Final Days of Yitzhak Rabin

November 6, 1995. A siren wails as silence descends over Israel. Grief is mixed with horror.

For the first time in the country's history, a politician has been assassinated. Yitzhak Rabin has been murdered. Israel's Prime Minister, a Nobel Prize winner, a general who fought for peace, his destiny was to serve Israel.

A legendary figure who almost alone embodied every combat the Hebrew state had fought. Israel mourns Yitzhak Rabin. Yitzhak Rabin is dead, and he was assassinated by a Jew.

It was so traumatic, first and foremost, because for the first time in the history of Zionism and Judaism, a prime minister had been killed in Israel, the leader of the Jews. A Jew doesn't kill another Jew for ideological reasons. A Jew doesn't kill another Jew for political reasons.

Political assassination is not what we're about. How could the unimaginable have become a reality? Perhaps because, before the unimaginable, there had come the unforgivable.

On September 13, 1993, the Israeli Prime Minister committed an act that many Jews, both in Israel and abroad, could never forgive. Therefore, it was here on the White House lawn that the final days of Yitzhak Rabin began. The time for peace has come.

We who have fought against you, the Palestinians, today we say to you in a loud and clear voice, enough of blood and tears. Enough! Rabin not only began peace negotiations with the Palestinians, but worse was to come when he met the eternal enemy, Yasser Arafat.

Regarding my conversations with Washington in the two days preceding the Oslo Agreement's signature ceremony, almost all the conversations, most of them in fact, were devoted to the question of how we could avoid embracing him, hugging him, shaking his hand, and even talking to him as little as possible. Twenty-four hours before, Rabin said: "I'm not going, I can't go. " "I don't want to shake Arafat's hand.

" In previous declarations, he'd said: "I don't shake the hands of assassins," "hands covered in the blood of Jewish children," et cetera. During the night, Clinton called him and said: "You can't do that to me. " "There are 3,000 people coming to Washington.

" "You can't. " We can see it in Clinton's attitude when he takes them by the shoulders and forces them. Clinton says not to do that to him and insists that he shake his hand.

He says that he's not sure and doesn't know if he can. However, he could. The handshake he so dreaded would seal Yitzhak Rabin's own fate.

For a good number of Jews, shaking the devil's hand, even as a gesture of peace, was nothing less than treason, a criminal act. All the more unimaginable and unpardonable because Rabin was an Israeli legend. Rabin was Israel.

His own story melded with that of his country. His parents having fled the Bolshevik Revolution, Rabin was born in Jerusalem on March 1st, 1922. He was a sabra, a Jew born in the land still known as Palestine.

He embodied the new Jew, proud and determined. Destined in the minds of Zionism's founding fathers to forever obliterate the age-old image of the wandering Jew, history's eternal victim. Our dream, for Yitzhak, for me, and my parents, was to find an Israeli state that was socialist and just, focusing on agriculture, establishing settlements, and building kibbutzim, et cetera.

The people who influenced us the most were our parents. Our home was very active, both publicly and politically. Rabin was more than active.

He was a fighter, and he fought every battle that Israel waged. As a teenager, he joined the Haganah, a clandestine Jewish army. As part of a commando unit, he fought for independence, which was finally won in 1948.

Despite the joy and excitement, the young Hebrew state immediately found itself at war. For Rabin, the young officer, nothing counted more than Israel's survival, security, and its army. From the age of 16, right up until he left the army in 1968, his whole life was devoted to the army.

Above all, he saw himself as a soldier more than anything else. Before being a politician, before being a statesman, before anything else. A soldier, and what a soldier!

In 1967, he was the veritable architect of a strategic masterpiece. A war against its Arab neighbors that Israel won in just six days. Twenty years after its creation, Israel multiplied its territory by five, annexing the Golan Heights in Syria, the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Gaza Strip.

The Arabs were totally routed. The chief of Sahal could boast of having lost only a few hundred men. Substantial losses, but limited compared to the forces deployed.

