And far more seriously, why did they allow Amir into the
so-called sterile security area where only authorized personnel
were permitted entrance? The next day, Israel TV broadcast a film
clip of Amir being taken away from an anti-Rabin demonstration
just two weeks before. Amir was well known to Rabin's security
detail; he was a member of the most extreme anti-Rabin right wing
organization of all, Eyal, an acronym for Jewish Warriors, run by
the most extreme right wing radical of them all, the notorious
Avishai Raviv.
Only on November 10, a public accusation was made by (now)
Knesset Member Benny Elon that Avishai Raviv was in fact an agent
for the General Security Services (Shabak), the very same Shabak
charged with protecting Rabin. If people scoffed, it was only for
a day.
On November 11, a respected left wing journalist Amnon
Abramovich broke the truth on Israel's Television One: Raviv was
a Shabak officer code-named Champagne, whose duty was to
infiltrate groups opposed to the government's peace process and
incriminate them in crime. To make his task easier, he created a
straw group called Eyal and hyper-radicalized young people,
turning legitimate protest into illegitimate outrages. He was the
Shabak's chief provocateur.
From that moment on, it was a matter of time before the
conspiracy to assassinate Rabin was exposed. The assassin
belonged to an organization created by the very Shabak which was
charged with protecting Rabin. And that was not all. Amir had
spent the spring and summer of 1992 in Riga, Latvia working with
a nest of spies called the Prime Minister's Liaison Office, or
Nativ for short. There, the newspapers reported, he had received
training from the Shabak.
Yigal Amir was not just a religious kid who got mad one night
and shot a prime minister. He had an intelligence background.
Enter The First Informer
At the time, I was the co-editor of Israel's only
intelligence newsletter, called Inside Israel. My partner was
Joel Bainerman. We had both written books, recently published. My
book, The Fall of Israel (Cannongate Publishers, Edinburgh) was
about political corruption; his book Crimes Of A President (SPI
Books, New York) was about the covert and illegal operations that
took place during the Bush administration.
Combined, we were
producing the most honest reporting of Israel's hidden political
shenanigans anywhere. We had gained a strong reputation in
numerous circles for the exposes of the criminal deceit that lay
behind Israel's agreements with the PLO.
And that is why one 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. 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 told 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 received his
death certificate and 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.
An Assassination Film Emerges.
Just under two months after the assassination, to the total
shock of the nation, an "amateur" video tape of the murder
emerged and it was broadcast over Channel Two. Joel taped the
film from the television and we scrutinized it closely. Though we
are being petty, to this day we argue over who caught the closing
door first.
The story of Rabin's last two hours of life is bizarre now,
as it was then. The drive to the hospital should have taken less
than a minute. But the driver, Menachem Damti, claimed he became
confused and that's why he got lost and took nine minutes to
arrive. After seven minutes driving, he stopped the car and asked
a cop, Pinchas Terem to get in the car and direct him to the
hospital. So, only three people were supposed to be in the car
until then, Rabin, the driver and the personal bodyguard Yoram
Rubin.
In the film all three are clearly outside the vehicle, when
the right back passenger door was slammed shut from the inside.
There was a fourth person in the car waiting for Rabin.
We saw two other shocking moments: the first occurs just
before Amir makes his move towards Rabin's back. Rabin's rear
bodyguard stopped dead in his tracks, turned his head sideways
and allowed the "killer" in. The act was deliberate, there was no
doubting the film.
And then, after Amir shoots, Rabin turns his head in the
direction of the shot and keeps walking...Just like eye-witnesses
said he did on the night of the assassination. Rabin was unhurt
by Amir's shot to the back. It was a blank bullet after all.
A month later, the government-appointed Shamgar Commission
Of Inquiry Into The Rabin Assassination issued its findings. It
concluded that Amir shot twice at Rabin's back, once while Rabin
was walking from 50 cm., then after he fell from about 20-30 cm
range. Very logical except the film showed that Amir never got
anywhere near such close range for the second shot. In fact, he
was no closer than six feet away for the second shot. The
contradictions had reached and far passed the point of being
utterly ridiculous.
The Trial
After the government had already declared him the murderer,
Amir stood trial for murder...which lets you know how fair a
trial he received. Before the trial began, there was a hearing.
When Amir stepped into the courtroom, he shouted to reporters,
"The whole system is rotten. If I open my mouth I can bring it
all down. The people will forgive me when they know the truth. I
didn't think they'd start killing anyone."
After this revealing outburst, he was taken away and never
allowed to address journalists again. After a month in Shabak
custody he appeared a different person for his trial: A grinning
idiot determined to prove his own guilt. He had been transformed,
we surmised by a combination of threats, promises, sleep
deprivation and drugs."
The trial was barely covered by the media but what emerged
was astounding. Damti and Rubin lied through their teeth. Just
for starters, Damti claimed he was opening the door for Leah
Rabin when the first shot rang out. Then he immediately sat in
the driver's seat as he had been trained to do. The truth was
that Leah Rabin was 24 feet away and nowhere in sight and the
film showed that he did not sit in the driver's seat until Rabin
was placed in the car.
