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

Michael Karpin (Author), Ina Friedman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 1998

The first book to tell the complete, explosive story of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

A dramatic tale of treachery and betrayal, Murder in the Name of God investigates and recreates the historic events of November 4, 1995. On that night a twenty-five-year-old student named Yigal Amir assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, an act that abruptly changed the course of Israeli politics. Based on exhaustive research, including an exclusive interview with the assassin, Murder in the Name of God is the first book to give the full story of the people whose words and actions made Rabin's assassination inevitable: the nationalist rabbis who condemned Rabin by invoking an arcane talmudic ruling; the militant settlers and right-wing politicians who launched a sophisticated campaign of incitement against him; and the security experts who saw what was coming but failed to act. In a series of shocking revelations, the book ranges beyond Israel to expose the extent of American support--financial and ideological--for the movement that produced Rabin's killer.

Far more than the tale of an assassination, Murder in the Name of God is a powerful indictment of a society's failure to examine itself honestly and to bring its own worst enemies to justice.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In November 1995, after addressing a pro-peace rally in a stadium in Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was returning to his car in the parking garage underneath the arena when three shots rang out. Rabin was hit twice, and when surgery to save his life was unsuccessful, Israel's leader had become the latest victim of the Middle East's seemingly never-ending cycle of violence. The assassin, however, was not a Palestinian seeking revenge over Israeli atrocities in the West Bank, but a fellow Israeli, a talmudic scholar named Yigal Amir. The illusion of solidarity in Israel--the small nation staunchly united against its surrounding enemies--was ruptured beyond repair.

As Karpin and Friedman describe the days and months leading up to Rabin's assassination, it becomes apparent that a confrontation between Israel's secular majority and its ultra-orthodox religious zealots had long been imminent. The 1993 signing of the Oslo Agreement, which began the process of returning the West Bank to Palestinian rule, provided the impetus for a violent tear in the fabric of Israeli society. Amir's story is painstakingly reconstructed, from his early initiation in zealotry to his current status in jail--serving a life sentence, but still intensely proud, even boastful, of his deed. The authors also show how the political gap has dramatically widened with the religious right's strengthening of its position in Israel's government since Rabin's killing. This is a chilling and sobering journalistic account that anyone with an interest in Middle East affairs simply must read, and soon. --Tjames Madison

From Publishers Weekly

Two years after the assassination of their prime minister, Israeli journalists Karpin and Friedman have produced not only a chilling profile of the murderer but also an expose of the right-wing zealotry that created him. Throughout, they illustrate the collision between the classic Zionist vision of a democratic, humane Jewish state as a refuge for the oppressed, and religious-nationalist Zionism, which demands theocracy and Jewish occupation of the entire biblical Land of Israel as a prerequisite for the messianic age. Opponents of the 1993 Oslo agreement set out to sabotage the peace accords?first by conventional protests, then by a deliberate campaign of demonization waged against Rabin. With few exceptions, according to the authors, the mainstream right (led by Benjamin Netanyahu) failed to condemn the excesses of extremists and in many cases collaborated with them. Karpin and Friedman further contend that radical rabbis (in Israel and the U.S.) distorted ancient Jewish legal concepts to give religious sanction to "murder in the name of God." Even after the assassination, they say, Israel failed to confront adequately the societal cleavages that had made the unthinkable a reality. The authors debunk the various conspiracy theories concocted by the right to blame Rabin and Shimon Peres for the murder. The left, they argue, refused to call to account the extremist rabbis who ruled that Judaism permitted the murder of Rabin and who declined to expose evidence linking Netanyahu to the provocateurs. Karpin and Friedman have filled this void with a sober examination of the historical record and a plea that Israelis learn the lessons from one of their country's greatest tragedies.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1st edition (November 4, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805057498
• ISBN-13: 978-0805057492
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,537,921 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Karpin (born 1945; lives in Tel Aviv) is a journalist, author of non-fiction books and director/producer of TV documentaries.
For 25 years Karpin was television and radio news reporter, anchor, and TV Channel One's bureau chief in Bonn (1976-80) and Moscow (1991-92); Chief News Editor (1983-86) and editor and presenter of his network's flagship program, "Second Look" (1986-90 and 1993-95).
Karpin's books and documentaries were instrumental in exposing two of Israel's most controversial issues: Dimona's nuclear activities and the incitement campaign that preceded the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 1983, Karpin broke the story of Israel's secret service fabrication of evidence in the course of Bus Line 300's investigation.
For his three chapters' TV series "Distant Relatives" (1995), portraying the Jewish community in North-America, B`nai B`rith awarded Karpin their World Center Award for Journalism.
Karpin's TV documentary "A Bomb in the Basement" (2001) tells for the first time in television the story of the development of Israel's nuclear capability. It had been screened by numerous television networks, international film festivals and professional conferences.
His TV documentary "The Road to Rabin Square" (1997) won a jury Special Recognition in the Biarritz FIPA 1998's Festival, and a Silver Medal in 1997's NY Festival for International Television Programming and Promotion. Television networks in 15 countries screened it, including France, Germany, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, Italy, South Africa and Australia. Arte screened it twice.
Karpin's documentary "Jerusalem is Full of Used Jews" (2006) presents a new artistic and political perspective of Yehuda Amichai's poems of Jerusalem.
His documentary "I Can't Take It Any More" (2007) describes in details the sorrowful last years of Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
Karpin's website: www.michaelkarpin.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating study of Israeli political debate, June 15, 2000