Yitzhak Rabin was a hesitant leader, and I, for example, personally prefer leaders who hesitate before sending our boys to the battlefield, where one can, as it happens, lose one's life. The most important thing I noticed in Yitzhak Rabin, a good many years before I started working with him, was what we called the sanctification of human life. Human life comes first.

Israel conquered Judea and Samaria. More importantly, its flag once more flew over the old town of Jerusalem and its holy shrines. Alongside Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin came to the Wailing Wall as a hero.

It was a pivotal moment, the event around which everything turned, for better or worse. For the worse, because there was euphoria concerning the old biblical Israel that had been regained. All those names in the Bible, Hebron, Bethlehem, Shiloh, and the Old City of Jerusalem.

Maybe certain people had dreams about the great Israel to come, but it was just a theory. Then suddenly, it was a physical reality. We can go there.

We hold these places, they're ours. For some people, the Six-Day War opened the gates to the Eretz Israel, the Greater Israel, ignoring the Arab populations that lived there. The question of the occupied territories reared its head.

In 1968, Rabin left his Sahal uniform for ambassadorial duty. He spent five years in Washington before entering politics as a socialist. He succeeded Golda Meir as Prime Minister and confirmed his image as a hardliner.

There was no question of negotiating with the Palestinian enemy embodied by Yasser Arafat's PLO. Despite the kidnappings, hijackings, bomb attacks, and the First Intifada in 1987, Rabin, as Defense Minister or Prime Minister, never ceded. We are going to make it clear by every means that is in our possession, within the limits of our laws, to ensure that the population in the Gaza area realizes that through violence and terror, they'll achieve nothing but more suffering for themselves.

He was the man who was famous for saying that we had to break the Palestinian's bones. What he said exactly doesn't really matter, but that's what happened. The Palestinian's bones were broken during the First Intifada.

We are in confrontation with you. Let's shift the confrontation to negotiation. Let's solve it not with stones, petrol bottles, or knives, but around the negotiation table.

In 1992, Rabin softened his image as a ruthless hawk. He became Prime Minister again at the age of 70, with an electoral promise to get the peace process out of the rut. He started with the peace camp, but what does a peace camp mean?

It doesn't mean the people who wanted peace. In theory, everyone wanted peace. It means those people who were prepared to pay the price for peace.

That is, making territorial concessions, dismantling the colonies, accepting and even furthering the creation of a Palestinian state. September 13, 1993. That was why, for many Jews, the handshake was an act of treason.

Twenty-six years after conquering the Jews' holy lands, Rabin was prepared to hand them back to the Palestinians. The former Sahal commando had become a soldier for peace, a soldier with just two years to live. An infernal mechanism was put into action by his new hate-filled enemies, Jewish extremists.

For them, Rabin was no longer a founding father but a wanted man. The first step was a series of demonstrations. In 1994, month after month, they increased in fervor.

Notably, the demos organized by the extreme religious right and the inhabitants of the Jewish colonies. Rabin was intransigent. Those who opposed peace with violence would also have their bones broken.

He always had extremely difficult relations with the nationalist religious movement and with the settlements movement. He told us that one of the most difficult problems was that the fundamentalists on both sides, both Palestinians and Jews, were to be found in the same places, such as Hebron, Nablus, and such places. He said there was serious confrontation.

That scared him because our fundamentalists were no better than theirs. His fears were justified on February 25, 1994, a few days before Rabin's 72nd birthday, in Hebron, at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a shrine shared by both Jews and Muslims. At dawn, a Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, emptied his pistol, clip after clip, firing at Muslim worshippers as they prayed.

He was then lynched by those he had not managed to shoot. There were 29 dead and 115 wounded. Rabin and a good part of the country were sickened.

It was no longer merely a question of acknowledging Jewish fanaticism, but of admitting that it could lead to bloodshed and terrorism. This is a difficult day for all those Jews and Arabs who seek peace. However, this deranged action of the lunatic individual will not prevent the reconciliation between the citizens of the State of Israel and the Palestinian people.

The killer, Baruch Goldstein, was a disciple of the Kach, a movement led by Rabbi Meir Kahane, who from the '70s until his death in 1990 embodied Jewish fundamentalism and racism. His organization had never extended beyond 100 or so members, but its power to harm had been seriously underestimated. The Kahanist movement was broken up, but it still had sympathizers in the Jewish colonies on the West Bank.

