-
- As I was reciting the Yom Kippur ne'ila prayer, one line
struck me. We beseech G-d to, "Grant freedom of speech to those who
desire it." Breaking with ceremony, I repeated that line several
times
over. No request could be as important to Israel this year.
Either the
Rabin murder is exposed this year, or those who commited it
and are covering
it up will make certain that an independent secure
nation is all but lost
the next. It is ultimately, in the name of
"peace" that Rabin's
murderers are being protected by the
Israeli political and media establishment.
For the sake of an elitist
ideology, murder may be commited in our nation
with impunity. And yes,
prayers are answered. After the post-fast meal
I opened my e-mail and
one devoted friend offered to put up a considerable
sum of money if I
would reprint a second English edition of Who Murdered
Yitzhak Rabin
and finally name the murderers. I accepted the offer. Another
message
was significant as well. An advocate of the truth offered to pay
for
bumper stickers reading Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin, The People Demand
To Know. I answered that if enough people write me and agree to put the
sticker on their vehicles, that I would accept his offer. Please let me
know if you'd like a bumper sticker free of charge. And please note the
following dates: On Monday and Tuesday Sept. 27-28, I will be at the
Jerusalem
Post Succot Fair in Kibbutz Tsora near Bet Shemesh. Gefen
Books will have
a booth offering my book Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin in
Hebrew and Russian
and I'll be manning the Zionist Book Club booth
offering the book and a
videotape of the same name in English. I'm
looking forward to meeting you
at the fair, discussing strategy and
signing books in three languages.
Finally, please note the date October
3. That is when Avishai Raviv is
once again due to be tried at the Bet
Mishpat HaShalom in Jerusalem. As
you know, those covering for his
crimes have cancelled his trial twice
and appointed a new trio of
judges to hear his case. It is an ugly cat
and mouse game whose object
is to lower the profile of the trial and arrange
as few witnesses as
possible for a rigged sentence. Those who care about
justice in Israel
will not let the deceit mongers wear them down. Please
do be a witness
and bring friends. To doublecheck that the trial hasn't
been cancelled
again and to get the exact time and courtroom, call Yochevet
at the Bet
Mishpat Ha Shalom: 02 6706411. We all know what we are up against.
We
have seen the mainstream media vigorously push the Karpin book's lie
that the religious and Right were collectively responsible for Rabin's
murder. And while this media flog that lie, it shows no shame in exposing
the minor misdemeanors of the Netanyahus as the crime of the century. In
order for the truth to emerge, we must stick it to the media and Avishai
Raviv's trial is the best sticking point we've got. See you there and at
the fair. Meanwhile, enjoy my latest article! Best, Barry Chamish
-
-
- EXPOSING THE RABIN
ASSASSINATION
- By Barry Chamish
-
- It took two years before
Americans began to suspect that
Lee Harvey Oswald did not shoot
President Kennedy. It took large sections
of the Israeli population
less than a week to suspect that Yigal Amir did
not shoot the fatal
bullets at Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It took me
about two hours. At
about midnight of Nov. 4, 1995, I asked how Amir could
possibly have
broken through Rabin's bodyguards to take a clear shot at
Rabin's back.
My answer was that he couldn't have: unless someone wanted
him to. The
next day my suspicions were reinforced by eye-witness testimonies
that
appeared in the media. After Amir's first shot, one witness after
another heard Rabin's bodyguards shout, "They're blanks;"
They're
not real;" and the like. And then, instead of killing Amir
on the
spot, the same bodyguards let him get off two more rounds. It
just didn't
add up. The bodyguards are trained to shoot an assassin in
less than a
second; it would take longer to shout, "They're
blanks, they're not
real." Why would they think the bullets were
duds? Why didn't they
kill Amir to save Rabin? 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, asit 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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