Middle East Policy, Volume VI, Number 4, June 1999

Book Review

Murder in the Name of God: The Plot to Kill Yitzhak Rabin, by Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998. 292 pages, with notes and index. $24.95, hardcover.

Guilain Denoeux
Associate professor of government, Colby College

Murder in the name of God represents an important addition to the literature on the religious and radical right in Israel -- an unfortunately limited body of work that includes Ian Lustick's For the Land and the Lord (Council on Foreign Relations, 1988), Robert Friedman's Zealots for Zion (Rutgers University Press, 1994), and two books by Ehud Sprinzak, The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right (Oxford University Press, 1991) and Brother Against Brother (The Free Press, 1999). Michael Karpin, one of Israel's most prominent journalists, and Ina Friedman, an American-born correspondent who has lived in Israel since 1968, analyze the campaign of incitement that led to the assassination of the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Written in the style of investigative journalism, the book skillfully pieces together information about key participants in this drama: Yigal Amir, the then-25-year-old student who murdered Rabin; his brother Haggai and his friend Dror Adani, both of whom were also his co-conspirators; Avishai Raviv, the right-wing activist and Shin Bet informant who has been at the center of numerous conspiracy theories regarding Rabin's assassination; and a whole gallery of zealots, radical rabbis, yeshiva teachers and members of the Shabak (Israel's General Security Services) who, directly or indirectly, willingly or unwillingly, were drawn into this defining moment in Israeli history. However, Murder in the Name of God does far more than merely re-create the intrigues and the tragic chain of events that resulted in Rabin's murder. It also offers a unique look into the world of Jewish religious messianism and ultranationalist extremism in both Israel and the United States.

Karpin and Friedman provide overwhelming evidence to support three critical claims. First, Rabin's murder should have come as no surprise. Indeed, it was forecast by several leading commentators including Yehoshafat Harkabi, a renowned author and former chief of Israeli military intelligence in the 1950s; Ze'ev Schiff, whose columns in the daily Ha'aretz have established him as one of Israel's most prominent defense analysts; and Victor Cygielman, the Israel correspondent of the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. Second, Amir was neither deranged nor isolated in his belief. Far from representing a "lunatic fringe" living on the margins of Israeli society, he came out of a world and subculture that represent an important component of Israel and its body politic. Third, several individuals on the mainstream right, most notably Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon, did not hesitate to rely on the religious and radical right to promote their own agendas. They repeatedly indulged and lent tacit support to zealots who called for violence to thwart the implementation of the Oslo agreements. The authors take care to emphasize that many in the Likud, including Michael Eitan, Dan Meridor and Benny Begin, publicly dissociated themselves from these tactics and warned of their potentially dire consequences. But in the end, they did not stand up forcefully enough to the demagogues in their ranks, just as the left failed to rally around Rabin until it was too late.

To the authors, Rabin's assassination merely underlined the most critical fault line in Israeli society today: the tension between mainstream and religious-messianic Zionism. The former, embodied in Rabin, envisions a modern, democratic state faithful to Zionism's original mission of giving Jews a means to realize their national aspirations and offering them a refuge from potential oppression and discrimination. By contrast, religious-messianic Zionism, of which Amir was a product, aspires first and foremost to protect "authentic" Jewish values and traditions against the ever-present dangers of assimilation. While mainstream Zionism reflects a pragmatic outlook and a longing for normalization, religious-messianic Zionism aspires to conform to a God-given scheme and is concerned primarily with maintaining the distinctiveness of the Jewish people.

Karpin and Friedman highlight the transformations that have affected the religious and ultranationalist communities over the past 20 years and their intensification since the Oslo accords. They describe the radicalization of the religious Zionist community, shown in particular by the rightward drift of the Religious Nationalist party and its current status as one of the most hawkish parties in Israel. They also underscore the blurring of the lines between the haredi community and the religious Zionists. Just as the younger generation of Orthodox nationalists adopted increasingly conservative lifestyles, its ultraorthodox counterpart became far more politically aggressive on the issue of the occupied territories. In short, the turn toward fundamentalism in the modern Orthodox community was paralleled by the display of more radical political leanings among the haredim. It was the convergence of these two trends that enhanced the possibilities for political cooperation between haredim and religious Zionists and led the two worlds to interact more closely than ever before. Haredim and religious nationalists also forged new alliances with the secular right and zealots of the Meir Kahane type. The result was the emergence of a broad-based social movement comprising three main components: secular extremists, religious ultranationalists and haredim. Although each component retained its distinct ideological identity, the three currents found increasing grounds to cooperate with each other toward the shared goal of opposing the return of the occupied territories.

