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- My expose of the true Rabin assassination, Who Murdered
Yitzhak Rabin, received a great deal of attention because it was the first
and because it was published in four languages. The release of a second
book on the conspiracy, The Fatal Sting by Natan Gefen was greeted with
less fanfare, partly because that's what happens when you're number two,
and in greater part, because so far, the book is only available in Hebrew.
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- Those who read Hebrew often ask if there is a rivalry
between me and Gefen. The answer is no; we are on the same team. And I'm
not being overly magnanimous when I conclude that his book is as valuable
as mine for those seeking the truth of what really happened to Rabin. In
fact, Gefen adds several documents missing from my work that round out
the study of the assassination. Allow me to point out his most striking
revelations.
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- Amir Did Not Confess At The Beginning
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- A month after the murder, on December 3, 1995, a court
hearing was held to consider Israel Police's request for an extension of
its investigation of the murder. Before the hearing began, Amir shouted
at the reporters present, demanding to know why they were not investigating
the murder of the security officer Yoav Kuriel. Most of Israel saw his
outburst on television and heard the following interchange between him
and Judge Dan Arbel , who ordered Amir to desist from speaking to the media.
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- From Maariv 4/11/95: One Of The Reporters - Would you
do it again? Amir - Yes. After you understand why, you'll see the system
is rotten. Everything is set up. What you're seeing is a facade. I didn't
think they'd start killing people. Since Oslo B... Judge Arbel - Don't
talk about Oslo B. You're not the Foreign Minister. Amir - They're killing
people. Don't you understand that? It's all a lie. Judge Arbel - What's
a lie? Amir - That I killed Rabin. I never even tried to kill him.
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- I included that remarkable exchange in my book but had
no idea that Amir's denial appeared in the court records. Gefen managed
to track down the protocols of this hearing and he reprints them in full
in The Fatal Sting. After the reporters are removed from the court and
the session continues in camera, Amir tells Judge Arbel, "About the
request for an extension, what you've seen now has all been a facade. I
request to be allowed to explain the background to my actions. They're
killing people. If you listen to the truth, the whole country will be up
in arms." Amazing it is that one month after the murder Amir was still
trying to tell an Israeli court the truth and the judge turned down his
request to speak. The justice system was rigged against Amir from the beginning
and Gefen proves it. After this incident, Amir was taken away for over
a month and a half and when he returned from Shabak prison to face the
investigators of the Shamgar Commission and the judges at his own trial,
he had changed. Now he was an ever-smiling buffoon who confessed every
time a witness testified in his favor. If only Judge Arbel had let him
speak the truth.
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- The Bullets
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- On page nine of his book, Gefen makes an astute observation
about Hagai Amir and Dror Edni. Both were tried and given long prison sentences
for supplying the ammunition to the murderer. Most of the case against
them was based on the following events. On the night of the murder, the
police searched the Amir home in Herzlia and came up nearly empty-handed.
Two days later, the Shabak (General Security Services, Israel's FBI), researched
the home and came away with two pistols and a huge armory of bullets. Gefen
observes that if Hagai Amir and Dror Edni were really involved in the assassination,
they would never have left such an armory in the Amir house. Now we jump
to page 30 and Gefen reports on the bullet that supposedly shot Rabin's
personal bodyguard, and my prime candidate as his murderer, Yoram Rubin.
The actual bullet was never found and Rubin was not actually shot. But
traces of the bullet which passed through his jacket were found by Israel
Crime Lab technician, Chief Lieutenant Baruch Gladstein and he discovered
brass, a metal that was not found in the bullets which wounded Rabin. Gefen
makes three points which I missed in my book. First, the prosecution explained
away the different bullet by claiming that Amir loaded two types of bullets
into his clip. Gefen puts the argument to rest by referring to the police
ballistics report. No bullet with the chemical composition of that which
pierced Rubin's suit was found in Amir's clip or in the armory allegedly
kept by his brother Hagai and his "accomplice" Edni. Next, Gefen
notes that hollowpoint bullets are rarely used in Israeli murders and it
would have been mad for a political assassin to use them since they are
much less effective at penetrating a bulletproof vest, which Rabin should
have been but wasn't wearing. How would Amir have known Rabin wouldn't
be wearing one? However, hollowpoints shatter upon impact and cannot be
traced back to a specific weapon.
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- Finally, a major revelation, nowhere in the court or
police records are Amir's gun, clip or extant bullets tested for fingerprints.
There is no fingerprint evidence that Amir ever held the murder weapon
or loaded its clip. Gefen insists this could not have been an oversight
and implies that the fingerprint evidence was deliberately withheld.
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- Tampering With The Film
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- Many people have found ways to prove that the "amateur"
film of the murder, wrongly attributed to a Shabak flunkie named Ronnie
Kempler, was obviously tampered with. The shooter in the still-frame from
the film has a different haircut and face than Amir, is wearing a long-sleeved
shirt, when Amir wore a short-sleeved shirt and is shooting with his left
hand, while Amir shot from the right. It can't be Amir and I have concluded
that someone else was superimposed into the frame to bring Amir closer
to the point blank range the police found Rabin was shot at. Central to
the case against Amir is the frame which supposedly captures the flash
of the gun as he shoots. Bernard Shechter, head of the Police Forensics
Laboratory at the time of the assassination, told me that he had never
seen a flash appear like that in any other shooting he had examined and
suspected that it was drawn in. Arther Vered, a computer expert pulled
the flash frame from the Kempler film and placed it atop the flash still
which was first published by Yediot Ahronot. They are not the same. Still,
there are lingering suspicions that the gunflash was real.
