something is very fishy here', said a senior government official in Jerusalem... Since the Rabin assassination, most of the conspiracy theories about Shin Bet involvement have been put forward by Rabbi Benny Elon, founder of the ultra-right wing settler movement Zo Artzeinu & a member of the far right Moledet party.  At least one of Rabbi Elon's allegations - that Avishai Raviv, leader of the Eyal extremist group to which Amir belonged, was a Shin Bet agent provacateur code named 'champagne'--has since been confirmed by government officials".

The mystery of the dead man was kept hushed by the Israeli media until it was unexpectedly raised by Amir himself.  In a bombshell declaration during remanding hearings in the Tel Aviv court on Sunday in front of judge Dan Arbel , Amir shouted to reporters, clicking and video photographers and to over a million people watching,

         "Why aren't you investigating Rabin's murdered bodyguard?  The people will forgive me when they
           know the truth. After you understand why, you'll see that the whole system is rotten. Everything
           you see is fabricated. I didn't think they'd start killing people." 

During the proceedings Amir made another attempt.

         "What you've seen up til now has been a facade. I request to be allowed to explain the background
           to my actions. They're killing people. If you listen to the truth, the whole country will turn upside
           down. After you understand why, you'll see the system is rotten.  Everything is set up.  What
           you're seeing is a facade. I didn't think they'd start killing people. Since Oslo B... "

          [Judge Arbel]: "Don't talk about Oslo B. You're not the Foreign Minister".

          [Amir]: "They're killing people. Don't you understand that?  It's all a lie".

          [Judge Arbel]: "What's a lie"?

          [Amir]: "That I killed Rabin. I never even tried to kill him. Everything is set up.  What you're
          seeing is a facade. I didn't think they'd start killing people.

          [Judge Arbel]: "I understand. You are killing people".

Needless to say, Judge Arbel did not give Amir a chance to explain himself and he was taken back to his lockup. On November 29,  l995, according to a report published by Ma'ariv in early '96, Amir complained to the police officer taking testimony, "They're going  to kill me in here." 

      "Nonsense," replied the officer.

      "You don't believe me, well I'm telling you it was a conspiracy. I didn't know I was going to kill Rabin."

      "What do you mean? You pulled the trigger, it's that simple."

      "Then why didn't Raviv report me?  He knew I was going to do it  and he didn't stop me? And why wasn't I shot to save
         Rabin?"

Obviously Amir was by now in distress and frightened. He didn't expect "them" to start killing people. Who is "them"?  Nobody had any doubts that Amir meant the GSS. This was the final, open attempt Amir made to prove his innocence. Later attempts would be much more subtle and hardly noticeable.

So whose death was the government trying unsuccessfully to hush up ? Who had committed suicide? The name of the man was Yoav Kuriel. Probably a Shabak agent, Kuriel was buried two weeks previously and there were wide spread suspicions of foul play. According to some, Kuriel died on the night of the murder although the date is given as 15.11.1995, some ten days later; another informer attests that the date is the correct one. His hurried burial took place at night at Hayarkon cemetery in north Tel Aviv but for some unspecified reason, traffic within a wide radius was closed or diverted for some 90 minutes. When they finallyu admitted that Kuriel died, the government insisted that Kuriel was depressed after Rabin�s murder and had committed suicide. The Hevre Kadisha undertaker, who lives in Bnei Brak, later divulged that Kuriel�s body had some internal organs removed and that his chest was pierced by seven gunshot holes. Now that�s a really persistent suicider !  His death certificate, acquired by Maariv reporter David Ronen, is equally puzzling: the reason for his death is given as�.  blank.

Yoav Kuriel's death certificate. Reason of death not given.

More details about Kuriel's death came, almost as usual, from unexpected quarters. After a Chamish lecture at the home of attorney Dov Even Or, one of the audience members who consistently kept contradicting the evidence presented, met him on the lawn outside to explain himself. He, it turns out, was a high ranking investigator for the Israel Police Crime Laboratory. He apologized for interrupting the lecture then he threw his bombshell.

        "I was the ballistics investigator in the Yoav Kuriel suicide. I was called to a Ramat Gan apartment
         to investigate Kuriel's 'suicide.' I wasn't allowed to see the body but I know who did and you're
         welcome to see if they'll talk. I asked to be given the suicide gun for lab testing and the superior
         officer told me the gun was missing. I asked him, 'How does a gun used by a suicide victim
         disappear?' He wouldn't answer but we both knew it couldn't in a real suicide. You can't publish
         my name, just what I said. Some day when it's safe, it will all come out."

While in solitary confinement then, Amir found out that an agent was killed. What he did not know however, was that not only Yoav Kuriel had died. In fact, there were of veritable series of men who disappeared or otherwise inexplicably 'committed suicide'. Apparently another GSS agent, Zvi Forster, was killed and was quickly buried in Jerusalem by an undertaker named Friedman in Givat Shaul cemetary. Friends of David Newman, a fellow Bar Ilan student and colleague of Yigal Amir, told that he received a call from Avishai Raviv immediately after Rabin's murder pressing him to "incriminate himself and become an accomplice" to the murder. He refused. Shortly after David was found dead in his room; he had 'committed suicide' due to depression. 

So after people started committing suicide (much in the same way that many who knew too much had done so after the JFK murder), here comes one of the most bizarre accounts of the affair. The author is one, Moshe Pavlov. Opinions are divided as to whether he was a GSS agent or not - most tend to think he was. He was also the first person to alert Chamish that something wasn�t kosher in the Rabin murder. Writes Chamish: 

�.Moshe Pavlov chose to call me on November 17. His first call was brief: "Watch Channel Two News tonight and you'll see me," he said. "Then I'll call back." He appeared on the news and was described as one of the country's most dangerous right wing leaders." Odd, I thought, why hadn't I heard of him before? The next call wasn't from Pavlov but from my neighbor Joel Bainerman [Chamish�s co-editor of the magazine Inside Israel]. Though he lived in a most obscure location, Pavlov found his way to Joel's doorstep and appeared unannounced. Joel said, "I don't think we should meet here. I'll see you downtown in ten minutes." Though he aggressively denies it, all, literally all, my sources later tell me Pavlov is a Shabak agent. In retrospect, there is no other way he could have had the information in his possession if he wasn't an insider. Joel and I sat in a quiet corner of the town square of Bet Shemesh, as a terrified and agitated Moshe Pavlov spewed out reams of, what turned out to be the truth. "Amir was supposed to shoot blanks," he insisted. "That's why the bodyguards shouted that he did. He was supposed to. It was a fake assassination. Rabin was supposed to survive the blank bullets, dramatically go back on the podium, condemn the violence of his opponents and become a hero. That's how he was going to save the Oslo Accords. Raviv was supposed to give him the gun with the blanks but Amir got wind of the plan and changed the bullets."