At Kiryat Arba, for example, a settlement of Orthodox Jews close to Hebron. Rabbi Kahane's ideology was that an authentic Jewish state should be based on the great Israel. You have to understand that my Arab neighbors who live in Hebron were brought up with the idea that we have to be exterminated, killed without leaving any trace, because we are Jews.

We are hated because we are Jews. It's a crazy situation, and Rabbi Kahane thought it should be dealt with. To do that, there had to be a retreat.

The Arabs should be sent back where they belong, and a proper Jewish state established here. These extremist ideas appealed to a young computer science and law student enrolled at a religious university. His name was Yigal Amir.

Born in Tel Aviv in 1970, he was part of the generation that fully realized what Israel owed to its Prime Minister. The brains behind the Six-Day War. The instigator of the legendary attack at Entebbe in 1976.

The man who responded to the Arabs blow for blow. However, in 1994, Amir had a new idol, and his faith led him to honor the tomb of a man, a doctor, who had become a veritable martyr for Jewish fanatics. Baruch Goldstein, the Butcher of Hebron.

Like thousands of other extremists, he now felt nothing but hatred for the man who received the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize alongside Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat. Amir had but one obsession, to derail the peace agreement. A traitor is someone who helps and collaborates with the enemy.

I also think that someone who puts a gun in the hands of a Palestinian policeman is a traitor too, there's no other word. In 1995, the violence was escalating. Rabin was sitting on a time bomb.

The Palestinian Hamas committed widespread terrorist acts. Even worse, Israel began liberating the occupied territories. After 27 years of exile, Yasser Arafat could return to Gaza.

After the handshake in 1993, now came the kiss of death on the promised land. The parliamentary right wing took over from the extremists and assailed Rabin at the Knesset. Anti-government demonstrations were rife, even in front of the Prime Minister's home in Jerusalem.

Vengeful and murderous slogans could be heard. "Death to Rabin, death to the traitor. " What we felt most was fear.

I was very scared that something terrible would happen because I could see these people and their hatred. Once, while we were at a demonstration somewhere and I could see people shouting and throwing stones, I said to Rafi: "It's like the Ku Klux Klan. " Seeing those demonstrations and all those hundreds of people with hate in their eyes who picked him out as the main target for that hate, it was a terrible ordeal.

At the office, for example, we received hundreds of letters, hate mail with Nazi symbols, and we received the bodies of dead cats in boxes. We also got some awful telephone calls. However, Rabin didn't weaken.

On September 28, 1995, a few weeks before his death, he was once again in Washington to sign the second peace agreement. The Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and King Hussein of Jordan were also present. Once again, there was a handshake with Arafat.

Rabin knew how to talk to Arafat. When Arafat lied or didn't respect a signed agreement, just one call would bring him back in line. Arafat had a kind of respect for Rabin that was an essential element in the peace process at the time.

Rabin and Arafat, two fates entwined, but an alliance that was doomed. In the autumn of 1995, the situation in Israel was explosive. The demonstrations continued, and there were calls for murder.

When I learned that there was going to be a kabbalistic prayer for the Prime Minister's death, we obviously went to see it. We went to film. I was all alone.

The Israeli press didn't understand what was going on. On October 2, in front of Rabin's home, a handful of men chanted an ancestral prayer, a deadly curse, the Psalms of Vengeance. For certain visionaries of Judaism, a Jew who harms another Jew can be killed.

For the atmosphere of hate and ferocious opposition to transform into political assassination, there had to be a very powerful ideological and religious justification. That was made possible by the extremist rabbis. You don't understand that people are prepared to sacrifice their souls for this country, the only land that belongs to the Jews, to the Jewish people.

You want us to leave? We've had Auschwitz, there won't be a second one. In early October, yet another demo was held in a Jewish settlement.

