The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin: ‘He never knew it was one of his people who shot him in the back’
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His words carried extra weight because of his own history. He was a soldier turned politician, a commander in the founding 1948 conflict Israelis call the War of Independence; the victorious chief of staff in the 1967 war Israelis saw as a miraculous deliverance from extinction at the hands of three neighbouring Arab states; and a serial defence minister famed as “Mr Security”. Rabin was no dove: in 1988, he had ordered Israeli troops to put down the first intifada by breaking the bones of stone-throwing Palestinian protesters. But as the uprising dragged on, his position slowly evolved: he came to see Palestinian resistance not as a military threat to be crushed, but as a political grievance requiring resolution. When the Oslo talks suggested broad agreement might be possible, he faced a choice: to keep fighting or find a different way.
The latter option was available to him in part because of his hawkish credentials: Israelis saw him as a man they could trust with the nation’s defences. So when he declared it was time to agree an accommodation with the Palestinians – even if that meant giving up some of the territory Israel had won in 1967 and occupied since – Israelis were prepared to listen.
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Meanwhile, Israel’s internal security agency, the Shabak, was picking up talk in far-right circles that alarmed them. Ultra-nationalist rabbis were calling Rabin a rodef: a murderer who, under Jewish religious law, could be killed to prevent further acts of murder. And the temperature at the anti-Rabin rallies was rising.
The then leader of the opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu, was the star speaker at two now infamous demonstrations, where the crowd’s slogans included “Death to Rabin”. In July 1995, Netanyahu walked at the head of a mock funeral procession featuring a fake black coffin.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/assassination-yitzhak-rabin-never-knew-his-people-shot-him-in-back
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