Pavlov was way off on this point. Later evidence proved beyond doubt that Amir did shoot blanks and Rabin was shot elsewhere. Pavlov became nearly hysterical. "They're killing people to cover this up and they're setting me up for a fall. Already one of Rabin's bodyguards is dead." He gave us the name of the bodyguard: Yoav Kuriel. He also supplied his details, including his social security number. A Yoav Kuriel was reported dead in the media the next day, but of a suicide. It would be another two years before I spoke with the man who prepared his body for burial. He died of seven bullets to the chest. No one was allowed to identify his remains. And then Pavlov gave us information that NO ONE was allowed to know. To this day, only the man's initials can legally appear in the Israeli media. "The guy behind the operation is Eli Barak, a lunatic. He runs the Shabak's Jewish Department. He is Raviv's superior and set up Amir to take the fall." He added a fact that was positively unknown at the time. "Barak takes his orders from the head of the Shabak. His first name is Carmi, he lives in Mevasseret Tzion and that's all I want to say."

It took over a year before the Israeli public was to learn the name of the Shabak Chief: Carmi Gillon. Pavlov was insistent: "You have to publish this and my name. Otherwise I'm finished." Joel and I decided to publish the story in Inside Israel. When it came out I met Pavlov at the Holiday Inn lobby in Jerusalem. We were surrounded by policemen. Wherever he went, they followed. That was good enough proof for me that our faith in Pavlov's version of events was justified.

Most of the information that Pavlov had initially supplied fuelled much of the speculations that are nowadays within the public domain. In 1998 I invited Pavlov to put forward his own version of event that took place on, and following the night of 4 November. In an open letter he wrote: 

�This letter is dedicated to the memory of Yoav Kuriel, may he rest in peace, who sacrificed his life for his country and his people.  

Following the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, when it became obvious to many observers that the Shin Bet, the Shabak, had attempted a planned sting operation I began a series of articles giving out detailed facts concerning that operation. The series of articles �On the Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin� was given out freely to the foreign and local press and media. When this knowledge was efficiently distributed and understood, there occurred the tragic death of Yoav Kuriel. I gave out the details of Yoav Kuriel his ID number and his address and sufficient information to begin an inquiry concerning his death. I furthermore divulged the information to the Hebrew news staff of IBA, Israel�s channel one television, when I was interviewed there on November 23, 1995. I further discussed the matter with an elite detective squad of the Israeli police. I discussed the matter with high ranking members of the Likud then in the opposition. On all these different fronts I attempted to arouse interest in the tragic death of Yoav Kuriel.

The wheels of justice move slowly. It was my hope and belief that the information that I had given out would be sufficient to pursue the matter further. I reasoned that the foreign journalists would have an interest to pursue the story further. The police who were not involved to the best of my knowledge in the sting operation should have been interested in investigating the matter. The Likud should have been interested in exposing the reality, the true price paid for peace. The case of Yoav Kuriel was brought forth before the Shamgar Commission. It is not clear what conclusion they arrived at.

I accuse all of these bodies of incurring a great injustice and in attempting each one to save himself. They have all attempted to conceal the truth. The truth will show how the different political bodies and the organizations subservient to them were all willing to compromise human life. They begin by playing with the life of the Prime Minister in their poorly planned sting operation. It was a total disregard of human life in not protecting the prime minister properly. They ended by causing the tragic death of Yoav Kuriel and killing one of their own. The disregard of human life led to cold blooded blotched murder - at the level of the Mafia. All this in the pseudo pursuit of peace.

For my attempt to bring out the truth I have been ridiculed and smeared by Israeli Television - both channel 1 and channel 2 smeared me simultaneously the same night at the same moment from film they received. (Let them come forth and say where they received this film. I am a former employee of Israeli Television channel one - and my former acquaintance Dan Zimmerman called me a couple of days before they smeared me. He told me and later reiterated again that they received the video film from Leah Rabin!) Due to the implications in the smear campaign of Israeli television networks most of the leadership on the right believes that I am a Shabak agent. In their political trial, the triumvirate leadership of �This is my land�, Moshe Feiglin, Benny Alon, and Shmuel Sokket all of them separately gave dozens of testimony against me. Moshe Feiglin specifically said that they have information that I am either a Shabak agent or a policeman. All of this was the work of the Shabak which attempted and succeeded in diverting attention away from me and the facts that I offered then. Since that time no leader of the right has heard my story although I am claiming to them that it is relevant and important. I presented facts - what is important is how we and history will relate to the justice and truth of these matters.

I now come to the explanation of these matters. The matter of Yoav Kuriel weighs heavily upon my conscience. Two days after the funeral I collected the facts then available and deduced that something was amiss, I sent out Part I of my series. Less than a week later I sent out Part II of my series where I suggested that the Shabak were interested in catching Amir red-handed after he had fired blank bullets. I pointed out that they had done this one half year earlier in the case of the Kahalani brothers. Now assume that you are the man responsible for the caper - Eli Barak, the problematic and infamous agent of the Shabak who was the head of the Jewish section of the Shabak and was well known in journalistic circles as a dangerous and irresponsible individual who had sexually harassed the reporter Carmela Menashe. You suddenly would realize that you must have a security leak. Somehow the news had gotten out!
    But only one person was to have altered Amir�s clip - only he knows what happened, and even he did not realize what the nature of the operation was. Now an explicit plan had been presented to all of the media and only one person could possibly have let the information out. He is by necessity summoned for questioning and receives a Shabak interrogation. I hate to imagine the horror he must have realized for on the one hand he was told that he was responsible for the assassination and on the other he was expected to tell them how the information had leaked out. There must have been upon this agent unbearable pain and pressure. I shudder to consider it.

    Now this person who was supposed to change the clip can not be a Shabak agent nor a policeman. It is too dangerous to use agents or policeman to break into someone�s home to change clips or guns. This individual is regularly used for miscellaneous jobs by the Shabak and was the one who altered the rifle and clip for the Kahalani brothers. There subsequent beating and persecution that they received in jail is probably due to the fact that they can recognize this man. This person gets paid in a roundabout manner from the National Social Services. Now I state categorically as known fact that Yoav Kuriel was not a policeman as some have suggested nor was he a Shabak agent. He was for a long while unemployed but received payment from the National Social Service. The reason many consider him to have been from the police is due to the fact that the payments received from the National Security Services were funneled from the police, many journalists have been aware of this fact.

