Final_Judgment

[418] Final Judgment 515
Clearly, Israel's people are serious about their nation's survival—and
many would be willing to kill one of their own prime ministers to ensure it.
One might even go so far as to say that Israel may be "a nation of violence."
What is fascinating is that the Israeli conspiracy theories regarding the
Rabin assassination are at least as complex as some of those that have come
forth in the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
According to the American Jewish weekly, Forward, "Most of those
theories center on the actions of Avishai Raviv, an agent provocateur who
overstepped the mandate given him by [Israel' s] General Security Service
to infiltrate and report on the right-wing extremist groups that spawned" 1063
Prime Minister Rabin's assassin, Yigar Amir. Working with Amir, Raviv
organized paramilitary training for the very circle of right-wing extremists
that Mr. Raviv was penetrating. Forward said that the conspiracy theorists
say that "Mr. Raviv is believed to have goaded Amir toward violence by
implying that his manhood depended on translating his zeal into action." 1064
What's more, noted Forward, Israel's "right wing" National Religious
Party newspaper Hatzofeh has charged, according to Forward, that "Rabin
knew of the assassination plot and let it go forward on the condition that the
bullets in Amir's gun were changed to blanks. Following this logic, a failed
attempt would allow Rabin to crack down on right-wing opponents who
believed his concessions to the Palestinians squandered the Biblical
inheritance and endangered the state.
"At the last minute, Hatzofeh opined, [Shimon] Peres and a secret
service official colluded to replace the blanks with live bullets. According to
the theory, the security official was promised a top post in the General
Security Service. [Then-Foreign Minister] Peres, of course, inherited the
mantle of prime minister." 1065
JOHN F. KENNEDY, Jr. SPEAKS
To make matters worse for Israel, international attention has been
focused on the growing conflict arising from the Rabin assassination and
the conspiracy theories that have evolved. The first major report in the
mainstream media in America about the controversy in Israel came from a
very interesting source, especially considering what we have explored in the
pages of Final Judgment.
In the March 1997 issue of his magazine, George, John F. Kennedy Jr.
published an article by the mother of Yitzhak Rabin's assassin in which the
woman, Geula Amir, alleged that her son, Yigal Amir, was goaded into
killing Rabin on November 5, 1995 by Avishai Raviv, who was an
undercover agent for Shin Bet, Israel's security agency.
The article was highly controversial and some accused young Kennedy of
interfering in Israel's political affairs not only by giving the assassin's mother
a forum to discuss her conspiracy theory, but also by giving