A riveting story about the murder that changed a nation: the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
remains the single most consequential event in Israel’s recent history,
and one that fundamentally altered the trajectory for both Israel and
the Palestinians. Killing a King relates the parallel stories
of Rabin and his stalker, Yigal Amir, over the two years leading up to
the assassination, as one of them planned political deals he hoped would
lead to peace, and the other plotted murder. Dan Ephron, who
reported from the Middle East for much of the past two decades, covered
both the rally where Rabin was killed and the subsequent murder trial.
He describes how Rabin, a former general who led the army in the Six-Day
War of 1967, embraced his nemesis, Palestine Liberation Organization
leader Yasser Arafat, and set about trying to resolve the twentieth
century’s most vexing conflict. He recounts in agonizing detail how
extremists on both sides undermined the peace process with ghastly
violence. And he reconstructs the relentless scheming of Amir, a
twenty-five-year-old law student and Jewish extremist who believed that
Rabin’s peace effort amounted to a betrayal of Israel and the Jewish
people. As Amir stalked Rabin over many months, the agency charged with
safeguarding the Israeli leader missed key clues, overlooked
intelligence reports, and then failed to protect him at the critical
moment, exactly twenty years ago. It was the biggest security blunder in
the agency’s history. Through the prism of the assassination,
much about Israel today comes into focus, from the paralysis in
peacemaking to the fraught relationship between current Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama. Based on Israeli police
reports, interviews, confessions, and the cooperation of both Rabin’s
and Amir’s families, Killing a King is a tightly coiled
narrative that reaches an inevitable, shattering conclusion. One can’t
help but wonder what Israel would look like today had Rabin lived.
Boktitel: Killing a King. The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of IsraelFörfattare: Dan Ephron Bokförlag: W:W. Norton & Co
Dan Ephron Foto: David Blumenfeld-www.bluemfeld.com
