Executive Intelligence Review
This review appears in the March 8, 2002 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Book Review
Can Israel Save Itself From Fascism? by Michele Steinberg

Murder in the Name of God:
The Plot to Kill Yitzhak Rabin

by Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman
New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1998
292 pages, hardbound, $24.95

When Israeli correspondent Amir Oren revealed on Jan. 25, 2002, in the pages of the daily Ha'aretz, that the Israeli officers in occupied Palestine were studying "how the German army fought in the Warsaw Ghetto," where the Jews were obliterated by the Nazis, there was little open revolt in the Israeli establishment. There is a numbness in Israel, a moral numbness, that is rooted, in great degree, to the aftershock of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Though it occurred more than seven years ago, on Nov. 4, 1995, many Israeli intellectuals who favor peace, admit that Israel has still not recovered from the Rabin assassination at the hands of a "sinister cabal," and its whitewash.

Murder in the Name of God is one of the best accounts available of the political campaign by Americans as well as Israelis, to assassinate Yitzhak Rabin, and of the conspiracy that carried it out. The reader will be convinced, while learning much about the real nature and origins of the " Jewish settlers" movement, and about the Jewish terrorist groups in Israel, that assassin Yigal Amir did not act alone. It is an excellent intelligence report on the "Jewish underground" and its links to government circles in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's party, the Likud, and the National Religious Party.

Anyone—especially American and European political figures—who cares one iota about "stopping the violence," should read this book. Written by Michael Karpin, a leading Israeli television journalist and writer, and Ina Friedman, an American-born Israeli, who is a correspondent for the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw, Murder in the Name of God lives up to the promise made on its back cover by reviewer Amos Elon, that the authors "draw a frightening picture of a sick society ... that allowed this cabal to mature, and today sits by in equanimity as Israel is pushed back from the brink of peace to the black hole of history."

It may even explain why leading officials such as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, leader of the Labor Party, sits back in silence as his military officers study the Nazi extermination of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, as the model for what they will do to the Palestinians; or why he approves, one after another, the assassinations of Palestinian "terrorists," even as he knows that the Jewish terrorist controllers, who planned the murder of his friend Rabin, go free today.

The following stunning excerpts show the emergence of a fascist movement among Israel's right wing—a movement protected from within the United States, more than is ever admitted, and which has paralyzed the Israeli establishment, which has failed to stand up against Sharon. It is also why hundreds of thousands of Israelis are fleeing their nation in fear of fascism.

From Chapter Three: 'Action Headquarters'

"By early evening [of Oct. 5, 1995, date of the Knesset parliamentary debate on Oslo II], tens of thousands of right-wing protesters had made their way to Jerusalem's Zion Square for a demonstration called by the opposition parties, the Yesha Council, the Joint Staff and the Action Headquarters.... A bearded young man in a yarmulke was caught on tape holding a picture of Rabin in one hand and beating it with his fist while shouting ... 'Because of this dog, this country is going to be destroyed.'... The microphone caught a voice saying, 'Instead of filming, will you come to the funeral? Will you come to the funeral tomorrow?'...

"As loudspeakers blasted patriotic songs, the crowd began working itself up to a frenzy even before any of the scheduled speakers had begun.... Wild young men in yellow Kach T-shirts carried Meir Kahane's son, Benyamin, on their shoulders.... Supporters of the Likud set Rabin's portrait on fire. Two bearded young men hoisted a banner reading 'Rabin, Arafat's Dog.' Standing near them a woman waving a blue and white Likud flag shouted, 'Death to Rabin!' over and over like a mantra. Shouts of 'Nazis!' 'Collaborators!' and 'Judenrat!' were levelled at the cordon of policemen.... Overlooking it all, on the balcony of the Ron Hotel, stood a gallery of right-wing politicians gazing with satisfaction at the maelstrom below. [Then-Likud chairman] Benjamin Netanyahu waved his hand at the demonstrators in encouragement. Ariel Sharon, Tsomet's Rafael Eitan, and Rehavam Ze'evi—all masters of anti-Arab and anti-government invective—flanked him. Tsachi Hanegbi, Netanyahu's liaison with the Action Headquarters, stood beaming with pride at the turnout and tenor of the crowd. The heart of the capital had been turned into a scene of fevered abandon....

"The climax of the evening was Netanyahu's speech.... Throughout the speech the violence kept escalating. Demonstrators threw lit torches at policemen. Groups of Kach supporters jumped up and down screaming, 'Rabin is a dog.... In blood and fire we'll drive Rabin out' ... [Netanyahu] thundered, '... we will bring the government down."

Karpin and Friedman tell how the violence escalated, especially after a leaflet with a photo-montage of Rabin dressed in an Nazi SS uniform began circulating, and the chant rose, "Rabin is a Nazi." In this frenzy, the demonstrators marched to the Knesset, where they attacked Rabin's empty limousine.