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- Not any more. Gefen consulted a physicist who explained
most rationally, that the light generated by the flash of an ignited bullet
cartridge is as brilliant as lightning. If the flash was real, it would
have lit up Rabin's back, which it clearly does not. The Fatal Sting proves
the photo of Amir shooting Rabin has been altered drastically.
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- Understanding Dr. Barabash
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- One of the biggest headaches I have when lecturing is
explaining away the TV interview given by Ichilov Hospital director, Dr.
Gabi Barabash on the evening of the assassination. While, the official
version of Rabin's murder has him shot twice in the back, both Gefen and
I agree that all the evidence proves that Rabin was shot three times, the
final fatal shot coming from the front and ultimately shattering his spine,
a wound the government claims never occurred.
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- I present two televised interviews from Ichilov to my
audiences. First, I show Health Minister Ephraim Sneh announcing that Rabin
was shot three times; in the chest, stomach and spinal cord. Then comes
Barabash who confirms the chest to spine wound but claims Rabin was only
shot twice. The Fatal Sting more than suggests he was lying. Two hours
later, Dr. Barabash was interviewed on Channel Two and he is much less
certain about the number of shots. Gefen provides the text of this startling
interview and keeps the original tape in his archive. Channel Two Reporter
- How many bullets are we talking about? Dr. Barabash - Pardon me? Channel
Two Reporter - How many bullets are we talking about? Dr. Barabash - I
think two, no three, I think two. One of them injured the area around the
heart and wounded the spinal cord, cutting it off. Barabash can't get the
story straight. He mixes up the coverup with the truth.
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- When Was Rabin Shot?
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- The Fatal Sting includes a shocking document I had never
seen before and frankly, I just can't digest it. I had concluded based
on court testimony and hospital records that Rabin was shot at 9:40, placed
in his limousine a few minutes later and arrived at the hospital at 9:52.
Since the ride should have taken only a minute, I concluded that Rabin's
driver, Menachem Damti, got unexplainably lost for eight minutes. Two months
ago, one of Rabin's surgeons, Dr. Kluger told Haaretz that, in fact, Rabin
was twelve minutes late. How could I have been off by four minutes?
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- (I digress. A close associate of his informed me last
week that Dr. Kluger has been afflicted by a mysterious malady and looks,
"like a living corpse." He is the second doctor to be so mysteriously
stricken recently. Last September, the head of Rabin's surgical team, Dr.
Mordechai Gutman suffered neurological pain that left him unable to function
for six weeks. The cause of the pain was never identified but my informant
told me, "He got the hint.")
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- To confuse the issue more, Gefen presents the hospital
conclusion based on blood coagulation that Rabin was shot 4-5 minutes before
he arrived at Ichilov. This would mean, according to my published calculations,
that Rabin was shot some three minutes after he entered his car. If Kluger
is right, then Rabin was shot, some seven minutes into his final journey.
This is just too much of a discrepancy and it must be explained.
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- Gefen does so in such a drastic fashion that, until I
figure out what it means, I must remain speechless. Reprinted in The Fatal
Sting are Amir's arrest records. According to them, he was arrested by
the police at 9:30 PM, or a full ten minutes before, officially, Rabin
was shot by him. I tried and tried to work it out, until finally I phoned
Nathan Gefen and asked him, "Is this arrest report mistaken? Didn't
people check their watches to see when Rabin was shot? Why is it accepted
that Rabin was shot at 9:40 if Amir was already in custody by then?"
He replied, "This is the first police report and it's the most authentic.
After that, the arrest time was readjusted five minutes at a time to suit
the cases of Shamgar and Amir's prosecutors." In The Fatal Sting,
Gefen quotes a police expert who explains that the time of arrest in such
a form is the most vital information of all and it is rarely, if ever,
so wrong. Gefen concludes, "If Amir had chosen to pursue his innocence,
he has the best alibi of all. He was already under arrest when Rabin was
shot."
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- There is much more in this book, but the arrest records
shook me up the most. Gefen dares where I merely hinted: he names Shimon
Peres as the organizer of the murder and he has strong arguments to back
his accusation up. Today, I have even stronger ones than Gefen. However,
the real strength of The Final Sting lies in the documentation, which when
combined with the ample documents of my book, proves beyond any doubt that
Yigal Amir could not possibly have murdered Rabin. Now there are two books
that reach the same conclusion. A third is on the way. It is called Lies:
The Israeli Secret Service And The Rabin Assassination by David Morrison.
It will be published by Gefen Books of Jerusalem (no relation to Nathan
Gefen). Write isragefen@netmedia.net.il for information. Last October,
Rabin's son Yuval went on television and demanded a reinvestigation of
his father's murder because, "If not, there are going to be a lot
more books likes Chamish's soon." His prediction is, thankfully, coming
true.
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- The Fatal Sting is sold through the Steimatzky chain
in Israel or can be ordered by phone from Ram Marketing. Call (972) (0)3
6775630 or 03 5745367. Natan Gefen can be reached at gfn@inter.net.il
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- My book Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin is distributed in
English in America by Brookline Books, call 1 800 666 BOOK and is available
again over Amazon.
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- Please visit www.webseers.com/rabin
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