Baruch
Goldstein, Shamgar, Carmi Gillon and 29 bodies. |
The assassination
of Yitzhak Rabin is a solvable crime. It begins not in Tel Aviv,
but in Hebron. There, in March 1994, another horrid crime was perpetrated.
Twenty nine Arabs were slaughtered in the Cave of the Patriarchs,
and a commission of inquiry was set up to get to the truth. It was
led by the former chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, Meir
Shamgar, who would later head the commission of inquiry into Yitzhak
Rabin's death. And like the latter case, the Hebron commission was
a blatant whitewash. The very day of the massacre, an Arab reporter
for the weekly news magazine Yerushalaim visited 25 survivors in
six separate hospitals. There was no time for these victims, some
of them mere children,
to organize a conspiracy or coordinate their testimony. One
after another they reported that the man accused of the crime --
Baruch Goldstein -- had at least one, perhaps two, accomplices.
A dozen of these survivors testified to the Shamgar Commission that
they saw an accomplice handing the shooter bullet clips as his ran
out. And like the Yitzhak Rabin murder, strangely, nine of the soldiers
who were supposed to guard the shrine were not on duty that morning.
The three that were testified that they saw Baruch Goldstein enter
followed a few minutes later by a civilian carrying a Galil assault
weapon. |
Shamgar
ruled that Baruch Goldstein acted alone, that the soldiers who saw
someone else follow him were mistaken and that all the Arab witnesses
perjured themselves. The implication of his verdict was that Arabs
lie and their testimony was worthless. No honest court in the world
would have reached Shamgar's conclusion. And like his later commission
into Yitzhak Rabin's murder, a great deal of significance lay in
which witnesses didn't testify and what evidence wasn't admitted.
First, to this day, no one knows how Baruch Goldstein died. No autopsy
was ordered, and the circumstances of his demise remain unknown.
Second, and more important, was who didn't prevent the massacre.
Baruch Goldstein knew the slaughter was coming and he told friends,
including Shmuel Cytryn, later arrested without charge and imprisoned
for months, that two days before the event he received notice from
the army "to prepare for a massacre." |
That
should have been enough warning for a division of the General Security
Services (Shabak) called the Non-Arab Anti-Subversive Unit to go
into preventative action. This most secret unit planted agents throughout
the territories, supposedly to surveil radical Jews and restrict
their activities. The massacre was a notable failure, yet the head
of the unit, Carmi Gillon, was not called to testify at the Shamgar
Commission. Perhaps this was because his brother, Ilan Carmi Gillon,
was the registrar of the commission responsible for organizing testimony.
After the Shangar whitewash, Carmi Gillon was named head of the
Shabak, a strange reward in the aftermath of the Hebron fiasco.
Or was the slaughter actually not a fiasco at all, but a planned
event? What is known for certain is that the unit continued to incite
and entrap those territorial Jewish residents who opposed the Yitzhak
Rabin peace process. The most publicized case was that of the Kahalani
brothers, who are serving multi-decade prison terms for the attempted
murder of Arabs. According to the Shabak they were caught in a sting
operation in which the firing pin of their weapon was removed. They
claim the weapon was planted in their vehicle. Either way, they
were entrapped in a manner illegal in most democratic societies.
|
Of
course, the unit's most famous agent was Avishai Raviv, whose duty
was to provoke the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. He formed an organization
called Eyal, which had no members but himself. He convinced Yigal
Amir, a student at Bar Ilan University, to help him organize study
groups in or near Hebron. Four teenage girls, students of Sarah
Eliash, witnessed Avishai Raviv prodding Yigal Amir to kill Yitzhak
Rabin in front of them, calling him a coward and a fake hero. This
testimony was heard by the Shamgar Commission and was not included
in the publicly released conclusions. (Notably, much of the commission's
report was withheld from the public.) Avishai Raviv was no minor
provocateur. It was he who had posters of Yitzhak Rabin dressed
in a Gestapo uniform printed and distributed at a large rally and
it was he who organized a swearing-in ceremony broadcast on Israel
television's Channel One a month and a half before Yitzhak Rabin's
assassination. The so-called Eyal members vowed to kill anyone who
betrayed the land of Israel. Later, participants in the performance
testified that Avishai Raviv told them what to say, where to stand
and the whole production was viewed as a put on. They did not realize
they were setting up Yigal Amir as a patsy by creating a radical
group for the public to identify him with. |
Replacing
Carmi Gillon as head of the anti-subversive unit was agent Kheshin,
who appointed agent Eli Barak as his deputy. To this day very little
is publicly known about Kheshin, even his first name. But Barak
is a different matter. The week after Yitzhak Rabin's murder, the
wide circulation newspaper Kol Ha'ir, without naming him, accused
him of being responsible for the assassination. Much is known about
Barak. He is a convicted drunk driver, wife swapper and stalker.
After a near fatal accident caused by his intoxication, he lied
to the police about who was driving the car. His friend and fellow
wife swapper died under mysterious circumstances. And in the most
publicized incident of all, he terrorized and stalked a radio reporter,
Carmela Menashe. Instead of firing this security hazard, Yitzhak
Rabin sent him abroad on a mysterious assignment and later approved
his appointment in Hebron. In the most obvious coverup of the Shamgar
Commission, seven Shabak agents and officers involved in the "snafu"
that led to Yitzhak Rabin's death, including Kheshin, received notices
that they were liable for criminal prosecution. Barak did not. Kheshin
was later exonerated by the commission, despite being in charge
of the Avishai Raviv operation. But Barak, who was apparently Avishai
Raviv's immediate superior, was not even called to testify. |
A few persistent
reporters tried tracking Barak down at his home in Kochav Yair
but were rudely turned away by Shabak officers surrounding his
block. The key to uncovering the truth clearly lies with Eli Barak,
but he has been "protected" by the government. And because of
this glaring coverup of his activities, many people have speculated
that he was the mystery man who closed the back door of Yitzhak
Rabin's car from the inside before the "wounded" Yitzhak Rabin
entered the backseat. In February of 1996, the Jerusalem correspondent
for the London Observor, Shay Batya, reported that he spoke with
two Shabak agents who were fired after the assassination. They
informed him that Yigal Amir was supposed to fire blanks and that
Danny Yatom, Yitzhak Rabin's chief security aide, was involved
in the preparations for the scam. His silence was bought by being
appointed as chief of the Mossad, an incident eerily reminiscent
of Carmi Gillon's rise to head of the Shabak after the Hebron
massacre. Of Carmi Gillon, it is well known that he was a far-leftist
who despised the settlers and was heard refering to them as "neo-nazis."
His attitude was revealed in his 1991 Masters thesis, completed
at Haifa Unversity, which analysed the settler movement from a
perspective of hatred. Two days before the assassination, despite
pleas from subordinates not to leave the country before the rally
in light of the national mood, Carmi Gillon flew to Paris. A joke
that made the rounds after the assassination has Carmi Gillon
calling Leah Rabin on the night of the murder and offering his
deep condolences. She asks him what for. He says, "Oops, sorry.
I forgot about the time difference."
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