    But why did he receive these special funds? Yoav Kuriel then was the person who was supposed to have altered Yigal Amir�s gun. He was as I have stated most probably the same person who had success in altering Kahalani�s gun. Yoav Kuriel was summoned and was interrogated by a non relinquishing Shabak who had to find out quickly how the information had leaked in addition as to why the sting had failed. Were they being set up? By whom? Yoav Kuriel�s dilemma was to admit to being an informant or deny it if he could be believed. Did he know why the sting did not succeed? He did have the biting problem of being informed that somehow something had gone wrong and that he was being blamed for inadvertently causing the death of Rabin, although he had no way of knowing this beforehand. The Shabak were not about to inform him why he was to change Amir�s clip. They would just make sure that in fact he had! The dilemma caused by the pressure of the interrogators was too much for Yoav Kuriel. He broke, and he committed suicide, his secret as to what had happened went down with him. He committed suicide with a friend nearby at the second floor of his home. One could imagine that he confessed to his friend before he died explaining exactly what had happened, and then he took his own life.

Except his close friend, those of the Shabak who knew, did not feel terribly bad about this. One less who knew intimately of the plot. There were now two major problems. What would the behavior of Yoav�s friend be and the second major problem was to stop the leak and stop the distribution of information. Now if you cannot stop the information you must color it. Tactics were needed to divert the focus of attention from the mock murder thesis and occupy the attention of the media. The Shabak acted swiftly and immediately revealed that Avishai Raviv was a Shabak agent and provocateur. They did this on two fronts one through the television commentator Amnon Abramovitch and the other through the staunch rightist Benny Alon, who was brought to Israeli Television to reveal Avishai Raviv. It was a classical diversion tactic to burn Raviv to take the heat off of the real problem. Now I challenge Benny Alon since he has testified and given out that in his opinion I am a provocateur why doesn�t he take this to the international and Israeli Press and media? For if I am a provocateur my activities were far more varied than Raviv�s. I gave literally hundred�s of interviews to the international media appearing on CNN, ABC and most of the main networks throughout the world. Why is Benny Alon and the Israeli media suddenly so quiet about me if they really believe what they are saying?? Many people had concluded that Avishai Raviv was a Shabak agent prior to Benny Alon how did he know to take this to the press and why were they willing to listen to him?? This information coming from Benny Allon gave credence to the belief that was expounded later on until this day - provocation yes conspiracy no.

The Shabak still had the second problem to tend to, the leak. On November 19 the Sunday after the tragic affair of Kuriel was behind the Shabak they gave over a video to channel 1 and channel 2 simultaneously. The next day or almost simultaneously I was to receive the information concerning Yoav Kuriel. I was asked to check it out. It was consonant with the rumors that were spreading throughout Israel that Rabin�s bodyguard committed suicide. But I knew for certain that Yoav Kuriel was not a member of the Shabak or the police force. I understood the end link of the information that I had received was from the Shabak. Due to the earthquake that occurred on November 22 the broadcast was shifted by both networks to the next day.

On November 23 I was smeared in a well orchestrated campaign and until this day have not been able to respond. I believe that the purpose the Shabak had in leaking the information to me was to test how I would respond. Did I know Kuriel and would I testify that he leaked information to me? The Shabak must have reasoned that if I was the end of a linked chain that was transmitting information from the Shabak the publicity that I was to receive a total of 15 minutes of prime time television would convince even the most stubborn informant to stay away from me. Now although I had been very active in demonstrations prior to the assassination I had never received any attention from Israel�s television networks. Now suddenly I had received 15 minutes worth of prime time news. I was now a questionable public figure. I on my part acted as if I never had heard of Yoav Kuriel previously as I sent out my third piece, �Who was Yoav Kuriel�. In this manner my life was saved although my name defamed.

Unfortunately the Shabak took no chances with Yoav Kuriel�s friend, his handler within the Shabak, he received a number of bullets in the back and was eliminated without ever having his name mentioned. Those who know of his death are terrified to talk. Thus the Shabak had secured their leak and damaged me to the point that I was unable to convince others in Israel of my story. They had bought time. But still the conspiracy theories had been tossed in to the air, and there were enough serious problems concerning the assassination that were unanswered that people took them seriously, it was therefore now necessary for them to attempt to negate them. The way to negate a conspiracy theory is to exaggerate it and proliferate them. This they succeeded in doing remarkably well. Theories spread of how Peres was involved, of how they put a bullet in Rabin�s chest in the hospital and other such unbearable junk. It is amazing to my mind that the main individual who is responsible on the interent in proliferating the conspiracy thesis is also one who writes about his checking alien abduction in Netanya. One would think that his theories could be dismissed if this fact were better known. Why didn�t the Shabak make this fact better known? I suggest the Shabak appreciated the mess of the conspiracy theories, if they themselves were not behind it. It creates an affect to the foreign journalist like the Kennedy assassination - we will never know the truth. But they have not yet succeeded completely.

This is my story. For those of you such as Moshe Feiglin who are convinced that I am a Shabak agent or a member of Israel�s police force I wish you to take seriously what I write here. For the rest I hope it will not only be taken seriously but that it will also cause you to ask the right questions, Why did Yoav Kuriel commit suicide? When was he interrogated by the Shabak? Can the Kahalani brothers recognize him? Who was the agent who was killed? What was his relationship with Yoav Kuriel? Why do the people who have come out against me not take my case to where I can answer to the public? Where did Israeli television get the video to smear me? What purpose was there in that? Did the police know that Yoav Kuriel was questioned by the Shabak? These are some of the questions which need to be put to the authorities involved in this matter. I hope this article will be taken seriously. We must have an immediate police investigations into the two murders mentioned here. Was Kuriel pushed to the limit intentionally by his interrogators. Who murdered Yoav Kuriel�s handler? Was he acting under orders? It is my wish that the deterioration that began with a mock murder and playing with a human life and ended with cold blooded murder be left behind us as a singular unique pathological case in our history. It can become for Israeli history a localized affair. Should it pass by it will indubitably leave the seeds of growth for further totalitarian activities and disregard for human life. It is my desire that the men and women of the Shabak purge the undesirable elements from their midst. If they refuse to do so the rotten elements will destroy them and they will fall. It is my fervent hope that the journalist who reads this will realize that he can make a difference and help make a better and secure civilized democratic world for us all.

