Recalling the Cemetery Swearing-In Ceremony Staged by Avishai Raviv

The website of Israel's Media Watch from when I was Director is down but seems at least this post about that infamous swearing-in ceremony staged by agent provocateur Avishai Raviv can still be found.

Secret service agent-provocateur Avishai Raviv and his connections with the media !!

The following text appeared in IINS News Service, November 1997 / Cheshvan 5758. As a public service, we bring to your attention its content.

"Declassified Shamgar Report (*) on Avishai Raviv"

November 13, 1997 - 13 Cheshvan 5757

Special Report -092sr

The following is a translation of the recently declassified portion of the Shamgar Commission's report (*) into the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin.

Chapter four (page 28) of the released material deals with Avishai Raviv. ********************************************************** 

Chapter IV - Avishai Raviv was connected to the security services (General Security Service (GSS/Shin-Bet)) since December 1987. Not only were criminal charges not filed against him, he was informed that criminal charges were pushed off. The response of his superiors was that his results outweighed damages from his actions, which for the most part were not active participation in lawbreaking but failure to report such illegal activities. GSS officials had no doubt that he would repeat his [illegal] actions.

Raviv was also involved in the 1990 campaign to erase road signs leading to Arab areas. He was involved with the establishment of the Zionist Fascist Youth organization and a key player in the establishment of the militant "Eyal" organization. The "Eyal" organization, in actuality, was only able to exist because Raviv and Israel's television stations publicized it.

1. In 1991, a racist letter sent to the Druze head of the Student Society of Tel-Aviv University was publicized by Israel TV.

2. Raviv assaulted Hadash (left-wing) MK Tamar Gozansky.

3. He incited a juvenile to attack Faisal Husseini. In connection with this attack, a false report was filed with Raviv's superiors.

[Not from the Shamgar Report] - Note: On September 21, 1995, Israel's government-run Channel One Television aired the swearing-in ceremony of Eyal members, who were seen holding a Bible and a handgun. This infamous TV footage created a national stir and increased the ongoing campaign to besmirch Israel's nationalistic (right-wing) camp.Staged Eyal ceremonyStaged Eyal swearing-in ceremony by GSS agent provocateur Avishai Raviv. Pictures published in newspaper Makor Rishon 31.10.97 (Many Thanks)..

The staged swearing with a Bible and a gun, in Mount Herzl cemetery !! (Thanks to Makor Rishon from 5.12.1997)

Staged Eyal ceremony by Avishai RavivPictures published in newspaper Makor Rishon 31.10.97 (Many Thanks).

Following the airing of the Eyal swearing-in ceremony, "Israel's Media Watch" sent a letter to Tzvi Lidar, the spokesman for Channel One Television. Media Watch asked if the TV Authority was certain the ceremony aired on TV was indeed, factual. The first response to the Media Watch letter stated that the question was unworthy of a response. Media Watch followed up with another letter, to which Lidar responded insisting the film footage was authentic, factual and worthy of being aired on national television. [end of note]

…[Shamgar Report Page continued- page 28] …Channel One Television aired the swearing in ceremony, which was obviously staged. Anyone who was present to see it had to have known it was a staged affair.

A7The following text appeared in Arutz 7 News Service, Friday, November 14, 1997 / Cheshvan 14, 5758. As a public service, we bring to your attention its content.

STILL NO ACTION ON COMPLAINT AGAINST TV

"Israel's Media Watch" has demanded that Israel Television director Yair Stern clarify whether he actually investigated its complaints regarding the staged swearing-in ceremony of Eyal members.

Israel Television broadcast the ceremony in a major item several weeks before the assassination. Media Watch then wrote to Israel Television spokesman Tzvi Lidar, asking him whether the authenticity of the event had been checked in advance, "because the broadcast gives the impression of being staged."

Lidar responded, "I don't know what your impression is based on." Media Watch wrote again, "Please answer whether the authenticity was investigated." This time, Lidar answered, "Yes, it was checked, and found to be factual and worthy of being broadcast."

As mentioned, Media Watch is waiting to hear whether the "check" was actually carried out. Media Watch later filed a complaint with the police against the television for broadcasting a staged event as authentic.

