Israeli TVs cancel airing interview with Rabin killer

[MikeWB]

Israeli TVs cancel airing interview with Rabin killer

Oct 31

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Two Israeli television channels cancelled plans to broadcast interviews on Friday night of the extremist Jew who assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, following a public uproar.

The broadcasts by privately owned Channel 2 and Channel 10 were to have coincided with Tuesday's anniversary of the 1995 assassination of Rabin by Yigal Amir, who aimed to torpedo the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians.

The Jewish state remains deeply divided over the Middle East peace process, which has made little progress since the collapse of the Oslo talks in 2000.

Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert welcomed the cancellation, saying the interviews had "nothing to do with freedom of expression.

"The broadcasting of the interviews would have hurt the feelings of a broad segment of the population," Olmert's office quoted him as saying.

"One can only regret the excessive and unnecessary attention given to the murderer instead of the murdered, Yitzhak Rabin."

Olmert had discussed the issue with the broadcasting authority that supervises the private channels, his office said.

Amir, 43, is serving a life sentence. He was able to speak on the phone to reporters from both channels without the prison service's knowledge in recent weeks.

A few excerpts were published on Friday morning.

Amir told Channel 10 his act was influenced by the rhetoric of right-wing politicians and generals, including former prime minister Ariel Sharon and former army chief of staff Rafael Eitan, whom he said made it clear the 1993 Oslo agreement "would lead to disaster."

Amir has never expressed any remorse for the killing.

"Yigal Amir ought to wither in prison for the rest of his life and he should under no condition be part of the mediatised public debate," Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who heads Rabin's centre-left Labour party, said in a statement.

The chairman of the right-wing National Religious Party Zevulun Orlev slammed the television stations for doing the interviews.

"I think that the interviews with the despicable murderer have broken the boycott and ostracising that exists, and ought to exist, on Yigal Amir," Orlev told public radio.

Most Israeli media were also critical of the controversial interviews.

"These interviews contribute nothing to the freedom of expression. Nothing. The legitimisation process of this wretched murderer has been going on for a long time," wrote Ben Dror Yemini, an editorialist for the mass-selling Maariv daily.

Sever Plotzcker, a senior correspondent for the Yediot Aharonot daily, said the initial decision to broadcast the interviews "is a contemptible journalistic act, which no stammering can excuse."

But Channel 10 anchor Ofer Shelah defended the decision to air the interview, before it was reversed.

"The Israeli society decided not to face the question and remain in a bubble saying that Yigal Amir does not exist," Shelah said.

Israeli Prison Service, meanwhile transferred Amir to a high-security prison in the south of the country and placed him in solitary detention on Friday after excerpts of the interviews were published, a spokesman said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081031/wl ... assin#full



Rabin's convicted lone gunman, Yigal Amir, had close ties to the extremist nationalist organization Eyal, and was groomed by its founder Avishai Raviv to kill Rabin. The Israeli paper Maariv reported November 24, 1995 that "according to Sarah Eliash, a schooteacher working at the Shomron Girls Seminary, some of her pupils heard Raviv encourage Amir to murder Rabin. Raviv told Amir, "Show us you're a man. Do it."

Uri Dan and Dennis Eisenberg elaborated on the girls testimony writing for The Jerusalem Post, which Barry Chamish quotes in his Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin?

Sarah Eliash had already appeared voluntarily before the commission and related how her pupils had run to see her on the night of the killing. In tears they said they knew Yigal Amir. They had met both Amir and Avishai Raviv.... 'We used to see Raviv and Amir on Saturdays during last summer,' they related.

These gatherings were arranged by Yigal... Raviv was real macho. He kept saying to Yigal: 'You keep talking about killing Rabin. Why don't you do it? Are you frightened? You say you want to do it. Show us that you're a man. Show us what you're made of.

Now, would it surprise you to know that Avishai Raviv, the founder of the extremist Eyal and the bug in the ear of Rabin's assassin, was also a Shabak (or "Shin Bet," Israel's covert internal security) agent, codenamed "Champagne" for, writes Chamish, "the bubbles of incitement he raised"?

From Marriv:

Amnon Abramovitch dropped a bombshell last night, announcing that Avishai Raviv was a Shabak agent codenamed "Champagne." Now we ask the question, why didn't he report Yigal Amir's plan to murder Rabin to his superiors? In conversations with security officials, the following picture emerged. Eyal was under close supervision of the Shabak. They supported it monetarily for the past two years. The Shabak knew the names of all Eyal members, including Yigal Amir.