Yigal Amir

There might be some objection to classifying a politically motivated assassin among criminals. To regard as criminal someone who fired two bullets into the Prime Minister of Israel, is a no-brainer for me. Note: The assassination was not completely unprecedented. Pre-State Jewish history in Palestine included some other assassinations - Jacob de Haan in 1924, Haim Arlozorov in 1933, Eliahu Giladi in 1943, and various other Jews deemed collaborators or traitors. Israel Rezső Kasztner was gunned down in Ramat Gan in 1957 for alleged collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust. In his case, unlike the others, Jews were both arrested and convicted for the murder.

Amir’s public execution of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, for which he has never expressed any remorse – on the contrary, his only expressed regret was not to have done it two years earlier, before Rabin signed the Oslo Accords - was in a category of its own. Surprisingly, perhaps, there is no detailed biographical publication about Amir in English, and I will make do with an edited version of the Wikipedia article about him, followed by details of various books and articles about the assassination and its aftermath. It is worth reviewing some of the details of Amir’s background and robust insistence on his full prisoner rights, following his conviction and sentencing.

Amir was born in Herzliya in 1970 to an Israeli Orthodox Yemenite Jewish family, the second of eight children. After graduating high school in 1989, he served 20 months of military service in the Israel Defense Forces as a Hesder student, combining army service in a religious platoon of the Golani Brigade, with religious study at Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh between 1991 and 1993.

In early 1993, Amir successfully applied for a handgun permit, listing the reason as self-defense while providing a false residence in Shavei Shomron, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. In summer 1993, shortly after his graduation from Kerem B’Yavneh, Amir was nominated by the religious-Zionist youth movement Bnei Akiva to teach Judaism in Riga, Latvia, for two months.

After returning to Israel in October 1993, Amir began studying law, Jewish law and computer science at Bar-Ilan University. He was known for his argumentative nature during debates with his rabbis, including Bar-Ilan University Dean Moshe Raziel, holding the view that Jewish laws took priority over the secular laws of Israel.

Amir strongly opposed to the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. He participated in protest rallies against the accords on campus, was active in organizing weekend bus outings to support Israeli settlers, and helped found an illegal settlement outpost. He was especially active in Hebron, where he led marches through the streets. After the accords, Amir reasoned in discussions with friends that the commandment ”thou shalt not kill” did not apply to Rabin because he had “hand[ed] over Jewish holy lands to the Arabs, [thus] blocking the redemption of the Jewish people.”^[6]

On November 4, 1995, after a demonstration in Tel Aviv’s Kings of Israel Square (now Rabin Square) in support of the Oslo Accords, Amir waited for Rabin in a parking lot adjacent to the square, close to Rabin’s official limousine. There, he shot Rabin twice and injured Yoram Rubin, a security guard, with a third shot. Amir was immediately seized by Rabin’s bodyguards. Rabin was rushed to Ichilov Hospital where he died 40 minutes later. According to the court, Yigal Amir’s brother Hagai and his friend Dror Adani were his accomplices in the assassination plan. Upon hearing that Rabin was dead, Amir told the police that he was “satisfied” and was acting on the “orders of God”.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yigal_Amir - cite_note-cnn.com-12 At his trial, Amir said he did not care if the outcome was death or paralysis as long as Rabin was “out of the way”. He expressed no regret for his actions.

Prior to Amir’s trial, his judges ordered a mental examination by three district psychiatrists and a clinical psychiatrist, who all agreed that he understood the meaning of his actions and was fit to stand trial.

Amir admitted to shooting Rabin and justified” his actions on religious grounds, claiming that shooting Rabin was an act of din rodef  (“law of the pursuer”), which would allow killing to prevent the deaths of innocent Jews. He also claimed he had only intended to paralyze Rabin and not kill him. The court rejected his arguments, and he was found guilty of murder and inflicting injury under aggravating circumstances over the wounding of Yoram Rubin. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Rabin plus six additional years in prison for injuring Rubin. In their verdict, the three judges wrote:

“Every murder is an abominable act, but the act before us is more abominable sevenfold, because not only has the accused not expressed regret or sorrow, but he also seeks to show that he is at peace with himself over the act that he perpetrated. He who so calmly cuts short another’s life, only proves the depth of wretchedness to which [his] values have fallen, and thus he does not merit any regard whatsoever, except pity, because he has lost his humanity.”

Amir’s claim that he was acting in accordance with Jewish law was rejected by the judges: “The attempt to grant religious authority to the murder ... is completely inappropriate and amounts to cynical exploitation of Jewish law for goals that are alien to Judaism.”

Rabin’s assassination was condemned by Bar-Ilan University. Daniel Sperber, a professor of Talmud at the university, said that the assassination “in no way represents the university or the policy of the university”

Amir was later sentenced to an additional five years, and after an appeal on behalf of the state, eight years, for conspiring to commit the assassination with his brother Hagai Amir and Dror Adani. All of the sentences were cumulative. In Israel, a sentence of life imprisonment is usually reduced to a period of 20–30 years by the president, with the possibility of further reduction for good behaviour. However, President Moshe Katsav did not reduce the sentence, saying that there is “no forgiveness, no absolution, and no pardon” for Yigal Amir. Prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Olmert have also said that Yigal Amir will never be released from prison.

