Description:
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
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