HA'ARETZ 4/30/99--via IMRA:

"Three people - MK Benny Elon, Deputy Minister Michael Eitan, and Arutz 7 broadcaster Adir Zik - had good reason to feel deeply gratified when the indictment against Avishai Raviv was filed this week in the Jerusalem Magistrates Court.

Raviv, who served as a Shin Bet agent among the extreme right for eight years from 1987 until the Rabin assassination in 1995, was charged with "failing to prevent a crime" because he did not pass on information on Yigal Amir's plans to assassinate the prime minister.

He was also charged with "support for a terror organization" based on the swearing-in ceremony for the right-wing Eyal organization that Raviv staged for television cameras. (For some unexplained reason, Raviv is charged only with organizing the ceremony, and not with the establishment of the organization itself.).

There was nothing that the legal establishment wanted less than to put Raviv on trial. Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon and State Prosecutor Edna Arbel made every effort to persuade Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein not to take this step.

They argued that indicting Raviv posed a "danger to state security," because certain aspects of Shin Bet operations could come to light in such a trial. Eitan claims that the real reason for the opposition to the trial was the fear that it would expose the puzzling immunity granted to Raviv by the Shin Bet and the legal establishment.

Elon was the first to expose the fact that Raviv was a Shin Bet agent, only days after the Rabin assassination. From the point of view of the right, this meant that the fury that had been directed against it following the assassination could now be deflected to Raviv and his Shin Bet handlers.

They could now argue that at least part of the incitement that had preceded the assassination had in fact been the work of a Shin Bet agent. On another level, the discovery was significant because of the claim that the Shin Bet had had an interest in incriminating the right, and that it used using Raviv to bolster accusations that the right was responsible for extremist actions.

Later, Raviv's involvement was also used by those who supported the "conspiracy theory." According to this theory, the entire assassination was really yet another attempt to incriminate the right in responsibility for extremist actions - but it later backfired when Amir unexpectedly replaced the blank bullets that the Shin Bet planted in his gun with live ones.

The Shamgar Commission, which investigated the Rabin assassination, explained that the Shin Bet had consented to Raviv's actions because it wanted "to increase his credibility in the eyes of his surroundings."

Elon was unavailable for comment this week. Eitan related that he had become involved in the Raviv affair about a year after the Rabin assassination, after he received information from a number of sources that convinced him that "something didn't smell right."

He began to raise the issue in the cabinet, demanding that the case be thoroughly investigated and that Raviv be put on trial. He met with intense opposition from Ayalon and Arbel, who threw her weight behind Ayalon.

Eitan maintains that Arbel fought him on this matter because "the state prosecution was also deeply involved in the Shin Bet's blunder in the affair because it gave full backing for Raviv's continued employment as an agent and for dropping charges against him."

In her response, Justice Ministry spokeswoman Etty Eshed said that the Raviv case had taken so long because the work on it "was being conducted in stages." She added that there was no basis for the accusations that the prosecution was dragging because of extraneous considerations.

The third person involved in the campaign to have Raviv tried to the full extent of the law was Adir Zik, acting mainly by means of his weekly radio program on Arutz 7. Since Raviv was exposed as a Shin Bet agent, Zik has turned the war on Raviv into a central element in his program.

He asked listeners to report on encounters with Raviv and places where he was seen and he broadcast these updates on his program. At the same time, he undertook his own investigation of Raviv.

Among his conclusions was that Raviv's handlers in the Shin Bet demanded, or at least encouraged, that he marry an extremist settler from the Hebron area in order to gain an even stronger foothold among the settlers.

This marriage did not last long, and the couple soon divorced. Zik therefore accuses the Shin Bet of causing a personal tragedy for the young woman, and claims that this is not an isolated incident.

Aviv Bushinsky, spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office (and ex officio spokesman for the Shin Bet), said, "From the moment the attorney general decided to indict Raviv, and because the process began with the filing of the indictment this week, the Shin Bet has no intention of relating to any question or claim in this matter."