In 2001 the Knesset approved the Yigal Amir Law which prohibits a parole board from recommending pardon or shortening time in prison for a murderer of a prime minister. His legal team and supporters deride the law as being tailor made to punish Amir, being applied retroactively.

Amir was held in solitary confinement in Beersheba’s Eshel Prison, and moved in 2003 to the Ayalon Prison in Ramla, where a solitary confinement wing was built especially for him. In 2006, he was transferred to Rimonim Prison in Tel Mond, near Netanya. He was also granted the privileges of having no surveillance cameras in his cell, the right to receive visitors in the visiting room, rather than in his cell, and the right to speak with other prisoners. Amir was interviewed by the Israeli press in 2008, but the planned broadcast was controversial and subsequently cancelled. As punishment for giving the interview, Amir was moved to Ramon Prison, and had a number of privileges withdrawn, including the removal of his TV and DVD player and the refusal of family visits; Amir went on a hunger strike in protest.^[22] In February 2010, the Nazareth District Court  permitted the Ynet internet news service to interview him.

In July 2010, after 15 years of solitary confinement, Amir appealed to the Petah Tikva District Court to be permitted to participate in group prayers in accordance with Jewish law. He claimed that the terms of his imprisonment were worse than any other prisoner in the history of the State of Israel, on the grounds that no other prisoner had been in solitary for this amount of time. He said that failure to allow him to pray in synagogue would be a violation of his right to freedom of worship. In August 2010, the court ruled that Amir would be allowed to meet another prisoner for prayer three times a week, and that he would be allowed to study Torah with another prisoner once every two weeks.

In July 2012, it was announced that Amir would no longer be held in solitary confinement. Under his new prison conditions, he would be allowed to watch television and use a phone more frequently. Though he was not moved to an open cell block, where prisoners are allowed to spend most of the day outside their cells, he was given the right to meet other prisoners during his two hours’ exercise in the prison yard.

In 2019, Amir’s telephone was confiscated by prison authorities for two months after he used it for political purposes in violation of prison regulations. He had called rapper and right-wing political activist Yoav Eliasi and urged him to fight for his release, a request which Eliasi rejected. In protest, Amir launched a hunger strike and was subsequently penalized with seven days in solitary confinement in a cell with downgraded amenities.

Amir’s appeals of both sentences were rejected. Subsequently, a law was passed by the Knesset barring the pardon by the President of Israel for any assassin of a prime minister. Amir has never expressed regret for his actions. In 2007, the “Committee for Democracy” was formed by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel to free Amir.

From time to time, radical Israeli right-wing organizations carry out campaigns (via posters or videos) that call for Amir to be released. Such a campaign was held in October 2007 in which the prominent Israeli singer Ariel Zilber also participated. In response to this campaign, the Israeli Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter stated: “This man is in the closest status a person can be to a death sentence”, and also added that, “A reduction of his sentence is impossible and illogical, and it will surely accompany him until his demise.”

Amir is married to Larisa Trembovler, who was born in Russia. She met Amir in Latvia, where he was teaching Judaism. After her immigration to Israel, she visited him with her then-husband, Benjamin (with whom she has four children), for humanitarian reasons. She expressed ideological support for Amir, and they began to correspond and speak on the phone. She divorced Benjamin in 2003.

Trembovler announced that she was engaged to Amir and wanted to marry him, while he was in jail. After various legal wrangles, they were eventually allowed to marry and enjoy conjugal visits. Their son was born in October, 2007. The circumcision ceremony was held in prison on November 4, 2007, the 12th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination. In 2020, Amir requested a furlough from prison to attend his son’s bar mitzvah, which the Israel Prison Service denied. Amir appealed the decision to the Beersheba District Court, which upheld the refusal.

During the last decade, there have been repeated legal attempts to obtain Amir’s release from prison, including by attempting to prove that it was not the bullets from his gun which caused Rabin’s death! For some on Israel’s extreme right, Amir remains a revered figure. None of these attempts have borne fruit and Amir remains incarcerated without parole or furloughs.

Films: See Filmography for details.

Beyond the Fear (2015) (see p. 528)

Incitement (2019) (see p. 533)

Significant Books and Articles:

Ephron, Dan, (Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel [hc, W.W. Norton, 2015]) 978-0393242096 [pb, W.W. Norton, 2016] 978-0393353242 [This is generally regarded as the best English-language account of the assassination. It reconstructs the parallel lives of Rabin and Yigal Amir during the two years preceding the murder. The book avoids portraying Amir as insane, instead presenting him as a rational ideological extremist acting within a broader climate of radicalization.]

Karpin, Michael, and Ina Friedman, (Murder in the Name of God: The Plot to Kill Yitzhak Rabin [hc, Metropolitan Books, 1998]) 978-0805057492 [pb, Granta Books, 1999] 978-1862072411 [This remains the classic investigative account and includes extensive interviews, reconstruction of Amir’s planning, Shin Bet failures, examination of extremist rabbis, religious-nationalist ideology and the conspiracy involving Hagai Amir and Dror Adani. It argues that Amir emerged from a political and religious milieu that increasingly legitimized violence against Rabin.]