 Moshe Pavlov

July 07, 1998

The letter sounds like a honest appeal and includes a number of details that may negate previously known facts, but the explanation behind Kuriel�s dilemma is illogical. If the Shabak genuinely intended to stage a sting operation and relied on Kuriel succeeding to switch Amir�s bullets to blanks, then the security service was walking an extremely tight rope. The risk was always there that Kuriel would fail in his assignment and thus expose the PM to real bullets. It is inconceivable that such an ambitious and visible plan, could entirely hinge on a high risk assumption that clips were indeed switched. If Kuriel did accomplish his job and someone subsequently had switched bullets again, it must also have been a Shabak job. In that case what was the point of Kuriel�s merciless interrogation � the answers were already know to the Shabak. In other words, either way the Shabak knew why the sting operation had failed. What perhaps they didn�t know yet was how, and who, had leaked the information about the staged event. It�s true that it could have been Kuriel, if he was indeed the person assigned to switch clips. But suppose Kuriel had for some reason, failed to do so. He either informed his handler of the failure or he lied and allowed the Shabak to believe the mission was accomplished. Would the GSS rely on his information alone and go ahead with the plans? Wouldn�t they have other contingency plans and sources to ascertain beyond doubt that Amir�s gun contained blanks before the staged sting got the go-ahead? As we shall see, this question didn�t matter � Amir didn�t shoot real bullets, in fact he never fired more than once!

Neither of the two agents mentioned, Yoav Kuriel and his handler, were killed on the same night as Rabin, as previously believed. Nor did a third victim in the saga, David Newman, who allegedly also committed suicide a few days later due to depression (it seems that an awful lot of young people suffered depression and took their own lives in the wake of the PM�s death). Pavlov attests that Kuriel did indeed commit suicide. The Bnei Brak undertaker who prepared his body for burial counted seven holes, though� Pavlov�s assertion that Kuriel wasn�t a Shabak agent, but one used by the service for various �miscellaneous jobs�, is curious, to say the least. What is someone who is officially unemployed, assigned special missions by the GSS and in return receives his salary from the National Security Services funneled through the police � if not an agent?  A helper (sayan)?  The name of his handler who was silenced with several shots in his back is not given. Could it be Tzvi Forster?

Above all, it now appears that someone was killed on the same night, together with Rabin, and his body did arrive at Ichilov. A hospital night guard testified that he saw blood stains on the front seat of the PM's Cadillac as it was parked, unguarded, outside Emergency Room.  His story tally with another testimony, given to the Supreme Court by a taxi driver.

Amir didn't know about these bodies. Nevertheless, he was right. They did start killing people.

A rare insight into the way Amir's mind worked in those early days can be gained from a taped interrogation by the police. It was carried out on the day Amir had his remand hearing and following his public outburst in front of judge Arbel. The security forces went into panic mode after Amir's assertion that it was all a cover up and a facade. They really needed to find out as a matter of urgency - before the opening of a trial - what the suspect really knows. Keeping this in mind will help make some sense of the following dialog. It would also be useful to remember that, while the Israeli media has spread the lies that Amir confessed to the murder and he is fully co-operating, this transcript proves that was not the case. He still wants to tell the truth but, clearly, he doesn't trust the intentions of the interrogators. The tapes were provided to Barry Camish by a dogged writer, well known and oft-seen on Israeli television. First, he corroborates the fact that another bodyguard was killed on the night, that his name was Tzvi Forster and that he was buried by an undertaker named Friedman in Givat Shaul Cemetary in Jerusalem.

As recalled, on his 3.12.1995 hearing Yigal Amir yelled to the cameras and over a million people watching, "Why aren't you investigating Rabin's murdered bodyguard? The people will forgive me when they know the background. After you understand why, you'll see the whole system is rotten. Everything you see is fabricated. I didn't think they'd start killing people."  Then at his hearing, he told Judge Dan Arbel, "They're killing people, it's all a lie that I killed Rabin. I didn't even try to kill him. What you've seen up til now has been a facade. I request to be allowed to explain the background to my actions. They're killing people. If you listen to the truth, the whole country will be up in arms."

Judge Arbel did not grant Amir a chance to explain himself. But obviously some bright red lights lighted up somewhere in back rooms an it was decided to find out the very same day, what Amir meant. The interrogators are two nervous, almost desperate policemen Yoav Gazit and Ofir Gamliel. Indirect reference is made to early questioning conducted by Amir's first interrogator, inspector Yoni Hirshorn. [According to Barry Chamish he received the taped interrogation from the economic writer and commentator Ya'acov Verker. The latter received the tape from Natan Gefen who in his turn received it from a former advisor to the Israel Police Crime Lab, Nahum Shachak.]

447/95 Serious Crimes Division, Israel Police;

Transcript of conversation of 3/12/95 
between the murder suspect of Prime Minister Rabin, Yigal Amir,
and two investigators, Sergeant Ofir Gamliel and Inspector Yoav Gazit

Gazit: Let's finish the investigation. Let's clean up the whole story.

Amir:  I gave you the phone so give it back.

Gazit: Here it is. This is the starting point. As soon as things are cleared up you can meet your parents. I want to start with a point you made and, look, I'm not writing anything down. You can talk freely. I want to nail down an issue you stated in Yoni's [Hirshorn] report...

By 3 December, almost a month after the murder, Amir was still retained in solitary confinement and hadn't meet yet his parents or anyone else, apart from his laywers.

Gazit: Everyone heard what you said in the courtroom today. I want to know what you meant by it. I'm hearing bits and pieces in the media but don't have the true picture. I asked Yoni to write a summary of your claims. Tell me what you meant by them. Were they real or not?

Amir: Now I'll talk.

Gazit: You said that what we've seen so far has been a facade and you asked the court to let you explain the background to your actions. 'They're killing people, if you listen to the truth there will be a revolution in the country,' you said. Wasn't that a bit bombastic?

Amir: They didn't let me tell what I could have.

Gazit: So tell me, I won't write anything down, what did you mean? Is it a theory or not? I don't know.

Amir: They're killing people. I heard about the dead bodyguard from my lawyer and from my interrogators.

Amir refers here to Yoav Kuriel, whose death and burial two weeks previously eventually reached the media. Amir now confirms that apart form his lawyer, another interrogator also told him about Kuriel. At his point in time Gazit doesn't want to contradict that source - he will do so later - because most likelyy the other interrogator was a GSS agent. At that moment in time the responsibility for the entire investigation was somewhat blurred.

