It’s been 30 years since the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and it’s impossible to watch events unfolding today without wondering how things might be different had he lived longer.
All the news programs are broadcasting features about Rabin, and there are several documentaries about his life and legacy. In recent years, I feel some of the coverage of the anniversary of his death has focused too much on the circumstances of the assassination and not enough on his life and legacy.
But Rabin’s Assassination – Averted Eyes, an excellent new documentary by Yossi Melman and Nadav Ben-Tzur on Hot 8, Hot VOD, and Next TV, examines both his life and his death, especially the circumstances that led up to it.
I would especially recommend this documentary to those who don’t remember that much about Rabin, particularly young people. It gives a concise outline of the life of the first Israeli prime minister born in Mandatory Palestine, showing how his military career led him to the difficult decision to make peace with PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and sign the Oslo Accords.
Ben-Gvir and Bibi featured
The interviewees include former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) officials, army officers, and colleagues such as Shimon Sheves, Prof. Shimon Shetreet, Michael Ben-Yair, Ami Ayalon, Yaakov Peri, Israel Harel, Avishai Raviv, Hezi Kalo, and Nahum Barnea.
After painting a portrait of Rabin, the documentary focuses on the climate of incitement leading up to his assassination, including the decision by an influential group of rabbis to call for his death, a Jewish version of an Islamic fatwa. It also shows the campaign of dehumanization by those who opposed Rabin, among them a young Itamar Ben-Gvir, now the national security minister.
It also shows the prevalence of posters showing Rabin as a Nazi and a Palestinian terrorist and that coffins were carried to rallies, where protesters screamed for Rabin’s death.
The documentary features footage of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at a rally in Jerusalem where the crowd chanted for Rabin’s death and shows that many of Netanyahu’s allies left the balcony from which the speakers addressed the crowd when they saw and heard calls to kill the prime minister amid the inciting posters.
The film makes the case that while there is no doubt that Yigal Amir pulled the trigger, there were many who were openly pushing for Rabin’s death.
The film also investigates why the state commission of inquiry formed after the murder was given such a limited mandate – one that excluded probing the climate of incitement – and how that omission helped fuel baseless conspiracy theories.
Eyewitness accounts
KAN 11 and kan.org.il will mark the memorial day for Rabin with a documentary series titled I Was Actually There, based on the Sorry for Asking format, which revisits key moments in Israeli history through the eyes of eyewitnesses. The first episode focuses on the Rabin assassination, featuring testimonies from those who were at the peace rally or with Rabin in the hours before the murder.
KAN is also showing Three Songs, which traces Rabin’s story through three songs tied to his life and death: “Nasser is Waiting for Rabin,” performed by Arik Lavie; “The Children of Winter 1973,” written by Shmuel Hasfari amid protests against the Oslo Accords; and “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman, turned into a Hebrew song by Naomi Shemer.
Rabin’s Days, a KAN documentary series, uses rare archival materials from the 1970s to 1995, including Rabin’s personal journals. It explores his sense of responsibility as a leader, his views on prisoners of war, his willingness to resign if the Entebbe operation had failed, and his relationships with soldiers, settlers, and Palestinian and Jordanian leaders.