Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel by Dan Ephron

Author:Dan Ephron [Ephron, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2015-10-18T22:00:00+00:00

SOMEHOW, THE JEWISH Affairs Department saw no way to make use of the information. It did, however, relay the report to Dignitary Protection, the unit within Shabak responsible for guarding the prime minister and other VIPs. If Arab Affairs occupied the top rung on the agency ladder, the protection unit lingered at the bottom. Its senior officers had no role in intelligence gathering—the agency’s core function—and met with the head of Shabak on average only once every two years. Guarding dignitaries at their offices and in their homes, as they made their way from one public event to another, involved complicated planning. But to outsiders it could seem like mere muscle work. It helped little that recruits often resembled nightclub bouncers, with gorged biceps and wraparound glasses. In Shabak’s early years, the department had been known as the Escort Unit, a name some in the agency’s other branches still invoked with a sneer.

Several people in the unit read the report, including Dror Mor, the officer in charge of Rabin’s security detail. Though his job entailed more planning than actual guarding, Mor had served as a regular on Rabin’s detail in the 1980s, picking him up from his home on Rav Ashi at five in the morning on many days and staying with him until midnight. With all those hours together—more than Rabin spent with his closest advisers or even family members on a given day—Mor came to know him intimately. How this man who had been a public figure for most of his life remained so painfully shy baffled him. Rabin seemed to relish the interaction with soldiers at dusty military bases while dreading the small talk at dinners and cocktail parties—and the attire as well. When Mor came to pick him up one evening in a jacket and tie for a formal event, Rabin groused softly. “If you’re wearing one, I’m going to have to wear one,” he said, and retreated to the bedroom to change.

Mor found the detail about the short Yemeni guy determined to kill Rabin noteworthy. For decades, the protection unit was certain of only one thing when it came to assassination scenarios: the shooter would be an Arab. But Mor and others knew that assumption no longer applied. After Oslo, the unit had introduced a new drill for coping with right-wing protests at events attended by Rabin. Known as keren zavit (translated roughly as “secluded corner”), the drill specifically factored the possibility of Jews perpetrating violence at or around Rabin. “We took it into consideration; we understood it could happen,” Mor recalled later. Halevy’s statement to police seemed to substantiate the threat. Mor conveyed the vague profile to the rest of the detail. At a meeting sometime later, he asked members of the Jewish Affairs Department whether they followed up on the report and what came of it.

But even as the perception of the threat against Rabin shifted, the unit did what bureaucracies tend to do: it remained fixed in its old approach. Dignitary Protection had a near perfect record, at least within the borders of Israel.

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