By 

Matthew Malowany - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder in the Name of God: The Plot to Kill Yitzhak Rabin (Hardcover)

I became interested in the subject of the Rabin assassination after reading a few conspiracy theories on the web. This book, however, provides ample evidence that Yitzhak Rabin's murder wasn't the act of shadowy secret services, but, rather, a lone fanatic acting on what he believed to be the implicit commands of self-righteous religious authorities who should have known better. In a way I was disappointed by the lack of JFK-style mystery in the book, but in the end I found it a truly enlightening work which brings to light the inevitable consequence of mixing politics with religion: violence.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most recent chapter of Israel's recent history, March 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Murder in the Name of God: The Plot to Kill Yitzhak Rabin (Hardcover)

This is an important book which is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the background to the current situation in the Middle East. Ostensibly an account of the events leading up to the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, the book is much more than this. It contains a wealth of background information and scrupulously marshalled detail which shows how the assassination wasnot an act of inhuman recklessness on the partof an isolated fanatic, but part of of a deliberate movement orchestrated by the leaders of the ultra-orthodox right to carryout a death threat 'sanctioned by Jewish law' against someone who was giving away the land of the Jews, in going along with the Oslo accord. It is a devastating account of mistaken bigotry and evil employing non-democratic ends to bring about its aims. the book paints a pictrure of a country on the verge of civil war and, although at times it reas likea thriller, this excellent book is an impartial and well-documented account of the most recent chapter in Israel's history.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ties together circumstances which led to Rabin's murder., January 25, 1999

By 

aptman (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder in the Name of God: The Plot to Kill Yitzhak Rabin (Hardcover)

This terrific book was an easy read, and managed to weave together many seemingly apparent notions in a manner no one has yet done about the relationship between the assasination of Rabin and the political right in Israel. Yet it also tells the greater story of how the small religious right minority in Israel has slowly begun to leave its mark on Israeli society at large, while using the very government and democratic tools they reject. While this book is a must read for anyone living in Israel or interested in the political situation there, it has great value for Americans (a chapter is devoted to right wing supporters of Israel in the United States) and freedom loving people everywhere. Serious dangers exist when people attempt to gain power democratically while preaching that their ways are the ways of God (with the implication that all others are the ways of non-believers). The chaos that can take place as these groups gain power is apparent from such disparate places such as the United States, Israel, Algeria and Iran, to name a few. This book seriously details the steady erosion to Israel's once vibrant, but now teetering, democracy that has resulted from the rise to power of these would be despots. The terrible situation that exists in Algeria and Iran, partly due to the rise of such groups, is clear. One can also see the clear link between these groups in Israel and those who would bomb abortion clinics, burn black churches, deface synagoges, bomb federal buildings, and commit other similar acts of domestic terrorism and intimidation in the United States.