Several people were arrested, including one Yigal Amir, now a member of the Eyal movement, an extreme religious right splinter group. These activists had organized a show for television during the summer of '95, a circus parade with balaclavas, guns, and an oath. It was sworn on the grave of one of the founders of the Stern Group, one of the leading Jewish terrorist groups in Palestine before the creation of Israel.

Their promise that night was to kill Jews regarded as traitors to their homeland. Yitzhak Rabin was firmly in their sights. I never saw him tremble, be afraid, or anything like that, not even once.

It is possible that toward the end, that hastened his death. He despised the demonstrators, mocked them, and simply had no regard for them. I think that if he had behaved somewhat differently, he wouldn't have raised the level of hate against himself to a degree that was unprecedented, never before seen in Israel.

Shame on you, you wretches! Judaism and hate are not compatible! Judaism means values of solidarity, human unity, Judaism is tolerant!

Judaism is positive! Judaism is not racist! There was perhaps something fatalistic in this attitude, but Rabin wasn't concerned about his own safety.

Rabin himself refused to believe it. He refused to wear a bulletproof vest. He would say: "I shall not protect myself among my own people.

" That’s how he saw it, if you like. On October 6, a political meeting in Zion Square in Jerusalem degenerated into a riot. The mood was for a lynching, and all the right-wing leaders were there, from Ariel Sharon to the head of the Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu.

It wasn't the splinter groups who were demonstrating, although they were there. There was the right wing, the traditional right, and the nationalist right. It’s not the Mr Rabin or General Rabin whom we knew in the past.

He is an entirely different man now. He's a weak man who has given up. The people of Israel want real peace.

Real peace means peace with security, peace they can trust, with a partner they can trust, and they don’t feel they have that here. We want real peace, not a fake one. The parliamentary right wing's game was obvious, to use the rank and file to seize power.

It was as simple as that. That meant: "Here we have popular opinion and the wishes of the people. " "Thanks to this popular opinion," "we'll reverse the situation and stop the Oslo peace process.

" It was as political and as pathetic as that. Not one of them dared to say: "We don't play that game, that's prohibited. " One harrowing image stood out that night.

Demonstrators held up a doctored photo of Yitzhak Rabin wearing an SS uniform. This was one low blow too many for a man who had survived deportation, a partisan of peace, the Franco-Israeli businessman Jean Frydman. I knew what that meant.

It meant he had to be killed. An SS officer is a symbol of murder for people who have to be eliminated. Frydman decided to take action.

The streets could not be abandoned to fanatics and opponents alone. I had the idea of a major rally on a much greater scale than the demonstrations against Rabin. First, I spoke to Peres, and he said: "Yes, we must do that, but talk to Rabin first.

" He was skeptical about the rally. He wasn't afraid that something might happen to him, but he was afraid that the support for this rally wouldn't be sufficient, and that the result would be that the peace process wouldn't be sufficiently supported by the Israeli people. He said: "What proof is there that it will work?

" "If it doesn’t work, the government is finished. " "It will be the end of the peace process. " That reaction made me very angry.

I said to him: "Listen, you were elected to make peace. " "Yes, but what if the people don’t want it? " "What if people don’t come?

" "If the Israeli people don't support you for peace, resign. " Rabin reluctantly agreed to the idea of the peace rally, but a date had to be fixed. I said: "Listen, the only day possible is November 4th.

" "It has to be a Saturday. " "It has to be before the rainy season, which means before the 15th of November. " "You and Peres both have to be there.

" "The only Saturday before November 15th when you're both here is November 4th. " He picked up his diary and quite aggressively crossed something out and wrote "Rally. " When the tragedy occurred, I said to myself: "Good heavens!

" "I gave him the day, the time, and the place of his death. " Saturday, November 4, 1995. It is Shabbat, and the Kings of Israel Square is quiet as it prepares for Jean Frydman's big event that evening.

At about 6:00 p. m. , Rabin has a final appointment with a popular young trade union leader, Haim Ramon.

He was very calm, and it was a very comfortable meeting. We had small talks about things going on, some gossip, political and personal. Then we also discussed the demonstration.

As always, he was very pessimistic, saying: "Ah, how many people will come? " and so on. "They don’t know how to organize it.

