ISRAEL: PR offensive for an assassin
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This week, Israel marks the 12th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with a series of ceremonies and school programs. But his killer is the one dominating headlines.
Yigal Amir, a right-wing Jewish extremist serving a life sentence for the fatal shooting on Nov. 4, 1995, is the focus of an energetic campaign by supporters urging his early release. Well-known ultranationalists, calling themselves the “Committee for Democracy,” mailed out thousands of postcards saying Amir should be freed in the name of “peace” and “democracy.”
In addition, Amir’s mother and his wife appear on a video that has spurred controversy — and widespread revulsion — for depicting the convicted assassin as a hero. On the tape, excerpts of which appeared on the popular Ynet news website, his wife, Larissa Trimbobler, accuses Israel of engaging in “a 12-year period of brainwashing” against Amir. Then a law student, Amir said he shot Rabin because he felt the premier had betrayed Jews by ceding land to the Palestinians under terms of the Oslo accords.
Amir and Trimbobler wed in 2004 during his incarceration and have been granted conjugal visits. Now Trimbobler is pregnant (reportedly through in-vitro fertilization). The daily Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported that she hopes to induce delivery on Wednesday, the anniversary of the assassination, according to the Hebrew calendar. Authorities have so far rejected his requests to attend the circumcision ceremony — the couple expects a son — at home or in prison.
Some commentators expressed consternation earlier this month when a poll by the Maariv newspaper found that 26% of respondents favor releasing Amir once he has served 20 years of his life term. Nearly half of respondents who were defined as devout said they didn’t believe Amir killed Rabin. To many Israelis, the poll results suggested that the impact of the assassination — at the time a national trauma — has faded over the years, while the peace process championed by Rabin collapsed into violence.
— Batsheva Sobelman and Ken Ellingwood in Jerusalem