Karpin and Friedman are effective in describing not only the intellectual and spiritual world to which Amir was drawn, but also the impressive organizational network through which the secular and religious radical right have made their power felt. The reader will find here a wealth of information on the web of groups spun by Jewish ideologues and vigilantes in the occupied territories, the key individuals active in them and their links to Israel's political establishment. Particularly important has been the Yesha Council, representing the leaders of Jewish local government in the territories, which shortly after Oslo launched a sustained campaign aimed at discrediting Rabin and crushing his spirit.

But the networks of the radical right have not stopped at Israel's borders. As the authors put it, "For all its crudeness and stridency, the incitement against Yitzhak Rabin in Israel seemed almost subdued compared with the parallel effort in . . . the United States" (p. 131). Karpin and Friedman observe the symbiosis that developed after 1967 between the Orthodox communities of Israel and the United States. They then describe the campaign of hatred that Orthodox circles and Jewish extremists in New York City launched against Rabin and his government. Masterminding the effort were such figures as New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (Kahane's former right hand in the Jewish Defense League), Rabbis Abraham Hecht and Herbert Bomzer, and businessmen Sam Domb and Jack Avital. These individuals were themselves connected to mainstream politicians who were indebted to them, including New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Governor George Pataki. Meanwhile, the Orthodox lobby courted powerful members of Congress such as Jesse Helms, Benjamin Gilman, Alfonse D'Amato, and Charles Schumer, harnessing their influence in an effort to discredit the Israeli government and slow down the implementation of the Oslo agreements.

One of the most interesting sections of the book describes how, like their counterparts in the Muslim world, radical rabbis in Israel and the United States have revived old, obscure halachic concepts to justify the use of violence. Terms such as din rodef ("the duty to kill a Jew who imperils the life or property of another Jew") and din moser ("the duty to eliminate a Jew who intends to turn another Jew in to non-Jewish authorities") were applied -- sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly -- to Rabin (pp. 105-107). The authors acknowledge that they cannot identify by name one single rabbi who might have given Amir religious sanction for the murder, but they ascribe this to Israel's refusal to conduct a genuine investigation into those responsible for creating the climate of violence that preceded Rabin's assassination. After all, Amir himself acknowledged that he had rabbinical sanction. As he told his interrogators, "Who am I to take such responsibility on myself?" (p. 127).

In the last four chapters, Karpin and Friedman reflect on the assassination's aftermath. They begin by observing that the Israeli media's intense focus on the public mourning that followed Rabin's murder was misleading, in that it failed to convey the extent to which large segments of Israeli society did not share in the sorrow. The image of an entire country shell-shocked by the assassination, experiencing a profound national trauma and prompted into a process of soul-searching may have been appealing to Israel's overwhelmingly secular and liberal media, but it was more myth and wishful thinking than reality. In fact, the authors note, it soon became common to hear in haredi neighborhoods, Jewish settlements and yeshivas that Rabin was actually responsible for his own death. According to Karpin and Friedman, Israel's media failed to appreciate the depth of the sympathy and understanding for Amir because of its lack of familiarity with, and access to, the world of Orthodox and ultraorthodox Jews. Many on the religious and ultranationalist right went so far as to express public support for Amir's motives and action. No effort was ever made, the authors add, to signal that such responses would not be tolerated.