Peri, Yoram [ed], (The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin [ hc, Stanford UP, 2000]) 978-0804738354 [pb, Stanford UP, 2000] 978-0804738378 [Probably the most important scholarly collection. Contributors include leading Israeli political scientists, sociologists and historians discussing Amir’s ideology, Israeli political culture, religious Zionism, democratic crisis, political incitement, media and collective memory. Rather than focusing solely on Amir, the volume asks why Israeli society produced someone like him.]

Alexander, Mark C., “Religiously Motivated Murder: The Rabin Assassination and Abortion Clinic Killings.” Arizona Law Review 41 (1999). This is perhaps the single most important academic study devoted specifically to Amir’s religious justification. It analyzes din rodef, halakhic misuse, Amir’s legal defense, comparisons with American anti-abortion violence and when religious law is invoked to justify political murder. It is still widely cited in legal and religious studies.

Beker, Avihai and Lavi, David “Portrait of a Jewish Murderer” [Hebrew: Diyokno shel Rotzeach Yehudi - דיוקנו של רוצח יהודי”” ]. Maariv Weekend Supplement, 10 November 1995.[Released less than a week after the November 4, 1995 assassination, capturing the immediate, raw shock of the nation. It relies on direct, fresh testimonies from Amir’s Golani Brigade military comrades, childhood peers, and university classmates. Because of its exhaustive depth, this specific profile remains a primary text heavily cited by sociologists and historians—such as Michael Feige in his seminal research on the fringes of religious nationalism—to analyze the radicalization and social environment that produced Amir.]

Rabinovich, Itamar, (Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman [hc, Yale UP, 2017] 978-0300212297 [pb, Yale UP, 2018] 978-0300234633 [ - authoritative historical perspective on the assassination’s impact.] [ChatGPT]

John Kifner, “Belief to Blood: The Making of Rabin’s Killer.” The New York Times, 19 November 1995 [Still probably the finest contemporary profile of Amir’s development from ordinary religious student to assassin.]

Bilsky, Liora, “Law and Politics: The Trial of Rabin’s Assassin” Plilim - The Tel Aviv University Law Review on Criminal Law, Volume 8, pp. 1–62 (alternatively cited as pp. 13–75 in some indices), published in 1999 in Hebrew. [ - analyzes the historic judgment and conviction of Yigal Amir. Rather than treating the case purely as a standard criminal trial, Bilsky explores the unusual and highly charged rhetoric that the court chose to deploy in its final verdict. The core thesis posits that at a moment of profound national and constitutional crisis, the court felt compelled to look beyond narrow, technical legal considerations. It did this to actively engage with the ideological defense advanced by Amir, who argued his actions were justified under the religious Jewish legal principle of din rodef (the duty to kill a pursuer). The trial forced the court to confront a radical challenge to Israel’s foundational identity: the perceived conflict between its “Jewish” and “democratic” values. Bilsky argues that through its specific narrative and rhetorical choices, the court actively attempted to construct and reinforce a new collective identity to heal and stabilize a fractured Israeli society.]

Frenkel, Sheera Claire (The Jerusalem Post, November 2, 2006). ”Olmert: Yigal Amir will never go free”.  [ ’... According to law, the murderer of the prime minister cannot ever go free – and it is impossible to grant him clemency, not now and not in the future’, said Olmert of the survey, taken last week, during his remarks at a special Knesset session to mark the 11th anniversary of the Rabin assassination. [...] Olmert’s position was echoed by opposition leader Binjamin Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, both of whom stressed that Amir never be allowed to walk free.]

Yoaz, Yuval, “AG orders state to recognize marriage of Rabin assassin Yigal Amir”, Haaretz, May 21, 2011.

Times of Israel Staff. 2020. “25 Years on, Rabin’s Jailed Assassin Still a National Threat: Security Service.” The Times of Israel, October 29, 2020. timesofisrael.com. [Shin Bet security officials deemed Yigal Amir, the assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a continued national threat 25 years after the murder. The intelligence assessment highlighted that Amir, despite his life sentence, maintains dangerous connections to radicalized right-wing youth, posing a risk of inciting violence from prison.]

Shindler, Colin, “OPINION: Rabin’s assassin is fêted in many Israeli circles”. Jewish News. June 2, 2023 [ - argues that while Yigal Amir remains jailed for the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the far-right ideologies that inspired him have entered the Israeli political mainstream. The piece highlights that figures associated with that extremist community now hold high government positions.]

Note:

• Presidential Consensus: Every Israeli president since the assassination has firmly stated they will never grant Amir a pardon or commute his life sentence.
• Public and Political Taboo: While fringe right-wing extremist groups still occasionally advocate for his release, any mainstream public push remains a massive national taboo. Public figures or media figures who have publicly suggested it is “time to free Amir” face immediate professional termination, widespread condemnation, and deep public backlash. [Google/AI]