The State Attorney's Office has not yet decided whether to begin a criminal investigation, despite repeated inquiries into the matter by Media Watch.

The organization believes that the complaint will now be taken more seriously, in light of the Shamgar Commission (*) findings released yesterday. The findings state, "Raviv continued his connections with the media in order to present Eyal as an existing body, and he received the help of the television in that it broadcast the swearing-in ceremony; [this] was nothing more than a fake, which anyone who was there most certainly noticed." 

(*) The Shamgar Commission has investigated the assassination of former prime-minister of Israel Mr. Yitshak Rabin (za"l). Nowadays, (November 13, 1997 - 13 Cheshvan 5757) a declassified secret part of the commision report about Secret Service agent provocateur Avishai Raviv has been published. 

Israel's Media Watch is a non-partisan advocacy group concerned with the ethical and professional standards of the media in Israel.

See here, too.

And from Jonathan Rosenbaum's article:

...On November 2, Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein prohibited publication of a summary of a meeting in the office of his predecessor Michael Ben-Yair. The summary, he claimed, would "endanger public security." Eleven days later, long after the document had been placed on the Internet, the Israeli Supreme Court removed its own gag order, issued at Rubinstein's request, and sharply reprimanded the Attorney-General for attempting to suppress a document that had no connection to public security.

A brief examination of Rubinstein's actions and the way the Israeli press covered the issue provides a good case study of the many of the themes we have been developing.

The document in question dealt with a complaint filed by Israel's Media Watch demanding that the Attorney-General bring criminal proceedings against Eitan Oren, the reporter who filmed the staged swearing-in ceremony of the Eyal organization (see p.8 above). According to the summary, the Attorney-General saw no alternative to prosecuting Oren. He is quoted as saying:

The episode shocked television viewers and caused enormous damage, a virtual public storm. I just don't see how we can avoid beginning [criminal] proceedings. . . . I don't see a problem with the evidence. I don't see any problems in terms of his criminal intent. It is impossible to close the case without public exposure.

Everyone else in the room – State Attorney Edna Arbel, senior prosecutors, and representatives of the GSS – expressed concern that Oren would call Avishai Raviv to the stand, and that the latter would reveal everything connected to his actions as an agent provocateur on behalf of the GSS.

Much of the discussion concerned what grounds could be given for closing the file: "lack of public interest" or "lack of evidence." The Jerusalem District Attorney argued that the latter ground would be easier to defend if the closure of the file reached the Supreme Court. The meeting ended with Attorney-General Ben-Yair washing his hands of the matter and leaving it up to the State Attorney.

The reason that the Israeli Right was so intent on revealing the document is clear. Since the Rabin assassination, the Right has continuously claimed that the GSS orchestrated a systematic campaign to delegitimize the opposition to Oslo by planting agent provocateurs in their midst to create the impression that the entire Right is composed of violent extremists. It was, for instance, GSS agent Avishai Raviv who held up the famous photomontage of Rabin in an SS uniform at an anti-Oslo rally, and who was Yigal Amir's closest confidant in the months leading up to the Rabin assassination. For the Right, then, the document seemed to show that the State Attorney's office was intent on avoiding public discussion of Raviv's activities and their implications.

Many leading lights in the legal system had their own reasons for not wanting the document released. According to one GSS official present, Dorit Beinisch, former State Attorney and today a justice on the Supreme Court, gave approval for Raviv to engage in activities which would incriminate someone else who would then be arrested.

Even Attorney-General Rubinstein had his reasons for not wanting the document public, though he was not present at the meeting in question. For three and a half years, the State Attorney's office pushed off inquiries from Israel's Media Watch as to why no complaint had been filed against Oren with the response that the matter was under investigation. The document showed that response to be a lie: The decision not to prosecute on the grounds of "lack of evidence"' was made already nearly four years ago, for reasons having nothing to do with a lack of evidence.

Anyone old enough to remember the Pentagon Papers might have expected the Israeli media to raise a hue and a cry for release of the suppressed document. Far from it. If anything, the media followed the lead of Amnon Avramovits, who attempted to pooh-pooh the document as revealing nothing new. Though the document was easily available on Internet and had surely been read by the vast majority of print and broadcast journalists, few showed any curiosity as to why the Attorney-General was so determined to prevent its publications or what made it so important.