" I told him: "It’s hard, but don’t worry. " "This time it’s going to be a big one, and you will be surprised. " He made his typical gesture with his hand and said: "Let’s see, let’s see.

" That was the last time I saw him alive. The day comes to an end in Tel Aviv. At around 7:00 p.

m. , a young man leaves his family home and catches a number 247 bus for the Kings of Israel Square. He is to attend Rabin's huge support rally.

In his pocket, Yigal Amir has a Beretta 9mm pistol. A steel ball has been added to the first three bullets in the clip for maximum damage. The man who altered the bullets is his own brother, Hagai, a weapons and ammunition expert and the only person who knew the secret.

When he reaches the square, Amir takes off his kippah to blend in more discreetly. It is 7:45 when Yitzhak Rabin summons his chauffeur to drive himself and his wife to the rally. Menahem Damti picks them up in a bulletproof Cadillac imposed on Rabin by the security service, the Shin Bet.

I'm quite shaken seeing this vehicle again. I'm shivering all over because it brings back memories of every day, every awful moment I experienced in this car. I remember that Rabin really didn't want to travel in it.

He didn't want to consider getting into this car. I understood later that he'd been persuaded to accept the car for security reasons, but he still didn't want to. He used to say: "What?

" "People are traveling by bus without any protection," "and I have to travel in an armored car? " "No, I refuse. " However, after a certain amount of pressure and persuasion, he finally agreed.

Before we arrived at the ceremony, he was concerned and wondered if there'd be a lot of people or not. However, he was informed that there were a lot of people there. Therefore, he was pleased, and he was in quite a good mood when he arrived at the ceremony.

At about 6:00, we could already see a lot of people. A flood of people were beginning to show up. It was quite impressive.

There were three helicopters, 200 marksmen on the rooftops, and several hundred soldiers on the ground. The security problem wasn't an issue. It was almost 8:00 when Yitzhak and Leah Rabin arrived at the Kings of Israel Square to be welcomed by a delirious crowd.

Between 200,000 and 300,000 people had come to support the Prime Minister. I welcomed him there. We were on the stage overlooking the square in front of the city hall.

He reacted: "Ah! " The relief in that sigh was very revealing of his tension and surprise. A relief and even a shock for Rabin, who had been so violently attacked for over two years.

It was also a revelation for a man renowned for his timidity. At that moment, it was as if a new Rabin was born. He saw young people splashing in fountains and shouting: "Rabin, Rabin!

" He was the opposite of a popular leader, a public speaker, and he was suddenly transformed, realizing that he'd been massively supported by the people during that period. It wasn't the others who were right, but himself. The people supported him and loved him.

All apart from one man who had decided to kill him. Amir kept his distance from a crowd he must have hated as much as the man he had come to assassinate. He waited for his moment behind the stage, where the evening's heroes would leave at the end of the meeting.

The heroes were Rabin, of course, but also Shimon Peres, the foreign affairs minister, who had convinced Rabin to negotiate with the Palestinians. Formerly his rival for domination of the Socialist Party, Peres was now his companion in history. In fact, they hated each other.

We have to tell it like it is. They were intense adversaries with totally incompatible natures and a profound antipathy. That's a fact.

They were companions because they couldn't avoid it. I would say it was one of the dimensions of the November 4th tragedy. Perhaps the first time that there was a truly friendly complicity in the way they came together and held each other's shoulders.

There was something real and authentic on the night of the 4th. I have been a soldier for 27 years. I fought as long as there was no chance of peace.

I am convinced that there is a real chance for peace today, a great chance, and we must seize it. Therefore, he made his speech. He was very pleased, and he thought he'd finished.

He stepped down and said: "I've done my job. " I said: "No, there's still something to be done. " "Everyone's going to sing a song.

" He squinted at me. He asked me: "What is this song? " "It's a song for peace, and I don't know the exact words but.

. . " It was a real reversal on his part.

Rabin was there singing the same song of peace that he'd forbidden when he was head of the armed forces because he thought it was too left wing. There he was singing it on stage. There was a sentiment of appeasement.