Gazit: Tell me briefly what you know about Itamar Ben Gvir.

Amir: That's what I heard in the bus, that he was going to murder the prime minister.

Gazit: Did you meet him personally?

Amir: No.

Gazit: Itamar was the one who put the sticker on the prime minister's car. He's an extremist. Did you ever meet him?

Amir: No, I just saw him.

Itamar Ben Gvir was a highly publicized member of Kach movement (outlawed since). There ere widespread suspicions that he was a Shabak agent in the Raviv ilk. Suspicions were fueled by an incident a few years back when he threatened to murder Sinead O'Connor and her band if they showed up for their scheduled Jerusalem performance. The show was cancelled, leading to great resentment among the country's Left and youth towards right wing settlers like Ben Gvir. Ben Gvir wasn't even questioned by the police, although it is a criminal offense to threaten someone with murder. A month before Rabin's assassination, Ben Gvir got so close to Rabin's limousine that he was able to put a sticker on his car reading, 'We got to Rabin's car, next we'll get to him." - much in the same style as Raviv would later inform the press "W missed this time, but we'll get him next time". Amir is claiming to have heard a rumor on a bus that Ben Gvir was planning to murder Rabin that night.

Gazit: Ben Gvir is in Kach. And the one who told you about him was a Likud Youth member from Raanana.

Amir: I don't want to say.

Gazit: You already said it. What you mean is you don't want to say who he was. You gave him a first name and I don't even remember it. Fine, you heard a theory and your lawyer told you a bodyguard was dead too. So what's your take on all this? Briefly, what do you make of it all?  If you don't feel like answering, that's fine with me too.

Amir: Do you swear?

Gazit: Enough already.

Amir: Alright.

Amir realized what Gazit is after. The police is desperate to know what, and how much, he knows about the plot. He also realizes that Gazit is not the 'friendly' chap he portrays himself to be ("look, I won't write down anything" - meaning 'it won't be held against you'). Amir stopped co-operating.

Gazit: I just want to clear up what you said, what is true and what isn't.

Amir: Aaah.

Gazit: Nu, tell me already, briefly.

Amir: I'll tell.

Gazit: What did you mean when you were so bombastic in court.

Amir: I had to be. They wouldn't let me talk.

Gazit: Who knows what they thought.

Amir: I don't care.

Gazit: I am speaking as your investigator and I don't understand my case. I have to follow up on things said in the media and the courtroom and I don't get it.

Amir: You're my investigator, not my father.

Gazit: That depends. I never said I was your father and you don't have to confide in me. I never asked for names of people.

Amir: You'll hear me in court.

Gazit: I'll tell you, from what you said in court this morning I can surmise that you think one of the bodyguards died, true?

Amir: Yes.

Gazit: You said an attorney told you? Who is he? What's his name?

Amir: The one who came to me.

Gazit: That's not enough and you know it. We're not children here. I want to know where you heard this theory. See, I'm not writing down a word. 

Amir: It was nothing. I just threw out some theories.

Gazit: That's not what you said before.

Amir: Okay.  

Gazit: I spoke with your brother before you as you saw. I asked what you meant in court today.

Amir: You'll both know later in court.  

Gazit: You said you were on a bus to the rally, right. There was a guy...  

Amir: I won't give his name. He told me that Itamar Ben Gvir was going to murder Rabin.

Gazit. You said you were told Ben Gvir intended to murder Rabin?

Amir: Yes.

Gazit: And you said you heard from people that Avishai Raviv was a Shabak agent. And that Avishai is friends with Itamar Ben Gvir, true?  That's what you said and now you're being wishy-washy. Are you finished with your words?

Amir: Yes.

Amir connects Avishai Raviv to the Rabin murder. He correctly identifies him as a Shabak agent. He connects Ben Gvir to Raviv and implies that he was a Shabak agent as well. And he insists that word was out that Ben Gvir intended to murder Rabin that night. Far from confessing to Rabin's murder, Amir is trying to make sense of it. He has obviously drawn some strong conclusions from the knowledge he possesses. Eventually Gazit is 'forced' to come out with the 'theory' and probe Amir.

Gazit: I can see you're tired. Stretch out while I carry on. Now tell me, true or not, is this what you believe? The top ranks of government, specifically Rabin and Peres, planned a fake assassination by a right winger after the rally and that Ben Gvir was supposed to be the shooter? Yes or no. 

Amir: Yes, yes.  

Amir sorted out the plot, at least the fake assassination part and the blame shifted to a right wing religious shooter. Note that he includes Peres in the plan. Far from confessing to the murder Amir caught on to what happened. Still, there has been no subsequent proof of his charges against Ben Gvir apart from previously coming dangerously close to Rabin's car.

Gazit: I need us to clear all this up. Other than that, I don't need anything.

Amir: Then I didn't mean it.

Gazit: Then what did you mean?

Amir: I said this, I said that, I wasn't thinking straight.

Gazit: You said that Itamar Ben Gvir was supposed to arrive, um, with a gun full of blank bullets that Avishai Raviv gave him. True?  That's what you said.  

Gazit is repeating here what Amir had told Yoni Hirshorn, his previous interrogator namely, that Avishai Raviv supplied Ben Gvir with a gun loaded with blanks. Yet we know that a minute after Rabin's shooting, forty minutes before anyone ever heard of Amir, Raviv told reporter Amir Gilat and numerous members of his phoney radical group Eyal, that Amir did the shooting. He knew before anyone else because he probably supplied the gun to him. So why is Amir claiming Raviv also supplied a gun with blanks to Ben Gvir? Was he also set up to be a patsy, or a backup to Amir? Or perhaps Amir is making the story up to get the police to look into Raviv. Whatever his motive, Amir has realized that he shot blanks at Rabin.

Amir: It was just a story. I threw it out as a possibility. Maybe Avishai isn't what I thought in the courtroom.

Gazit: No. You said what you said, also about the Kahalani brothers, that they switched bullets or rigged their weapons. Where did you get that idea?

Amir is right again. Two months before Rabin's murder, two brothers Eitan and Yehodidya Kahalani were arrested by the Shabak and charged with planning to massacre Arabs. The Shabak claimed they had tampered with the two M-16s, making them inoperable. The two M-16s were in the lab the night before they were planted, not in the Kahalanis' car but in a car borrowed from a Shabak snitch named Yves Tibi. Two months later the Kahalani brothers were quietly released from prison. Amir is absolutely right about the frameup of the Kahalanis but how did he know? No one suspected the Shabak of such a thing until the tactics of the Rabin assassination and Raviv were exposed much later. Amir has more than a gut feeling about how he was set up.