The media completely failed to accurately report the reason for the meeting described in the banned document: the complaint of Israel's Media Watch to the Attorney-General over the role of IBA reporter Eitan Oren in the staged Eyal induction ceremony. A conspiracy of silence seemed to surround the activities of one of the brotherhood. No one asked why a reporter who played an integral role in the staged Eyal induction ceremony is still on the air.

Even after the Supreme Court allowed publication of the summary of the meeting, the media confined itself to score-keeping of winners and losers in the affair. The underlying issue of the government's use of agent provocateurs as a means of delegitimizing opposition groups, however, still remained largely undiscussed.

The media showed a studied indifference to a document containing information sure to raise uncomfortable issues. When Israel's Media Watch called a press conference prior to release of the meeting minutes, not one national paper or TV station sent a reporter, despite the presence at the press conference of Likud's rising star MK Dr. Yuval Steinitz and one of Israel's best known attorneys and the bombshell nature of the issue.

Steinitz was plainly stunned by the total boycott, and commented that the press conference reminded him of one called by Jewish refuseniks for the Soviet press under the Communists...

^

Routing Rosner: Peace Is Not A Dirty Word

Shmuel Rosner's piece in the NYTimes is quite ingenuous.

While the headline asks

How Did ‘Peace’ Become a Dirty Word in Israel?

in the body of his text we have this

How has “peace” become such a politically charged term? Jews include the word “shalom,” or peace, in their daily prayers; they use the word as a greeting regularly. But in the political arena, many Israelis are no longer willing to say that peace is their goal for their country, because they fear that saying so will make them sound fainthearted or deluded or — God forbid! — like leftists.

Israelis have developed two strategies as they shun the politically poisonous word “peace.” The right generally avoids the subject entirely. Since it believes peace is not a realistic goal, there is nothing to talk about. 

and in addition, there's this:

by “peace” in this context, I mean what Mr. Rabin wanted: a concrete and stable peace with their Palestinian neighbors. 

But we know what Rabin wanted, and what he didn't want, and it wasn't what the Israeli Left is promoting.

A month before he was assassinated, he spoke in the Knesset in a debate on an Interim Agreement arrangement as part of the Oslo Process and said:

In the framework of the permanent solution, we aspire to reach, first and foremost, the State of Israel as a Jewish state, at least 80% of whose citizens will be, and are, Jews.

At the same time, we also promise that the non-Jewish citizens of Israel -- Muslim, Christian, Druze and others -- will enjoy full personal, religious and civil rights, like those of any Israeli citizen. Judaism and racism are diametrically opposed.

We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.

And these are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:

A. First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma'ale Adumim and Givat Ze'ev -- as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.

B. The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.

C. Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the "Green Line," prior to the Six Day War.

D. The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

The Left when never accept this today (and it didn't then). They even make up stories based on hearsay that Rabin really didn't believe in what he said.

What is true is that the term "peace" has been sullied, denuded of what it should mean.

It should mean a Jewish state. Security. Freedom of worship at Jewish holy sites. It should mean reconstituting the Jewish national home. It should mean a loyal citizenry who deserve and require full civil liberties, rights and freedoms, without discrimination.

And for that we have the Left, both pre-state and post-Oslo to 'thank' for that peace is viewed with trepidation and disbelief.

(h/t=MP)

^

Rabin and Total Withdrawal Not

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin conversing with US President Jimmy Carter, March 7, 1977

We are ready however, for territorial compromise, but we do not accept the principle of total withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines. The location of the lines can be negotiated. The bulk of Sinai can be given back. As for Golan, even in a peace agreement, we do not want to come down from the Golan Heights. The West Bank is the most delicate issue. We just had a Labor Party convention in which there was a long argument over this issue. We concluded that for peace, we would make territorial compromises on all fronts. But it is not so easy. General Dayan put forward a reservation concerning the West Bank and a close vote was held. Out of 1,200 participants, a majority of only 51 came out for our position on territorial compromise. So it is not an easy problem. Our policy is that we will not draw lines. Once this is done, it becomes the basis for later bargaining. There have been no Cabinet decisions on final borders. But this will be an issue in the campaign. The tendency in Israeli public opinion is not to give too much, to put it mildly. But if the public could see a concrete offer, if negotiations were underway, and if we were on the verge of peace, then we would have some room for maneuver. But not for total withdrawal. Ninety percent of the Israeli public would reject that, and we are a democracy.