We felt that Yitzhak Rabin was a happy man that evening. He was singing a song of peace. You can see him smiling.

He was delighted because the rally demonstrated support for the peace process, and he'd never seen that before. It is 9:42 p. m.

, and Shimon Peres has just left. Yitzhak Rabin and his wife have a dinner engagement with friends, but before they leave, he wants to pose for one last picture for posterity with the rally organizers. I went down the steps with Rabin, perhaps looking for a compliment.

I asked: "Are you pleased? " He replied: "What do you mean, happy? " "I owe you the best two hours of my life.

" I saw the Prime Minister coming down, moving in my direction, looking from left to right. He turned around. There was a security guard there.

He arrived on my side, but he should have arrived on the other side. He was looking around, shaking hands, looking all around. In one way or another, he ended up by my door, and suddenly the damned murderer jumped out and started shooting.

He fired and fired and I shouted: "What's that? " "What's that? What's going on?

" It is 9:47 p. m. Yigal Amir slips past the surveillance of Rabin's five bodyguards, approaches from behind, and fires from point-blank range.

Three shots ring out. Rabin collapses, hit in the abdomen and the spinal column. The third bullet wounds a bodyguard, who nevertheless manages to push Rabin into the car.

I engaged first gear and started to speed away with the siren blaring. At first sight, I looked at him, and I saw that there was no reaction. He reacted: "Ah, ah!

" He was stammering a few incomprehensible words like that. My chief said: "To the hospital, quick, to the hospital! " The armor-plated Cadillac arrives at the hospital a few minutes after the attack.

The bodyguard is wounded in the shoulder. Yitzhak Rabin is unconscious and in a critical condition. At the scene of the attack, the crowd is panicking and scattering in every direction.

Bodyguards and police officers immediately grab Yigal Amir and hold him against a wall. I met my cameraman, and we saw a person being held against a wall. I asked him: "Did you film that?

" He said: "Yes, I filmed it. " -"Who is it? " -"It's that person there.

" -"Was he Palestinian or Jewish? " -"I think he's a Jew. " This impression was confirmed by the assassin's own ID.

Amir declares that he is not an Arab, but a Jewish student. Yigal Amir was taken to police headquarters and then transferred to the Shin Bet interrogation center. Contradictory rumors are circulating about the Prime Minister's condition.

Leah Rabin arrives at the hospital as the population of Tel Aviv gathers in shock, not yet knowing that Yitzhak Rabin's heart has stopped beating. It is 10:30. The doctors' final attempts to revive him have failed.

There's no point describing what I felt. It was terribly traumatic, an unforeseen nightmare. That evening, it crashed down on us like a horrendous catastrophe.

I don't think I need to say any more. I think the full weight of that catastrophe on our family is sufficiently obvious. It’s very, very difficult for me.

For three days, I just couldn’t get over it. It was very hard. A man who I had worked with my whole life, who was like a father to me, and who asked about my children every morning: "How are you?

" "How’s the family? " I lost a father, I’m not joking. I felt really bad, really very, very bad.

The rally banners were already at half-mast when the President of the United States expressed his own grief. I admired him, and I loved him very much. Since words cannot express my true feelings, let me just say: "Shalom, chaver.

" "Goodbye, friend. " Yasser Arafat was next, clearly in shock. I am very sad and very shocked by this awful and terrible crime.

Forty-eight hours after the attack, Yitzhak Rabin was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, beside Israel's founding fathers. For security reasons, Yasser Arafat stayed away. The head of the PLO watched the funeral on television, but 87 other heads of state attended the ceremony.

Leah, I know that. . .

Funeral orations were given by Bill Clinton and Shimon Peres, as well as by close friends like Eitan Haber, who held up the lyrics from the Song of Peace, the paper soaked in blood retrieved from Rabin's jacket pocket. Above all, there was Noa, the deceased's granddaughter, whose words and tears moved the entire world. Forgive me for not wanting to talk about peace.

I should talk about my grandfather. I ask the angels of heaven who are with you now to watch over you and take care of you, for you deserve such guardians. We shall always love you, grandfather.