"As the gates of the Knesset parking lot finally closed behind Rabin's car, another vehicle began moving up.... In it sat Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a figure who had worked closely with the settlers in the 1980s ... but was now the symbol of the Labor government's construction freeze in most of the settlements. TV cameras caught the trapped minister pale with fright as rioters surrounded the car and rocked it from side to side like a ship in a tempest. One rioter who was being taken into custody screamed at the police: 'Rabin is murdering the homeland.'... 'He's right!' Rabbi Elon called out. 'The traitor is inside [the car]. He's the one who should be arrested!'

"When he reached the safety of the Knesset building, the shaken Ben-Eliezer set out in search of Netanyahu. 'I've never experienced anything like it!' he told colleagues along the way. 'I've fought in all [of Israel's] wars and seen death before my eyes. But never was I so close to death as I was tonight.' Finally collaring Netanyahu in one of the corridors, Ben-Eliezer warned him loudly: 'You'd better restrain your people. Otherwise it will end in murder. They tried to kill me just now!'

"Embarrassed by the scene, Netanyahu responded with a grin of discomfort.

" 'I suggest you wipe the smile off your face,' Ben-Eliezer barked at him. 'Your people are mad. If someone is murdered, the blood will be on your hands!'... The settlers have gone crazy, and someone will be murdered here, if not today, then in another week or another month."

A month later, Rabin was shot and killed at a campaign rally by Yigal Amir, a fellow traveller of the Kach movement, who had been harassing Rabin at his home for over a year, and whose collaborators came from the highest levels of the settlement's Yesha Council, Bar Ilan University, and American political circles, leading directly into the offices of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).

From Chapter Six: 'The Lover'

The authors, who interviewed Yigal Amir at some length, described how the settlers idolized Amir and his cohorts as heroes. One of the co-conspirators was Margalit Har-Shefi, the object of Amir's romantic fantasies, and a law student at Bar-Ilan University with him. Eventually Har-Shefi, who came from the settlement of Beit El, just 15 minutes north of Jerusalem, testified against Amir. Established just after the June War in 1967, Beit El has often been a site of clashes between Jews and Palestinians. What follows is the description of how her neighbors greeted Hare-Shefi after the assassination.

"A few days later she was released on bail, she returned to Beit El, and received a heroine's welcome. Hundreds of settlers wildly cheered her. Rabbi Aviner made a speech in her honor. Neighbors lifted her on a chair, like a joyous bride, singing and dancing their way to her home. That evening, when clips of the reception were shown on the news, a still-mourning Israel was stunned."

Similar desecrations were taking place across Israel:

"A resident of the haredi [ultra-Orthodox] stronghold of Bnei Brak stood before television cameras and declared: 'There is no mourning here. Yitzhak Rabin was not one of us.' In the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Polin, haredim raised glasses of wine and gleefully toasted the murder.... In two West Bank settlements inhabited by Kahanist extremists, pictures of Amir were hung on the walls at parties celebrating the 'miracle.' At Bar-Ilan University, students called Yigal Amir a 'saint.' Avigdor Eskin, who had conducted the Pulsa da-Nura [Lashes of Fire] ceremony against Rabin, boasted on television that the curse had succeeded."

Rabin's Murder and Sept. 11

Murder in the Name of God raises an entirely new set of questions about suicide terrorism, especially after Sept. 11, as the entire world—especially the American population—is being mass-brainwashed into believing in a vast conspiracy of Islamic "suicide terrorists" directed by Osama bin Laden from his bat cave in Afghanistan. Yigal Amir was a "suicide terrorist," as was his "role model," the insane Baruch Goldstein, a Brooklyn-born medical doctor and Kach follower, who carried out the February 1994 massacre of 29 Muslims at Friday prayers at the mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs in occupied Hebron.

The authors of Murder in the Name of God provide a careful, extensively researched report on the network of rabbis who controlled these and other suicide terrorists, and who pronounced a religious death sentence on Rabin, on their communications, and meetings where discussions of the "duty" to kill Rabin took place.

At the heart of "death sentence" issue is the battle between "halachic law" (Jewish religious law) and "secular law" of the state. Only a "holy man"—a rabbi—can make the determination that a Jew can be killed. That is what occurred against Rabin.