Gazit: No! You said it. You said they rigged their rifles.

Amir: I tell the police one thing because they lead me in certain directions and it's not what I intend to tell the court.  

Gazit: I'm asking if your version is just a theory. Your claim is that the top echelons of government staged a fake assassination to strengthen their hold on government by blaming a right wing shooter who really shot blank bullets. In the end, the intended shooter didn't shoot, but you did.

Amir: True.  

Gazit: And to further the plot, Rabin's bodyguards cleared a path for the shooter to Rabin?

Amir: That's why the bodyguards shouted that the bullets were blanks.

Amir's got it. He worked out the plan and it seems that Gazit suspects he may be right. The problem is the addition of Ben Gvir. Why add him? Why doesn't Amir just say that Raviv gave him the gun with the blanks, since that is most probably the truth?  We'll discuss this issue later on.

Gazit: So it was supposed to be Ben Gvir. No, let's not mention names. Wait, Ophir (Gamliel) is coming. (A second policeman enters the room). Ophir, he thinks I don't understand him, what he's getting to.

Amir: That's it.

Gamliel: Listen.

Gazit: Talk to Ophir.

Gamliel: You spoke about a facade.

Gazit: Ophir wants to hear. That's why I brought him.

Like he wasn't watching the whole thing through a two way mirror.  Note that this is the precise moment a second interrogator's presence is required in the room. As Gazit reached the topic he is most interested in - the cover up - Gamliel steps in. For judicial reasons, since Amir is not going to sign any statements ("look, I don't write anything down"), a second witness is required to testify, if need be. Else, for court purposes, it's Amir's word against Gazit's.

Gamliel: You brought up other people.

Amir: I've said nothing. They didn't let me talk to the court or the reporters.

Gamliel: No, I meant here.

Amir: I asked you to let me talk.

Gamliel: Nu, talk!

Amir: You're not letting me.  

Gamliel: Talk, let's hear.  

Amir: It's too late.  

Gazit: What's the story?  

Amir: Wait until my trial.  

Gamliel: The court will ask that the police testify to what you told us. You can't say we're not giving you every opportunity to explain yourself.

See above comment.

Amir: I don't want to say.  

Gamliel: You don't want to say but we know what you want to say. We know your story.

Amir: It's not a story.

Gamliel is tryin to turninto the 'bad cop' but the strategy fails. Amir will lose whatever slight trust he had established with Gazit as soon as Gamliel turns up the heat and the lies.

Gamliel: You said there was a Shabak conspiracy and you accidentally walked into the middle of it. You said the bodyguards shouted, ' They're blanks.' Do you know which ones?

Amir: I told you why they shouted, 'Blanks.'

Gamliel: And what do you base this theory on?

Amir: Nothing. It was just a theory. Take it or leave it.

Gamliel: So what's the theory. I don't understand it.  

Amir: One of the bodyguards is dead.  

Gazit: No.  

Gamliel: Who told you such a thing?

Amir: Just people.  

Gamliel: No one is dead. Now let's listen to your theory.

Bad mistake. Gamliel is trying to shake Amir's belief that someone is dead. But it's a lie. Amir knows it's a lie. Gamliel lost it.

Gazit: Your theory is based on a dead bodyguard, murdered to keep silent.  

Amir: He asked what I thought.

Gamliel: If I tell you there is no dead bodyguard, then your whole theory collapses.  

Amir: Yes.

Gamliel: That's what I'm telling you. 

Gazit is trying somehow to recover the situation a bit by appealing to Amir's reason. It's too late. The truth is Yoav Kuriel was buried on the 15th of November in HaYarkon Cemetary and his plot can be visited at bloc 13, region 5, row 57, number 20. Obviously, at this stage Amir is unware that at least another bodyguard named Tzvi Forster was murdered and buried ten days before Kuriel, nor that his Bar Ilan colleague, David Newman, had 'committed suicide'.

Amir: Really?

Gamliel: Your line is that the Shabak murdered him to shut him up. That's what you meant to say.  

Amir: Maybe.  

Gamliel: Did you say that here?

Amir: That's what I said.

Gamliel: Who is Benny Birtz?

Amir: Just someone.

Gazit: He told me the one who stuck the sticker on Rabin's car was there. He saw him on television.

Gamliel: Wait a second, you told me it's all connected and the shouts of 'Blanks,' connects everything together.

Gazit: Suddenly he's very mysterious.

Gamliel: You don't want to talk to us.

Amir: Okay, I'll talk.

Gamliel: Then talk already.

(Amir's response missing from film).

Gazit: So nothing is true. It's all based on a story someone told you about a dead bodyguard.

Amir: As well.

Gazit: And you mixed the Kahalani story into your salad so everything would fit together. So, say something.

Amir: There's no need. This isn't a detective novel.

Gamliel: If the bodyguards were involved, tell me how and I'll investigate.

Amir: Does it seem right to you that...

Gamliel: So you're not so sure what's right, are you?

Amir: You said you'd investigate. If you're so sure then you won't, will you?  

Gamliel: There's nothing to investigate. No one is dead. Everyone is alive.  

Amir: Fine, if everyone's alive... And your story is truthful.  

Gamliel: Now listen. You've just been guessing all along, haven't you? If not, tell us something you know for sure. Up til now you've been very frank with us. There's no reason to hide anything more.

Gazit: I don't understand your problem. We'll investigate whatever needs to be investigated. You explain yourself well. Say what it is you want to say.  

Gazit: I'm telling you, no one was killed.

Amir: So what, we'll see.

Gazit: So where did you get the story from? From who exactly? You can't really say you're basing your suspicions on hard facts.

Amir: Not this question.

The tactic is to find out who Amir's informants is. In time, they will try to track down the Likud youth who informed him about Ben Gvir. But Amir as careful and as stubborn as not to turn into a stool-pigeon.

Gamliel: So why is it one day you say at full volume that you did it, that you were alone and now you're inventing a conspiracy?

Amir: That's the situation. It's all been a facade.

Gazit: A facade by whom? Who wore the mask?

Amir: I can't say anything.

Gamliel: You can't or won't say? Because you weave conspiracies.

Amir: Okay.

Gamliel: Not okay. I want to hear your theories.