There was a journalistic problem. We all talked about the granddaughter and her moving speech. However, at the funeral, we saw the most amazing event, impossible to imagine a few weeks previously.

A third of the Arab League was there on Mount Herzl, just 50 meters from the grave of the founder of Zionism. Imagine it, Hosni Mubarak. The King of Jordan, from whom Rabin, as head of the armed forces during the Six-Day War, had taken East Jerusalem and the Holy Mosques.

The King of Jordan was there! I had never thought that a moment would come when I would grieve the loss of a brother, a colleague, and a friend. He had vision, and he had a commitment to peace.

Rabin was the first man whom both communities mourned. However, instead of building on that, we somehow lost it all in bloodshed. Four days after the funeral, a man accompanied by bodyguards and wearing a raincoat, a hat, and dark glasses came to knock on Leah Rabin's door.

It was Yasser Arafat, who came to present his personal condolences to the widow and her family. It was the first time in his life that he had entered the State of Israel. A secret visit in disguise, perhaps for the first time too without his trademark keffiyeh.

Did Yasser Arafat suspect that evening that the death of Yitzhak Rabin would also ring the death knell for the peace process? In Israel, there was grief, utter confusion, and shock. The people mourned their Prime Minister.

The state grieved the loss of innocence. The Israelis wanted to understand. A commission of inquiry was set up.

How and why could a Jew, Yigal Amir, have killed their Prime Minister? I think that the Shin Bet and the security forces in general made an error, not in terms of organization. It wasn't a technical error, but a conceptual error.

The mistake was in their minds, in the notion that terrorism can only come from the Arabs. A Jew can’t do that. The Shin Bet was under serious scrutiny.

How could Amir, seen here during a reconstruction, have avoided being placed on the secret service's blacklist, despite the fact an informer had told them of a plan to assassinate Rabin? There had been no investigation, and there was no trace of Amir in any files. The scandal deepened when it was revealed that the Eyal movement the assassin belonged to had been infiltrated and even manipulated by the Shin Bet.

No more was needed to create a conspiracy theory about Rabin's murder. In my view, the assassin didn’t just appear from nowhere, like a man from Mars with a kippah suddenly deciding to kill the Prime Minister. He emerged from a movement.

Various theories, which have not been fully explored, have suggested he was sent by the rabbis, but this has never been proved. I think he was at least morally representative of a whole movement that was prepared to do anything to halt and interrupt the peace process with the Palestinians. The verdict of the inquiry commission was finally that of the lone killer.

Amir was a fanatic, acting by himself. The assassin himself was declared to be perfectly sane and consistently claimed that his crime had been inspired by a deadly holy trinity, the people, the Torah, and the Land of Israel. On March 26, 1996, Amir was sentenced to life imprisonment after a trial that lasted barely a dozen brief hearings.

As if Israeli society wished to exorcise the trauma as soon as possible, avoiding the perils of examining its own conscience. The shadow of the murder of Yitzhak Rabin is still with us. Many of the things we're doing and how we are acting are influenced by what happened ten years ago.

Subjected to solitary confinement, Yigal Amir stands little hope of a pardon. However, he is married by correspondence. Ten years after its verdict, the Supreme Court even granted him the right to have a child by artificial insemination.

Will this child, if it is ever born, one day learn of the disastrous consequences of its father's act? At the time it happened, I mistakenly sustained the illusion that the peace process was too far advanced for the death of one man to bring it into question. However, I was entirely wrong.

The death of Yitzhak Rabin had a much more devastating effect on the process than I could have ever imagined. The time for peace has come. Today, we say to you in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears.

Enough! Hamas's continuing suicide attacks only precipitated Shimon Peres's electoral defeat. His successors on both the left and right were obliged to follow in Rabin's footsteps, even those who rode the wave of hate.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who was Prime Minister, also shook hands with Yasser Arafat less than a year after his rival's death. As for Ariel Sharon, he became, in turn, the most hated man in his country for having forced the Jewish settlements to leave the Gaza Strip. Ten years after the death of Yitzhak Rabin, Israelis and Palestinians alike have all failed to make peace.