Like most political assassins, Yigal Amir seemed a nice enough fellow to those who knew him in passing.
Amir’s extreme right-wing political views were nothing out of the ordinary in a country increasingly polarized by the process of making peace with its Arab neighbors.
Police said Monday they aren’t yet sure whether the 25-year-old law student acted alone or whether he belongs to any of Israel’s militant right-wing organizations.
Amir had participated in some protests, often coaxing friends to come along. On one occasion last summer he was filmed at a protest outside a West Bank settlement being dragged away by police. Two months ago, he heckled Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during a speech, and was removed by police from the auditorium.
Despite such anti-government activity, he wasn’t on the growing list of right-wing extremists whom police considered dangerous enough to monitor.
Amir apparently had few close friends. He had an ordinary record in the army, an ordinary record at Bar-Ilan University.
To journalists attempting to flesh out his unremarkable career, Amir is repeatedly described by his teachers and fellow students as “quiet and religious.”
In sum, he was like most political assassins. He was a nobody.
During a pause in his arraignment Monday before a Tel Aviv magistrate, Amir took the opportunity to engage in a heated exchange with Israeli reporters. He revealed himself as an Arab-hating fanatic with little remorse for his deed.
“It’s interesting how an entire nation did not notice that the center of the Palestinian state is an army of terrorists that we will have to fight in less than half a year or a year,” said Amir, lecturing in an aggressive tone.
“Everyone is shocked about the killing of a prime minister who groveled before all the countries of the world. He (Rabin) is responsible for the security of only 98 percent of the population and did not care about the other 2 percent,” Amir said, a reference to the estimated 130,000 Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “Such a prime minister is not a prime minister for me.”
Amir mentioned the peace rally where he had stalked his target. “It was 50 percent Arab. Did anyone cover it? Did anyone report that there were 50 percent Arabs? These Arabs who will determine the future of my state?
“If you are willing to let them determine the future of your state . . . you are hypocrites. What will you do when there are 2 million Arabs in the country? You will give this country to the Arabs,” he said.
During court proceedings, Amir told the magistrate he tried to get close to Rabin before firing to avoid hitting anyone else. One of Rabin’s bodyguards was wounded, but Amir said it was unintentional.
Amir has told police interrogators he had hoped to assassinate Foreign Minister Shimon Peres as well, but that Peres left the rally ahead of Rabin, and Amir decided to wait for the better target.
Amir also has admitted stalking Rabin on two previous occasions. His first attempt was thwarted when a suicide attack on an Israeli bus forced Rabin to cancel a Jan. 22 appearance at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial that was to have marked the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Amir tried again in September at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new highway interchange, but found security was too tight.
Without a trace of regret, Amir explained to the court why he murdered:
“I did not do this to stop the peace process because it does not exist. There is a war and the murder was my obligation according to Halacha (Jewish religious law),” he said. “According to the Halacha, you can kill the enemy. . . . When you kill in war, it is an act that is allowed.”
Asked whether he acted alone, Amir replied: “It was God.”
At present, police aren’t ready to take Amir at his word that he acted alone and wasn’t part of a conspiracy. They have arrested his older brother, Hagai, 27, who apparently knew of Yigal Amir’s two previous attempts to kill Rabin, but did nothing to stop him. Police said in court that Hagai also prepared at least one of the hollow-point 9mm bullets that struck Rabin.
A previously unknown group calling itself the “Jewish Avenging Organization” claimed responsibility for Saturday’s assassination. Israel TV reported Monday that police are looking into possible links with organizations founded by Meir Kahane, the extremist American rabbi who was slain in midtown Manhattan on Nov. 5, 1990-the same date Rabin was slain.
Newspapers quoting anonymous police sources said Amir may have links to an extremist group known as “Eyal,” an acronym for Jewish Fighting Organization. The group apparently has links to some right-wing students at Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan University, where Amir was studying law and computers.
Yigal Amir was the second of Geula and Shlomo Amir’s eight children. The traditional and deeply religious Yemenite family lived humbly in a working-class neighborhood of Herzliya.
Geula Amir ran a nursery in the family’s home and is known and loved for having raised several generations of children in the neighborhood.
Shlomo Amir is a sofer, engaged in the traditional Jewish occupation of inscribing religious verse for prayer books and other religious articles. He also is a shochet, attending to the ritual slaughter of animals in accordance with religious law.
According to profiles in the Israeli press, Yigal was the son the family pinned its hopes on, the one who would be clever enough to rise above the social and economic circumstances that keep many Jews of Middle Eastern ancestry on the edge of poverty.
When he was 14 he entered a yeshiva, a religious studies school, that had a reputation for encouraging its students to shun the military.
But according to classmates, Amir looked forward to his military service, and when he was 19 he was accepted into the elite Golani Brigade as a participant in a “hesder” program, which allows religious Jews to combine their religious studies with military service.
After he was discharged from the army, a time when young Israelis traditionally travel abroad, Amir got a job teaching Hebrew in Latvia under the auspices of the Jewish Agency.
He returned to Israel in 1993 and he enrolled in classes at Bar-Ilan University. But increasingly, Amir became caught up in the political debate that has raged in Israel since the September afternoon in 1993 when Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat shook hands on the lawn of the White House.
“He believed that since Rabin had made peace with Arafat and was handing over the land of Israel, he is a betrayer of the Jews, and it is therefore permitted to kill him,” said a fellow student who was quoted in the newspaper Yediot Aharnot.
In recent months, such poisonous sentiments, often with the blessing of religious authorities, have become commonplace among Israel’s right-wing extremists. Many now believe it was only a matter of time before those seeds of hatred would take root in the mind of a fanatic.
One woman who knew Amir at Bar-Ilan University told an Israeli newspaper “it was impossible to guess he would have tried to kill-he’s a very gentle and thoughtful person who does things from the heart.”
Amir told police he made no plans to escape, and that he would have preferred to pay for his deed with his life.
