Bibi by Pfeffer Anshel

Author:Pfeffer, Anshel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2018-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

19

Good for the Jews

As Eitan Haber, Yitzhak Rabin’s chief of staff, read the government statement on the prime minister’s assassination, people in the crowd outside Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv were already shouting “Bibi the murderer!”

The slain prime minister’s body still warm, the public had yet to learn the assassin’s identity, but Netanyahu was already being cast as the principal villain. Ostracized by the establishment, he was first informed that Rabin had died in the hospital by the US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk. The only official communication he received that night was from the Shin Bet informing him that his security was being beefed up.

After hours huddling with his advisers, Netanyahu came out to give a short statement. “The people of Israel gave up on political murder 2000 years ago,” he said. “We don’t replace the government by rule of gun.” Netanyahu was visibly shaken. He had dismissed warnings of an actual assassination attempt. He was well aware that the media would accuse him, but was convinced that he had done nothing wrong. Privately, he blamed Rabin for not agreeing to meet in those last months and join in a call against violence. “It’s the responsibility of the prime minister to bring the nation together, not split it,” he complained.1

On the eve of the “Yes to Peace. No to Violence” rally in Tel Aviv, he had for the first time called upon the right wing not to cause a disruption. It didn’t make much of a difference. Counterdemonstrators arrived. Netanyahu had no influence over the far right, certainly not over the assassin, Yigal Amir, a law student and a supporter of the Hebron murderer Baruch Goldstein. When Amir’s name came out shortly after the murder, Netanyahu dispatched Avigdor Lieberman to the Likud offices to ensure that he was not a party member.

Netanyahu wasn’t surprised by the polls a few days later showing a gap of 30 percent between him and Shimon Peres. He knew the bullets that had killed Rabin had also blown away his prospects of winning the election. As far as the Israeli establishment was concerned, Bibi sat in the dock alongside Amir—and with them, the religious and settler communities.

The Likud faction gathered the next day in the Knesset. Netanyahu warned that “no one should dare blame Likud for the tragedy. It’s a false accusation. The real incitement began ten minutes after Rabin’s murder.” He wasn’t prepared to shoulder any of the blame. But some of his Likud colleagues were already convinced that the party would be better off without him. Benny Begin and Dan Meridor, who privately blamed Netanyahu for getting too close to the far right, prevailed upon him to announce Likud’s support for Peres’s appointment as prime minister. Agreeing, Netanyahu said to the media, “We won’t let an assassin’s bullet decide who is the prime minister of Israel.” One of his Likud rivals muttered quietly, “The Knesset’s mourning session for Rabin is the wake of Netanyahu’s political career.”2

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