Negbi Should Know Better

Moshe Negbi is the IBA's official legal commentator.

Supposedly, that makes him a neutral observer.

Wrong.

Here he is in this morning's Haaretz on the Rabin assassination:

Rabin's murderers are still free and happy

Yigal Amir is in jail but his senior partners to the murder of the prime minister are still free and happy. Amir himself testified about those partners already on the night of the assassination when he said in his investigation: "Without the rabbinical ruling or the 'din rodef' [the right to pursue and kill someone who has supposedly sinned] that applied to [Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin, issued by a number of rabbis that I know about, I would have had difficulty murdering. A murder of that kind must have backing. If I did not have backing ... I would not have acted."

The criminal code stipulates that someone who urges another to perform a criminal act "by persuasion, encouragement or demand" bears the same criminal responsibility as that of the criminal he pressured. That is to say, the rabbis who issued the "din rodef" about the prime minister, and in that way gave backing to Amir, are assassins just like him, and they were supposed to spend the rest of their lives in prison like him. However they have remained free and obviously are also happy. From their point of view, the murder of the prime minister was a perfect crime that paid - it achieved its aim and they did not have to pay any price for it.

Of course, Negbi does not know who those Rabbis are.  He has no name, no evidence, no proof.

A special investigation headed by then Attn'y-General Elyakim Rubenstein arrived at the conclusion that despite some Rabbis being questioned, there was no proof of any Rabbi of any sort who had incited, instigate or otherwise acted criminally.

Negbi knows this.

Steve Plaut wrote it and has not been proven wrong:

...speakers and TV stations repeat over and over and over the lies that Rabin's death was caused by right-wing "inciters", that rabbis supposedly gave the okay to Amir to kill Rabin (except no one has ever managed to name or locate any such Rabbi)...As you know, the Israeli leftist media fabricated an urban legend about how un-named Rabbis supposedly told Yigal Amir it would be nice if he murdered Rabin and who allegedly otherwise endorsed violence. Never mind that no one has ever produced any evidence of any Rabbi endorsing murder of Rabin or of anyone else

.

But he also claims to know that

The only convincing explanation for the failure to trial these Rabbis he "heard came from Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, the first to denounce the rabbis who permitted the shedding of Rabin's blood. When the rabbi was asked why he did not go to the police with the names of those rabbis rather than to the Chief Rabbinate, he said he had learned that the law-enforcement authorities were afraid of dealing with them and their extremist followers.

He never gave names.  Ever.  Sixteen years later and nada.  But Negbi "knows" and besmirches and pillories.

Maybe Negbi would wish that Bin-Nun be tried for interefering with an investigation?

Or maybe he should stop peddling pernicious fantasies?

After all, he is a lawyer and should know better.


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