And if those statements were mere whoppers, Rubin's version
of events was a lollapalooza. He testified that he lay on top of
Rabin and Rabin helped him get up. Then they both jumped
headfirst into the car, Rabin landing on the seat, Rubin on the
floor. Without elaborating on the depth of the lie, no witnesses
saw Rabin jump and the film proves he didn't.
After the trial, I received my first prized secret document;
the testimony of Chief Lieutenant Baruch Gladstein, of the Israel
Police Crime Laboratory, taken from the protocols of Amir's
trial. After testing Rabin's clothes scientifically, Gladstein
testified that the prime minister was shot from point blank,
barrel on the skin, range. He insisted that his conclusion was
certain and that the combination of massed gunpowder and an
explosion tear on the clothing could only have occurred at 0
distance. Even half a centimeter would have been too far.
Amir never, ever shot from point blank range. He did not
kill Rabin. That was enough for me. I gathered the film, and the
testimonies and started giving lectures on the Rabin Murder
Conspiracy in Jerusalem and the crowds who came to hear me were
always large.
Shutting Me Up
In October 1996, I received a phone call from the Weekend
Magazine program of television Channel Two. They had heard about
my lectures and also believed there were inconsistencies between
the evidence and the Shamgar Commission findings. They wanted to
interview me.
What liars they were! They broadcast an eight minute snow job
which compared me to a Holocaust denier. And they rebroadcast the
show the next night. At first it looked like a disaster for my
life. The organizations which had sponsored my lectures were
forced to cancel them, cabinet ministers condemned me as a
"fascist" and a few threatening crank calls resulted.
However, the program did include the clip of Rabin's car
door slamming shut when no one was supposed to be in the car. And
a few of my strongest points slipped through loud and clear.
People everywhere I went congratulated me on my courage. The show
boomeranged and ended up encouraging me to carry on.
I was not the only one on the show. A Ramat Gan computer
technician named Natan Gefen also appeared briefly with his own
proofs. As a result of his appearance, the local Ramat Gan
newspaper interviewed him at length about his evidence of a
conspiracy behind the Rabin assassination.
One would not believe that Natan Gefen deserves to be
recognized as one of the greatest investigators of all time. He
doesn't look the part and by day he operates a computer at a
pharmaceutical firm. But Gefen uncovered the most sensitive
documents of any political assassination and here's how he did
it.
He made a hundred copies of his interview in the Ramat Gan
paper, added his fax number and a request for proof, and placed
the package in every corner of the hospital Rabin was taken to,
Ichilov. And someone faxed him Rabin's medical records.
What an incredible tale they told! The surgeon who operated
on Rabin, Dr. Mordechai Gutman and his surgical team, recorded
the following fact: Rabin arrived with two bullet holes in the
back, was revived, was shot again and left with a third one in
the front which passed through the upper lobe of his
right lung and finally shattered dorsal vertebrae 5 and 6.
The conspiracy was broken. The State Pathologist's report erased
all the wounds the hospital staff reported because Amir never
shot from the front and couldn't have. And Rabin could not have
had his backbone shattered because the videotape of the murder
clearly shows him walking after the only shot to the upper back.
Gefen had provided the definitive proof that Amir did not shoot
the deadly bullets into Rabin.
I had to get the information out but my lectures were
cancelled. Then Joel had a brilliant idea: if your lectures are
cancelled, let's rent a hotel auditorium and do one ourselves. On
a stormy January night in 1997, over 70 people braved the wet and
arrived for the lecture. And Channel One television covered it.
I was back.
Attending the lecture was Brian Bunn, who sat on the Foreign
Student's council of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was
impressed and booked me to speak at the country's most respected
educational institute. This the Shabak could not tolerate, so
they organized a violent riot against me. And I must thank them
for that because I was front page news for a week in Israel, and
the riot was covered worldwide.
Next, a smear campaign was organized against me in the
Israeli media, but a few reporters listened to me, read the
evidence I had gathered and wrote long, favorable pieces. And
over 300 people contacted me within a week, ALL to congratulate
me and some 20 to pass on invaluable information. I was invited
to give the same lecture in New York, where I met Jay Sidman who
set up a brilliant Rabin website for me at
www.webseers.com/rabin. It turned into a meeting place for an
international exchange of ideas and information about the
assassination. Next it was on to Toronto to lecture to a full
house at the Toronto Zionist Center.
The Toronto film was videotaped and later sold commercially.
I was really on that night and the videotape convinced tens of
thousands of people that I was right. And best of all, the
publicity led to book contracts, first in America, then in Israel
and France. I took care with the book, reviews have been
excellent and hundreds of thousands have been swayed by the
facts.
In my followup book I may name the culprits: I know who did
it. Right now, it's a bit too early for my fellow Jews and
Israelis to digest the fact that Rabin was murdered from within
his own political circle.
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