In any case, the official admission concerning Raviv's position as a Shin Bet agent sheds new light on his violent and troubling life. He threatened the mayor of Kiryat Arba, Zvi Katzover, claiming that Katzover had caused the arrest of local extremists.

As head of a right-wing student cell in Tel Aviv University in the early nineties, he verbally abused the elected Druze chair of the student union, Masad Kadur, accusing him of being a "fifth column."

He was one of the organizers of a Kahanist summer camp for children in Kiryat Arba, and it is suspected that as part of this camp he incited the children to throw stones at Palestinians. He was not indicted for any of these acts.

Raviv was indicted in only one case, when in 1991 he attacked MK Tamar Gozansky with a flagpole. In the face of this provocation, even the immunity he received from the Shin Bet and the prosecution could not protect him. However, strangely enough, the prosecution in the trial was satisfied with a request for a suspended sentence, and he was sentenced to a nine-month suspended sentence and a NIS 2,500 fine.

Eitan raises further claims concerning the backing the Shin Bet gave Raviv. At a certain stage, he says, when it became clear that there were suspicions among the settlers that Raviv was a Shin Bet agent, his handlers planned to cause suspicions to fall on another person, who was completely uninvolved in the case, in order to enable Raviv's continued operation as an agent.

The plan was ultimately not set in motion, but in Eitan's opinion, the very fact that such a plan was considered is very serious. Additionally, he says, the investigation that he conducted into the affair showed that the Shin Bet had discovered long before the assassination that Raviv had been keeping certain information from his handlers and that he had lied in other details.

Consequently, adds Eitan, "It is not clear why they allowed him to continue his operations as an agent."

Elon, Eitan and Zik do not agree on the motives for the continued handling of an agent as problematic as Raviv. Zik believes that the purpose was to create a conscious political provocation against the right. "I absolutely maintain that he did not serve as a Shin Bet informer, but rather as an agent provocateur in the service of the Shin Bet."

The more cautious Eitan says, "I do not claim that there was a conscious effort here to use him against the right, but the fact is that his actions were instrumental in the defamation of the right and that did not trouble his handlers. This is a very undemocratic act.

Another question arises: Since Raviv was known to be a problematic agent even concerning the quality of the information he passed on, what interest did the Shin Bet have leaving him in the field as an agent and protecting him with such force?"

There are other questions. Today it is clear that Raviv used the sweeping immunity provided by the Shin Bet to continue to function in the manner in which he functioned from the outset, before he was recruited by the Shin Bet - as a violent right-wing extremist.

Why, then, is he not standing trial now for all his actions in the past besides the staged swearing-in ceremony of the Eyal organization? Is the possibility being investigated that perhaps Raviv did not play a merely passive role in the assassination, by not reporting Yigal Amir's actions to his superiors, but actually encouraged Amir to assassinate Rabin?

Have any steps been taken against the Shin Bet officers and the prosecutors who granted Raviv his sweeping legal immunity? "The question of Raviv's involvement in the assassination of the prime minister has been investigated and discarded," Eshed said.

"Any actions he took that overstepped the instructions he received from his handlers were certainly not known to them in real time, and when they were discovered, his activities were halted for a while."

This refers to an interval of about a month following the swearing-in ceremony, after which Raviv was made to sign a paper stating that he would not repeat such behavior.

As to indictments of Raviv for other actions he took, Rubinstein wrote in his decision that the dropping of charges against Raviv was generally done "sporadically by the police, and on only two occasions were the charges dropped by the prosecution and the Attorney General's Office."

Rubinstein also mentions additional complaints that were filed against Raviv in his decision, and determines, "The new evidence is problematic, in addition to the fact that the complaints were filed very late."

In order to guarantee that a genuine investigation into the affair takes place, and to ensure that such things do not happen again, Eitan requested about six months ago that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu form a government commission of inquiry into the Raviv case.

His request was denied and only a cursory discussion of the matter took place.

Why?

Eitan: "I don't know. In general, there is a gap between the extent of the interest that the government seemingly takes in all kinds of subjects, on the one hand, and the actions it takes, on the other. Also, perhaps because of the prime minister's current responsibility for the Shin Bet, he prefers not to open the subject.