In Sinai, Sharm al-Shaikh is one point. We do not require sovereignty, but we require a presence and control. Two wars began over navigation there, 1956 and 1967. Our people would ask, if we returned Sharm al-Shaikh, whether there would be more wars there. So we need control, not sovereignty, and a land connection, as well as some changes in the old international boundary between Egypt and the Palestine Mandate. Those lines, after all, were changed in 1906. The British pushed the Ottoman Empire to give up part of Sinai to Egypt. Before 1906, the international boundary between the Ottoman Empire and Egypt was different....

...I cannot say anything about the West Bank, but for peace, we would be prepared for a territorial compromise. But not for full withdrawal. There are sharp differences within Israel. 

^

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.


^

Clinton on Rabin; Dalia Rabin on Rabin

In a New York Times op-ed, Bill Clinton praises Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo process.

A decade and a half since his death, I continue to believe that, had he lived, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Rabin's daughter, Dalia, was less sure:

Interviewed in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot on October 8, Dalia Rabin said, “Many people who were close to father told me that on the eve of the murder he considered stopping the Oslo process because of the terror that was running rampant in the streets and that Arafat wasn't delivering the goods. Father after all wasn't a blind man running forward without thought. I don't rule out the possibility that he considered also doing a reverse on our side. After all he was someone for whom the security of the state was sacrosanct. So they say that Oslo brought Arafat and gave them rifles and caused the intifada. But historical processes develop, change and flow. It is impossible to take a person murdered in ‘95 and judge him according to what happened in 2000” (‘Dalia Rabin: My father might have stopped Oslo,’ translation from Hebrew provided by Independent media Review analysis, October 8, 2010).

UPDATE

Letter to the Editor of the NYTimes:

To the Editor:

In his Op-Ed article, as he did throughout his presidency, Bill Clinton wrongly focuses his pressure on Israel to finish Yitzhak Rabin’s work, instead of focusing on the Palestinians, who, after all, are the ones responsible for destroying what Mr. Rabin started.

Yasir Arafat was present for the signing of the Oslo agreement, along with Mr. Rabin and Mr. Clinton — and he then proceeded to violate it wantonly, by sponsoring terrorists who murdered hundreds of Israelis and several dozen Americans, including my daughter Alisa.

I deeply appreciated Mr. Clinton’s condolence call to me, in April 1995, after Alisa’s death. I would have appreciated it even more if he had pressed the Palestinian leaders to extradite the killers. Sadly, pressuring the Palestinians never seems to be on Mr. Clinton’s agenda.

Stephen M. Flatow
West Orange, N.J.

^

A Matter of Expectoration

In 1995, two Yeshiva students were caught spitting on Yitzhak Rabin's grave and brought to trial.

Two ultra-Orthodox Jews apologized yesterday for spitting on the grave of murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin but denied trying to urinate there. "I did it without thinking," Yehudah Kiegel, 20, told a judge after he and a fellow seminarian were arrested yesterday at Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem. Kiegel admitted spitting three times on the fresh grave of the international hero, but he said it wasn't planned. "I had a thought, it happened in a second," he said. "I'm very sorry about it. Really, I can't think why I did it. It's as though I was crazy."

Avraham Birenbaum, 20, said he spat once on the grave and "might have made an obscene gesture." But he did so, he said, without evil intent. Still, the judge described the desecration as akin to "undermining the foundations of the state." He ordered the students held for six days while cops probe whether anyone at their school, the Beer Ha Torah Yeshiva, incited their actions. They face up to three years in jail.

Rabbi Aharon Feldman expelled them from the Yeshiva.

And what happened today?

This:-

Meretz youth activists on Thursday put up a sign on former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's grave bearing the words "Shalom Labor."

Referring to former US president Bill Clinton's famous "Shalom friend" eulogy at Rabin's funeral, the message insinuated that the founding party was dead.

