How Many Countries?

Most of my non-Israeli readers would probably ignore the importance of this issue (How many countries would solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?) in the Israeli society. Many years ago, when a Mossad agent called Arik still thought he could get valuable information out of me, he spent a considerable amount of time and efforts trying to find out which kind of solution to the conflict I favored. Would it be the “two states” solution or the “one-state” one? Along the years, I met this security services’ obsession theme time and again.

Essentially possessing simple minds, people working for the security services tend to see everything in terms of black and white. Anything more complex apparently eludes them, even if pronounced slowly. The Shin Beth and Mossad logic works as follows: “if you support the ‘two states’ solution (a Palestinian state next to Israel) then we can work with you; but if you support the ‘one state’ solution then you are our enemy because this option leads to a Palestinian majority that would take control of the country administration.”

As a result of this, Israeli citizens are systematically approached by undercover state agents attempting to find out their political opinions in a variety of issues and sometimes even more.

On Champagne and Solid Evidence

Eight years and twenty-five days before I was shot at by an Israeli agent, I was half-listening to “Reshet Bet,” the Israeli government’s news radio station. They were broadcasting live from a peace rally on Tel Aviv’s main square. At around 9:30 PM, a slight change in the tone and semantics used by the anchors hinted that something had happened. There were unclear shouts in the background; panic filtered into the anchors’ voices, while they were trying to buy time and understand what was happening. Death was in the air. Three gunshots had shattered a dream. Rabin – Israel’s Prime Minister – had been assassinated by a religious Jew, and a promising peace process had died.

The event had been videotaped by Roni Kempler – a man with unclear but published connections with the security services – who was standing on the “Gan Hair” shopping mall roof. Inexplicably, he was allowed to stand within the sterile security area surrounding Rabin’s exit point. In the minutes before the killing, his video focused mainly on the assassin, as if he knew what was about to happen. In the video, the rear bodyguard was seen clearing the way to the assassin, who shot three bullets before he was restrained by the police. Later, the video was purchased by “Channel 2” – allegedly for a million dollars – and then broadcast to the astonished public, before being banished from the Israeli media.

Rabin was allegedly the best secured head of state in the world. The thought that a civilian could enter the “sterile area” surrounding Rabin was unbelievable.

Later, it became known that the assassin, Yigal Amir, had been targeted by the Shin Beth months before that and that the Shin Beth trained him in the use of arms. Avishai Raviv, a Shin Beth employee, was placed next to him. They claimed he was only an information gathering agent. Yigal Amir, a former Yeshiva student studying at the religious Bar Ilan University, killed Prime Minister Rabin with the blessing of his Pharisaic rabbi. He moved from one rabbi to another until he found one who agreed that the killing would save many Jewish lives; and thus – the religious authority claimed – it was justified.

Raviv knew that and reported Yigal Amir's plan to assassinate Yitzhak Rabin, based on “din rodef” (law of the pursuer) which rabbis interpret as allowing the killing of another Jew to prevent him from handing Jewish land over to non-Jews.

Despite that, the Shin Beth did not stop Amir.

The most troubling part of this story is that “The Jerusalem Post,” an English, right-wing newspaper published in Jerusalem, reported witnesses having heard Raviv telling Amir: “Be a man! Kill him already!” Later on, Raviv’s name came out during Amir’s trial. It was published that his operational code was “Champagne.” Nothing seems more appropriate for an agitating agent, which is a better definition to the role he performed. More