Three bullets struck Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the 12th day of the Hebrew month of Heshvan, 25 years ago today. Two pierced his back as he walked toward his armored car following a peace rally in Tel Aviv’s central square. The ensuing hour was among the most dramatic in the history of the state. As Rabin was rushed to a hospital in critical condition, Israelis hoped for two things: that he would survive and that the shooter was not Jewish. Both hopes were dashed.
When the assassin’s name, Yigal Amir, was made public two hours later, then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu dispatched his close aide, Avigdor Liberman, to the Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv to check the membership lists for any signs of affiliation with Amir. The hour it took Liberman to drive from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv was one of the tensest in Netanyahu’s political career. He knew that if Amir turned out to be a card-carrying Likudnik, he could pack his bag and disappear into the scrapyard of history. Luckily for him, Amir was not. He was a brainwashed religious ultra-nationalist who believed that killing Rabin would also bury the peace process with the Palestinians and save the people of Israel from the catastrophic consequences he believed would follow. He continues to hold that belief behind bars.