Karpin and Friedman also put to rest the various theories that blamed Rabin's assassination on a conspiracy hatched within the Shabak. Most of these conspiracy theories revolve around the figure of Avishai Raviv, a 28-year-old student and Shabak informer who knew Amir. In 1987, following his arrest at a demonstration organized by Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach party, Raviv was recruited by the Shabak, which promised him immunity from prosecution if he agreed to pass on information about the radical right. The authors show that again and again Raviv deceived the Shabak, kept information from it and engaged in unauthorized activities. Most of the acts of violence that he committed toward Palestinians were not even reported, and he did not inform his handlers in advance of his decision to found Eyal (an acronym for Irgun Yehudi Lochem, or "Jewish Fighting Organization"), a small, shadowy group on the far right. In short, Raviv knew the Shabak felt him to be indispensable, and he took advantage of it to pursue his own radical agenda. This loose canon on the Shabak's payroll reflected serious dysfunctions within Israel's security services, as did the more general security breakdown that made Rabin's assassination possible.

In their detailed examination of that complete collapse of security, the authors come down hard on Carmi Gillon, the former head of the Shin Bet. Appointed by Rabin on March 1, 1995, Gillon was forced to resign on January 5, 1996. Ironically, for someone whose expertise was in the fight against Jewish extremism, his approach to protecting the prime minister reflected an underlying false assumption: that the physical threat to Rabin could only come from a non-Jew. Even a cursory analysis of Israel in 1995 should have shattered this misconception. The authors observe that on at least two occasions in the month leading up to the assassination, Jewish opponents of the peace process were allowed to get within a few feet of Rabin, with the apparent intent to assault him physically, before they were stopped at the last minute by one of the prime minister's bodyguards. One of these incidents was described by Ze'ev Schiff in the daily Ha'aretz as "Rabin's murder -- a dry run." Not only was the entire approach to protecting the prime minister thoroughly inadequate, but the Shabak failed to follow up on leads that might have prevented Rabin's assassination. Shockingly, the Shabak seems to have been unaware that radical rabbis had issued rulings on din moser and din rodef. It had only scant information about the zealots active in Jewish settlements and yeshivas or about their activities, and its last success in preventing violence by Jewish extremists went back to 1984.

In the final chapter, Karpin and Friedman bemoan that the country made no genuine attempt to draw lessons from the assassination, that it refrained from taking steps that might prevent a similar occurrence in the future, and that it failed to call to account those who had openly advocated Rabin's murder. In the name of protecting a mythical "national unity," and for fear that a serious examination of the tragedy might increase social and ideological tensions in an already splintered society, the assassination was quickly eliminated from the public agenda. Only those who had condoned or participated in the demonization of Rabin benefitted from this failure to turn the assassination into an opportunity to address longstanding, unresolved issues in Israel -- from the relationship between religion and state to the desirability and feasibility of measures designed to isolate the extremists within. The authors question how long the resolution of these vital questions can be postponed further. In the meantime, some Cabinet ministers and Knesset members call for the transformation of Israel into a halachic state, extremist groups continue to operate unhindered, barely veiled threats are made publicly on the prime minister's life (former allies of Netanyahu's directed some against him in the wake of the Wye agreement), and violence increasingly permeates society as a whole.

Murder in the Name of God displays a few flaws. The various chapters are insufficiently integrated, which leads to numerous repetitions. The book also constantly goes back and forth in time, which may be confusing to the general reader, who would have benefitted from a clearer sense of chronology. Finally, the subtitle is misleading, to the extent that Rabin's assassination stemmed less from a plot than from a general atmosphere of extreme polarization and near frenzy that enabled some individuals and groups to advocate violence with impunity. But these are relatively minor quibbles that should not detract from the overall quality of this well-researched and elegantly written book.

Ehud Barak's victory and the poor showing of rightist parties in the May 1999 elections may lead one to conclude that religious and ultranationalist zealots in Israel have lost their ability to shape their country's political course. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The milieu out of which Yigal Amir emerged may be in temporary disarray, and it is likely to undergo significant recompositions as its members debate the lessons from both Netanyahu's decisive defeat and the swing of a significant segment of the electorate to the center. But those who recognize themselves in Yigal Amir continue to represent a significant and vocal segment of a society increasingly divided into hostile sub-units and subcultures. By providing one of the few windows that outsiders have into their world, Karpin and Friedman have done those interested in Israeli affairs an invaluable service.