Word: amir
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...moment, that tide has drowned out the most vituperative antipeace zealots. Slogans denouncing Rabin, the Labor Party government and the peace plan have disappeared from Israeli auto bumpers, windows and walls. Some of the most militant Zionist groups hastened to condemn Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir, and anyone who applauded his bloody act. The Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza even passed a resolution pledging to "silence those voices...
Such contrition is the more urgent if the radical right is to dissociate itself in the public mind from what Israeli police now say was a murderous conspiracy. Amir insists that he had only one prompter and helper: God. But Police Minister Moshe Shahal asserts, "We believe that a group of people carefully prepared the ground to murder carefully chosen targets," not stopping with Rabin. Besides Yigal Amir, Shahal's cops so far have taken into custody his brother Hagai Amir, who has admitted giving Yigal the homemade, hollowed-out bullets that tore apart Rabin's chest, and six other...
Evidence so far is thin. The police did dig up a large cache of explosives--sticks of TNT, detonators and a silencer--buried under a sandbox in a kindergarten run at home by the Amirs' mother (who has tearfully disowned her son Yigal). But none of it was used in the assassination of Rabin, which seemed to be carried out in a haphazard rather than a well-planned fashion. Police have indicated they intend to charge Yigal Amir and one other man with murder; the others could be charged with helping to plan the assassination or knowing about...
Wearing a white bulletproof vest, Yigal Amir was lead by police back to the spot where he killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin today. As angry onlookers screamed insults, Amir calmly reenacted the assassination. Using a plastic pistol, he showed how he shot Rabin in the back, narrating his movements for a policeman with a tape recorder. "It was eerie," says TIME's Edward Barnes. "They did this at three in the morning and there was still a crowd." Barnes says that such reenactments are common in Israel, especially when suspects have confessed. "It does tend to reinforce the view that...
Barnes says that Israeli police have been sweeping the settlements, questioning anyone who knew Amir, but have yet to find solid signs of a plot to kill Rabin. "I think the police were simply taken by surprise that Jews kill other Jews and are cracking down out of frustration," says Barnes. "The interesting thing is that Amir fits the profile of a lot of terrorists. He's a loner and a former soldier who seemed especially sensitive to the rhetoric of the radical right. Just like Timothy McVeigh, the man charged with blowing up the Oklahoma federal building. I think...