Labor released a statement calling what the activists did an "ugly, shameful and cheap provocation from a party the people are sick of."

And what will happen to these Meretz activists?

After all, 14 years ago,

The desecration is "lunacy," said Yossi Beilin, minister of the economy, who is expected to be a key player in Prime Minister Shimon Peres' new government. Beilin called for an end to state funding to groups that foment extremism.

Didn't these Meretz 'lunatics' symbolically "spit" on Rabin's grave?

Were they not acting out of extremism?

The Oddities of Israeli Politics

Yuval Rabin, son of assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, said that he would support a unity government headed by Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu.

In a press conference held Monday Rabin said that although he planned to vote for Labor head Ehud Barak, "the opportunity for a strong Right wing government exists."

Meretz activists responded by telling Rabin that his father would be turning over in his grave and that "the Left is ashamed of him."

Rabin and The "Good Ol' Days"

Once upon a time, Yitzhak Rabin made fun of the Likud concern that the Olso Accords would bring Katyusha rockets down on Israel. I remember this incident. He was being interviewed on television and practically spit when he mentioned the word "Likud".

Here's the recording of his voice and my translation from the Hebrew is as follows:


The scare stories of the Likud are well known.
They 'promised' us Katyusha rockets from Gaza.
It's been a year that Gaza is under control of the Palestinian Authority.
There hasn't been - and there won't be - any Katyushas,
Etc., etc., etc.
All the babble of the Likud, the Likud is afraid,
They are the Peace Fraidycats.
This is the Likud of today.

Now who spits at who's name.

By the way, the clip ends with the words: "And who was right?"

An Academic Article

Israel Drori, Chaim Weizmann (2007) Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin against the Settlers: A Stakeholder Analysis, Public Administration Review 67 (2), 302–314

This case study considers how a minority stakeholder group of Israeli settlers blocked Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s peace initiatives. Drawing on interviews with those who served in Rabin’s administration and with the settlers’ leaders, this article contends that the prime minister’s use of adversarial public rhetoric against the settlers denied the legitimacy of an influential stakeholder group, triggering a backlash of intense militancy from the right-wing minority.

This, coupled with Rabin’s failure to deal with opposing coalitions, diminished his capacity to implement "land for peace" initiatives.

The case illustrates a leader’s failure to maintain adequate forms of engagement with key stakeholders. The accompanying analysis demonstrates that stakeholder theories, though incomplete in their existing forms, can still illuminate the high risk and ineffectiveness of denying the legitimacy of stakeholder groups and the strategic importance of maintaining channels of flexible negotiation and cooperation with seemingly marginal groups when high-stakes rivalries are likely to ensue.

A Rabin Parallel?

In 1995, the claim was made that since Avishai Raviv was employed by the GSS and that he himself was the creator of much of the anti-Rabin grafitti and moreover, was encouraging and inciting others to rant and rave about Rabin, and that Rabin was informed of his activities, that Rabin bore some responsibility for the later assassination.

I am not agreeing with this or giving it credence. I am just recalling it.

Why?

Musharraf: Bhutto bears responsibility for death

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf conceded that a gunman may have shot Benazir Bhutto but said the opposition leader exposed herself to danger and bore responsibility for her death, CBS News said on Saturday.

Begin Who?

In a story entitled, "Return of the Generals, Israelis start looking to ex-soldiers for leadership", Newsweek concludes its review of Israeli politics with this paragraph:-

...a general might well be voted into office — which could serve everyone's interest. The Jewish state has been down this road before. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel had been caught unprepared by a major invasion, the electorate turned against the civilian prime minister, Golda Meir, who ultimately resigned. She was replaced by a respected military man, Yitzhak Rabin. And it was Rabin, of course, who eventually led the country to its first major peace treaty with the Palestinians.

That last sentence caught my eye.

So, I penned this letter and sent it off:-

Your May 7 report on Israel's politics notes that Yitzhak Rabin, remarkably a former general, led the country "to its first major peace treaty with the Palestinians". While true, the correspondents should have informed your readers that it was Menachem Begin, former Irgun pre-state underground commander who, almost 15 years earlier, achieved the first ever peace treaty with an Arab country, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Stay tuned.