On Assassinations and Attempted Assassinations- By Binyamin Kahane

Binyamin Kahane's classic article that he penned shortly after Rabin's assassination.

On Assassinations and Attempted Assassinations (11/95)

Translated by Lenny Goldberg

The murder of Yizchak Rabin has left so many Jews confused. I am not talking about the self-righteous Israeli media, who, ad nauseam, toil to create a nation-wide atmosphere that doesn't exist. Anyone who lives amongst his people knows that such a thing was brewing in the guts of so many people, as more and more Jews without any link to one another saw it as perhaps the last and only chance to do "something". No one is happy about it, but when a people are driven to desperation by seeing this evil regime remove the ground from beneath them, establishing fact after fact without a willingness to heed any logic and remain totally oblivious to public opinion - all this pointed to the fact that such a thing was more and more likely to occur.

I do not think that now is time to discuss how one should relate to such an event. I also won't play into the hands of the evil and corrupt Israeli authorities whose leader has left this world, and who, like wild animals,hunt down prey with an uninhibited lust for vengeance which knows no bounds.In this discussion I will only raise a few points for all those confused Jews who do not know how to deal with this new situation.

Yizchak Rabin was a man who brought the Jewish People to the verge of national tragedy which we have not yet seen in our history. Yizchak Rabin and his policies brought death to many, many Jewish homes, and the slogan"Rabin the murderer" is a correct one, no matter how much the left protests and screams. For sure, love of Jews is a lofty concept, and the hope that Rabin would do "Tshuva" is fine. But when a leader holds an entire country hostage, is it the time to throw around slogans, or is it the time to act more forcefully?

What caused Yigal Amir, a third year law student, Yeshiva scholar and outstanding Golani soldier to give all that up and take upon himself such a mission? What caused him to stand with such incredible cool-headedness across from the Prime Minister of Israel and shoot him? Was it some momentary hysteria? And what caused so many people, and I dare say thousands, to bring up the idea in so many discussions? Does not such a widespread gut feeling tell us something? Did Yigal Amir take upon himself the definition, "The zealots strike him"?

And finally, according to the non-Jewish calendar, (which perhaps has no significance for us anyway), Yizchak Rabin was killed exactly five years after my father. How ironic. Do you remember the reaction of the left when my father was murdered? These self-righteous hypocrites danced on his blood.The Israeli Government officially ignored it. It was pleased to see the troublemaker go.

My father's murder was also two years after the same Likud-Labor government,out of fear that he would cop seats from them, banned my father from running for Knesset. Such an act disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Jews,negating from them their basic democratic right to vote. It closed the door in the face of the most excitable and enthusiastic sector of the population,and it left them little choice. Did it not enter their Bolshevik minds that one out of all these people MIGHT do something out of desperation when no other alternative was left to?

In one of his books, my father writes about the first murder attempt against him. The year was 1976, and the Shin Bet warned him to stop his actions, and if not, they would "take care of him". My father did not stop, and on the17th of Tamuz, 1976, there was an attempt to assassinate him. Only a miracle saved him. Who was Prime Minister then? You got it. Yizchak Rabin.

Many say that such is an appropriate ending for a traitor. Is this true? Is this the way? I leave the question open and as food for thought after putting before you some of my own thoughts. There is much more that must be said, and with G-d's help we will continue at another time. Firmly and carefully. We will not play into the hands of the authorities who are looking for easy prey.