In a fascinating chapter titled "Din Rodef," the authors say that after the 1993 Oslo Accords, "Orthodox rabbis in Israel and abroad had revived two obsolete halachic precepts—din rodef (the duty to kill a Jew who imperils the life or property of another Jew) and din moser (the duty to eliminate a Jew who intends to turn another Jew in to non-Jewish authorities)—and were seriously debating whether these antiquated religious laws should be applied to the prime minister of Israel." There is no doubt Amir believed that he was the chosen one to eliminate the traitor Rabin, and that he had done it under the power of law interpreted by rabbinical authorities. On the night of his arrest, when he was told that Rabin had died, Amir said to the police, 'Do your work. I've done mine.' Then, with a smile, he told a cop, 'Get some wine and cakes, let's have a toast.' "

Some Orthodox leaders, such as Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, one of the founders of the right-wing Gush Emunin settlers group, tried to stop the madness among the rabbis, but even "the establishment" rabbis would not back him. Bin-Nun demanded that any rabbi who was involved in the din rodef ruling resign. He denounced them as a threat to the endurance of Israel, saying that they had become "revolutionary courts, like a Jewish Hezbollah."

In December 2000, EIR published a special report under the direction of EIR Founder and 2004 Democratic Party pre-Presidental candidate, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., entitled "Who Is Sparking a Religious War in the Middle East?—and How to Stop It." This report drew upon nearly 20 years of investigative work into the network of fanatical Jewish and Christian evangelical fundamentalists involved in a plot to blow up the Islamic holy sites on the al-Haram al-Sharif (known in Israel as Temple Mount). Though Karpin and Friedman do not discuss the Temple Mount plot in detail, the networks first identified by EIR, as early as 1982, are precisely those that killed Rabin.

For example, the case of Avigdor Eskin: In 1986, EIR published a detailed dossier on Eskin, a young Soviet intelligence agent, who could boast of service for the KGB, Mossad, and several U.S. agencies. EIR identified him as one of the most dangerous operatives in the Temple Mount terrorist networks. EIR was not wrong: Nine years later, the same Eskin was given red-carpet treatment by the U.S. Congress, and an informal office in the suite of Sen. Jesse Helms to lobby for Israeli right-wing views, who issued the religious curse against Rabin—the Pulsa da Nura. The ritual, dating back to the Middle Ages, says: "If ten rabbis cursed a man by invoking the formula, he would meet his end within 30 days."

In October 1995, Eskin gathered a group of disciples of the late terrorist Rabbi Meir Kahane outside the Prime Minister's home and chanted, "I deliver to you, the angels of wrath and ire, Yitzhak, the son of Rosa Rabin, that you may smother him and the specter of him, and cast him into bed, and dry up his wealth, and plague his thoughts, and scatter his mind that he may be steadily diminished until he reaches his death." His followers chimed in "Put to death the cursed Yitzhak."

One of the authors' most important insights is the American role in the assassination of Rabin. Top American officials such as former Sen. Al D'Amato, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and New York City Councilman Dov Hikind, who is a former Kach/Jewish Defense League thug, protected the networks that were planning the murder of Rabin.

This American connection to these Israeli fanatics is not to be underestimated. As LaRouche has emphasized, the attacks on Sept. 11 were an internal military coup d'état attempt, which served to "detonate" a strategic policy coup by the "Clash of Civilizations" grouping around Zbigniew Brzezinski. In his article "Zbigniew Brzezinski and September 11th" (EIR, Jan. 11, 2002) LaRouche describes how the Sharon networks are used by this Anglo-American network to achieve their goal of a global "Clash of Civilizations" religious war.

LaRouche said, "[T]here is an implicit suicide bomber-like role of the current Israeli regime, whose adducibly characteristic intention is to set off the wider war, a war which, among other results, would bring about the self-extermination of Israel as a state. That increasingly evident risk of Israel's self-extermination, if it continues its present policies, had been the stated concern motivating Prime Minister Rabin's support for the Oslo Accords. These are the same Oslo Accords whose adoption was the motive for the Israel coup d'état, by assassination of Rabin."

The whitewashing of the networks behind the Jewish terrorists who killed Rabin has been a crucial part of the Brzezinski coup.

But even as the Nazi-like regime of Sharon continues its post-Rabin bloodbath, LaRouche emphasized that the action of a growing group of Israeli Defense Forces reserve officers, who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, is a model of courage against a new fascist world-empire idea.

In a Jan. 27 statement, LaRouche further emphasized the role of the Anglo-American establishment in pushing Sharon. LaRouche said: "If our dirty nest, inside the English-speaking world, is cleaned out, the danger from the Middle East could be controlled.... Join me! Stop this horror being unleashed by the Sharon government, while that horror could still be prevented. Confront the world with the clear evidence of the horrid intention behind the crimes of the Ariel Sharon government."

Authors Karpin and Friedman begin the book with an excerpt from the poem "A Sketch," by Christina Rossetti:


I might show facts as plain as day:

But since your eyes are blind, you'd say,

"Where? What?" and turn away.

In the weeks since LaRouche issued his call "Join me!" against the Sharon horrors, and against the Brzezinski imperial plot, tens of thousands have again assembled in the streets of Israel, calling for a future, calling for peace. Perhaps the numbness is over.

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