Amir: I won't give you what you're after. You don't care.

Gamliel: We care. Our problem is most of what you've said until now checked out. We've been very impressed with your honesty. You're not a simpleton and what you've said so far, you believed. Now we want to check out your new points.

Amir: I just can't.

Gamliel: You mean you don't want to because you don't know anything. Why can't you tell? Is it because you know things that can't be revealed or you're guessing based on logic, like the bodyguards shouting, 'They're blanks.' You think that doesn't bother us, too? It does, no doubt about it. I can imagine how much it disturbs you. The question is if there is something behind it. So far, you've been very open with us, now we need hard facts from you.

Amir: I can't relate to that.

Gamliel: How...

Amir: I can't relate to it.  

Gamliel: You can't relate?  

Amir: Can't relate.  

Gamliel: Because you're just theorizing.

Amir: Enough, enough.  

Gamliel (laughing): No, it's not enough.

Gazit: You really do want to relate your theory to us.

Gamliel: It would be interesting to hear what you think.

Gazit: Suddenly, he's so mysterious.

The cops are running out of rehearsed script. Amir has so far correctly told about the dead bodyguard, the frame up of the Kahalani brothers, the reason the bodyguards shouted, 'Blanks,' the fact that Raviv supplied the gun with the blanks, that the bodyguards cleared a path for the fake killer and also implicated Shimon Peres. That is an awful lot to know a month after the murder, while spending all his time alone in a cell. How did Amir know so much, so quickly?

Amir: All I can tell you is I don't say things for nothing. Don't worry about that.  

Gamliel: You're trying to get other people involved. Until now this wasn't your line. So what changed your mind? What else is behind this conspiracy of bodyguards and whoever else was in it? We'll all leave here with a cleaner conscience if you can prove a conspiracy, or you think there was one because of this or that. Can you with a clean conscience attest to a conspiracy?  Don't hesitate if you can give me evidence I don't have. Today they shut you up in court but you'll be home free at your trial to say what you want. Now what do you want to say?  

Amir: I can't say.  

Gazit: What do you mean you can't say?

Amir: I can't tell you.

Gamliel: You're just using logic, like in the Kahalani brothers story. What you say makes some sense but they're a different case. We're not going to investigate it for you. If you have evidence related to your case, we will. So talk already.  

Amir: Everything that you wrote down about Itamar Ben Gvir is nonsense.  

Gamliel: That was your theory.  

Amir: It was nonsense.

Out of the blue, Amir retracts his story about Ben Gvir. The retraction is too sudden for the interrogators not to suspect the motive of this change of heart and they pursue it. In a flash, Amir has decided that he has said too much already for his own good. 

Gamliel: You just don't understand the legal process. If you make a statement to the police and retract it, the court won't take you at your word. You have to be consistent. It's for your own good.  

Amir: I didn't say it for my own good.  

Gamliel: You're hurting your own cause.  

Amir: I never said anything, nothing. Are you telling me that no bodyguard is dead?  

Gamliel: No.  

Amir: Fine.  

Gamliel: So go on as if there was no dead bodyguard.  

Gazit: One of your investigators told you that?  

Gamliel: Ask your lawyer. He's objective. If he tells me a bodyguard is dead, I'll investigate.  

Amir: So why are they saying so?  

Gamliel: We just told you, there is definitely no dead bodyguard. Does it matter to you that much?  

Amir: What?  

Gazit: That you're told there's no dead bodyguard.

Gamliel: Yigal, it's your right to think but there's no motive for your thoughts.  

Amir: I never said anything, not a thing.  

Gamliel: Then I can construe that your thinking is based on theory not facts.  

Amir: What was said here, wasn't.  

Gazit: Itamar, the bodyguards, the high-level plot, nothing?  

Amir: I explained there, oh, alright.  

Gazit: Have we stopped then?  

Amir: He asked what could have been and I answered.  

Gazit: So you meant none of it. They were just crumbs of ideas.  

Amir: Yes.  

Gazit: This is hard to say, but we are at your service.  

Amir: Yes.  

Gazit: What you said in the courtroom is unconnected to what you said here?  

Amir: I can say more here.

Gazit: Look how mysterious he's become so suddenly. I don't even know you anymore. This morning I spoke with Ofri. He said he was representing you. Do you even know who is your lawyer, the one who changed your whole perspective? There's no connection between these things at all.  

Amir: Now I know what the connection is.  

Gazit: I've sat with you before several times. You weren't like this. I want to know why you're so different now. Why you've suddenly become so mysterious. Is it just something that came over you?  

Amir: No?  

Gazit: I'm not asking these questions for nothing. I consider you reliable, now I can't understand you. I had no problem with your story as long as you said you did it.  

Amir: Yes.  

Gazit: Now you're throwing out new things and we're obliged to follow them up.  

Amir: Even without me you should be doing it.  

Gazit: What?  

Amir: Your conclusions are unconnected to it all.  

Gazit. No. You're saying these things in court and we have to find out why. You throw out these things in court and I have to find out from the media what you're claiming. You tell me that one day you'll tell everything. I have to find out what you mean by that. I don't even know what you mean by a facade. Tell me simply.  

Amir: (yawns)  

Gazit: Are you tired?  

Amir: (yawns)  

Gazit: We can talk to you tomorrow if you want, but it would be better to do some explaining now. You think you're the only one without explanations? We can find explanations for everything you think. If you've been just saying these things for nothing, then tell us.  

Gamliel: I have one question.  

Amir: What time is it now?  

Gamliel: Five thirty. When you want to eat, join us. Now you told a story about a bus ride from your house to the rally on the night of the murder where you met an acquaintance who told you about Ben Gvir.  

Amir: Truth and nothing but the truth.  

Gamliel: Truth and nothing but the truth. That means you confirm the story on the bus.  

Amir: Yes.  

Gamliel: Did you see him accidentally or do you always travel together? That would mean he lives in Herzlia.  

Amir: Raanana.  

Gamliel: Raanana.  

Amir: I didn't say anything.  

Gazit: He already told me.  

Gamliel: What did he say?  

Gazit: It was a guy from Likud Youth In Raanana. He gave me his name. What was it?

A little tactical trap. It didn't work.  

Amir: I don't want to give the name.  

Gazit: You already told me.  

Amir: Only the first name. I think it was Gilad, I'm not sure.

Gamliel: He must have known you or he wouldn't have brought up the subject.  

Gazit: He was a young boy.  

Gamliel: Someone who knew you.  

Gazit: You said Margalit knew him as well.

Amir has already incriminated Margalit Har Shefi, as we shall soon see. The police are building their own right wing conspiracy and want as many people within it as possible. If this Likud youth didn't report Ben Gvir's intentions to the police, then he was as guilty as Har Shefi was of not preventing the murder of Rabin. But unlike Har Shefi, Amir told inspector Hirshorn that the youth did report Ben Gvir's plans to the police. The policemen are most likely not trying to help Amir's case but the government's for a right wing, religious conspiracy. And Amir has caught on. 

Amir: Maybe I did. Listen, I don't want...  

Gamliel: What don't you want?  

Amir: that...  

Gamliel: But you're saying this is the truth. This is what happened on the bus.  

Gazit: That means you happened to meet him and he just happened to tell you this story. 

Gamliel: If you won't give his name, at least tell exactly what he said.  

Amir: He heard that Itamar Ben Gvir wanted to kill Rabin at the rally.  

Gamliel: So what did you tell him?  

Amir: Can't you find the bus driver who might have seen us together?  

Gamliel: Who was this youth?  

Amir: (groans)

Gazit: Don't play games. We're trying to find people and you're groaning.  

Gamliel: Were you known to anyone else on the bus?  

Gazit: I understood from you that you didn't see him again, that you avoided him.  

Amir: Yes.

Gamliel: Now explain logically why he told you the story and no one else we can find.  

Amir: I'm not saying anything to incriminate someone else.  

Gamliel: What could you incriminate him on?  

Amir: It doesn't matter.  

Gamliel: Not true.  

Amir: I've already turned the state upside down.  

Gamliel: Not true. You haven't turned anything upside down.  

Amir uses the word "hafakhti" which means turned upside down. Colloquially it also means to cause a political or social shock or 'earth quake'. Now does Amir mean he turned the state upside down because he murdered Rabin, or because he was blamed for the murder? Look at his next line of thinking. 

Amir: They've investigated every rabbi in the country.  

Gamliel: Don't exaggerate.  

Amir: No exaggeration.  

Gamliel: All in all we spoke to a very few rabbis, not what you think.

Amir: The reign of terror against them has started. (Amir used Arabic word "aleyhom" to describe terror).

Gamliel - Aleyhom?  

Amir: Yes.  

Amir has caught on to the whole plan; set up a religious patsy for Rabin's murder and start a reign of repression against the religious community and their rabbis. He knows that is what the policemen are aiming for and he's testing them. They do not fail him.

Gazit: Hagai told me specifically that you went to a certain rabbi to get his blessings.  

Amir: Not true.  

Gazit: Ask Hagai if he said it.  

Amir: What does Hagai know about this?  

Gazit: You tell me.  

Amir: No, I know the rabbis permitted it. I hear it on the radio, read it in the papers. But I never went to a rabbi to ask.  

Gamliel: They said in their classes?  

Amir: No. There was no need. The persecutor judgment was known.

Gamliel: You wanted verification.

Amir: Didn't need it. Rabin fell in the category.  

Gamliel: And I understand you checked that out first.  

Amir: Me?

Gamliel: Yes, you.

Amir: And that's how I arrived at my conclusion...

Gamliel: You arrived at your own conclusion. The question is if you had help.  

Amir riled Gamliel and got his answer. He is out to prove that the religious community and their rabbis murdered Rabin. His only purpose in interrogating Amir was to get him to change his testimony about a government conspiracy or to disprove it. Amir was right from the beginning: all the interrogators were interested in was wrapping up the government's version of events. Amir plays along with his inquisitors as he was always supposed to. He reverts to form and implicates Har Shefi. It isn't easy to understand Amir's sudden reversal of form, but all talk of a government/Shabak conspiracy disappears and the rabbis are now to blame. This is what he was supposed to say all along and we can surmise that he knew these cops weren't there to help him. He gave up telling the truth. 

Amir: No help but I was influenced.  

Gazit: Not enough, be more specific. We understand from Hagai that you went to a rabbi and you yourself said that Margalit went to her rabbi in Bet El.  

Amir: She wanted to. She didn't trust my judgment and said she'd see her rabbi. I told her to ask him.

Gamliel: Did she get an answer?

Amir: She told me no.

Gamliel: What, no?

Amir: He put her off, didn't give a straight answer.

Gamliel: So you felt vindicated.

Amir: I told her to ask and she'd find out it wasn't forbidden. She wanted to prove the opposite and I told her that he'd say it was allowed.  

Gamliel: But you got a less certain answer in the end.

Amir: Another rabbi would have said it's a blessing. I didn't need to find one to know it.

For the final five minutes of the interrogation, the interrogators once again try to get Amir to name names: which rabbi blessed his actions, who was the Likud Youth on the bus, who told him about the dead bodyguard. Eventually Amir has enough and shouts

"Stop harassing me. This is like a Shabak interrogation."

Now how would he know that? Amir's crime was a police matter. Although the murder was prima facie a typical, exclusive police matter, the GSS had assumed overall responsibility(!) and did interrogate Amir. Gazit, as we can see from his testimony at the trial, didn't much care for that arrangement. 

Defense: We have a report that the Shabak was responsible for the (police) investigation. Do you know why?
Gazit: No idea but the Shabak was the dominant factor at certain points in the investigation.
Defense: Why did the Shabak receive responsibility for the investigation?
Gazit: I'm not authorized to tell you...
Defense: How did you feel about the Shabak's role?
Gazit: I didn't appreciate it.

It is inconceivable that, judicially, the organization that is under scrutiny will itself conduct it's own inquiry. The police hands were tied. It was "Big Brother" who instructed them what to extract from Amir and they obeyed. As we shall see, the police would be paid handsomely for its co-operation.

Amir insisted throughout that he traveled to the rally by public transport - he boarded a bus (no.274) in Herzlya and got off at Arlozorov at Ibn Gvirol corner, walking the remaining few hundred meters from the square. According to prison inmates, his brother Hagai has a different version of events.

Hagai's prison inmates say that yesterday the assassin's brother told them: "The bullets in my
brother's gun were blanks but someone changed them to real ones". The Shata Prison inmates
also said that Hagai was very satisfied with the storm raised by the "Champagne" affair, saying
that "this increases my chances to get out of here". The inmates said that [Hagai] Amir told them
that on the night of the murder another man drove [Yigal] to the Tel Aviv square. According
to this version, Amir was driven in an Opel car. Hagai said: "It was probably in there that the
bullets were changed".

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