Barry Chamish, a veteran writer who is the most outspoken and document-laden of the dozens of Rabin murder “conspiracy theorists,” says it is impossible that convicted killer Yigal Amir was the real assassin. In his book Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin? (Gefen Publishing), written two years ago, Chamish did not name the man he believes ordered the assassination. Today, with two additional years of evidence and documents in hand, he says he is sure he can identify the murderer and his handlers. Yet even without Chamish’s new evidence, the reader is left with the feeling that the official version of the murder — Yigal Amir acting as a lone religious fanatic determined to halt the peace process at any cost — just doesn’t wash.

By now most Israelis are aware of the discovery, only weeks after the murder, that Avishai Raviv, Amir’s close friend and founder of the extremist Eyal organization, was an agent provocateur of the Shin Bet (Israeli Secret Service). Avishai Raviv’s mission was to make the anti-Oslo camp look so fanatical and subversive that it would be entirely discredited as a legitimate political opposition force. The common belief is that Raviv provoked Amir into the assassination, a provocation for which Raviv is now being pressured to stand trial.

However, Israelis are also aware of the many witnesses who heard Shin Bet agents and bodyguards yelling, “They’re blanks,” “It was a toy gun,” “It’s an exercise,” “They were caps,” “Dummy bullets,” and the like immediately after the shooting at a peace rally in Tel Aviv’s Malchei Yisrael Square.

Why wasn’t Amir immediately gunned down, when the Prime Minister’s bodyguards are trained to fell an assailant in .8 seconds? Why did Yoram Rubin, Rabin’s bodyguard, step aside, leaving Amir with a clear shot at the Prime Minister’s back — a bodyguard no-no? What was Amir doing in the sterile area around the Prime Minister in the first place? Who let him in, and why wasn’t he ousted summarily?

The common belief among the skeptics, a belief with which Barry Chamish agrees, is that many of the Shin Bet agents and policemen on duty at the rally were instructed to allow a sting operation to take place. Yigal Amir was to be provided with a gun loaded with blanks, perhaps from his friend Avishai Raviv. He would shoot at Yitzchak Rabin and be caught red-handed. Rabin’s government would then have the justification to order a nation-wide crackdown on opponents of the peace process.

So how was Rabin killed? Well, say the cynics, Amir realized he was being set up, so he switched the bullets and used live ammunition instead.

Yigal Amir is taken into custody.

Chamish agrees that there was a double-cross, but argues that it didn’t come from Amir. Using the very same “home video” that was broadcast on national television two months after the murder allegedly showing how Amir fired the fatal shots, Chamish says that Rabin, very much alive after Amir shot, walked to his limousine and was shoved in. Chamish believes that it was in the car where the real shooting took place. Then, what should have been a one-minute trip to the hospital took over eight minutes as Rabin’s limo meandered down the dark streets of Tel Aviv.

Numerous security and police officers present at the rally testified that they did not think Rabin had been shot because he didn’t fall or cry out. There also was no blood at the site.

But it is the hospital and police laboratory reports that provide the most incriminating evidence of a second assassin. These indicate that Rabin was shot at point-blank range (no more than ten centimeters), while the government’s inquiry commission concluded that Amir shot from at least half a yard (fifty centimeters) and perhaps even six feet away.

Chamish possesses a copy of the death certificate, signed by Dr. Mordechai Guttman, one of the surgeons who operated on Rabin. It states that Rabin was shot through the chest from the front at point-blank range, and that his spine was shattered, a claim backed that same evening by an operating room nurse, by Health Minister Efraim Sneh, and by the director of Ichilov Hospital. Only later, when it was realized that Amir was not in front of Rabin, was the official version changed, and there was no further talk of a frontal chest wound. Dr. Guttman was not called to testify to the Shamgar Inquiry Commission or at any of the hearings.

At the Tel Aviv rally, Yitzchak Rabin sings the “Song of Peace.”

Since beginning his investigation, Chamish has been harping on the “mystery of the car door.” It goes like this. Two months after the murder, Israeli television announced it had obtained an “amateur film,” shot by one Roni Kempler from his Tel Aviv balcony, that clearly showed Amir shooting Rabin. Where the film was for two months is an unanswered question.

Kempler may be an aspiring amateur filmmaker, but he was also an employee of the State Comptroller’s Office and a bodyguard in the army reserves. After sending the video for analysis to Arthur Vered, a film expert in London, Chamish believes the video was doctored, but enough clues were left to make his job easier. In the film, Amir’s arm is abnormally long (“I never saw a gorilla with such an arm,” Chamish quips), as is the shape of the gunshot blast. Several frames were spliced out immediately after the shooting, which Chamish says would have shown Rabin making it to the car on his own two feet — impossible if his spine was shattered by the shot.

“Essentially they had to bring Amir closer to Rabin,” Chamish explains. “He was quite far away, but the medical reports all said he shot at point-blank range. So the film, which I’m sure was created to be used as ‘proof’ of Amir’s role, now posed a problem. Amir was at least six feet away from Rabin, so they lengthened his arm and cut the frame to make the evidence fit. I frankly think it was pretty careless of them to release the film in the first place. The conspirators were so sloppy; they left in the truth. Either they didn’t notice it, or they thought no one else would. I guess they figured that 99.9% of the viewers would see Amir shoot Rabin and the country would be convinced.”

Yitzchak Rabin celebrates an election victory in the early 1990’s.

Playing Kempler’s film frame by frame, one can see that Rabin does not wince or flinch, although he had supposedly taken a hollow-point nine-millimeter bullet in his back. He is not even pushed forward by the impact, and his suit exhibits no signs of tearing. Instead, he continues walking forward and turns his head behind him, in the direction of the noise.

Now to the car door. Just before Rabin was pushed into the limousine, the back door of the car mysteriously slams shut from the inside. Yet the only people who were permitted to be in the car were driver Menachem Damti and bodyguard Yoram Rubin. Both were outside the car at the time. Who, then, slammed the door?

Was the real assassin lying in wait for the Prime Minister? For years, that was Chamish’s belief. He was sure the murderer had sneaked into the back seat (accounting for the slammed door) and had to be let out in a Tel Aviv back alley, accounting for the seven-minute delay in what should have been a one-minute trip to the hospital.

Rabin and Shimon Peres acknowledge the crowd at the peace rally in Tel Aviv shortly before the shooting.

In the Shamgar Inquiry Commission, the driver testified that he “suddenly became confused and lost his way.” Damti, however, was one of the most experienced drivers in the country, having chauffeured every prime minister since 1974. How, Chamish asks, could he have so bungled a one-minute drive from Malchei Yisrael Square straight down David Hamelech Street to Ichilov Hospital? (It should also be noted that the hospital was not radioed in advance that an injured Rabin was being sped to the emergency room.) Furthermore, Damti was not supposed to be the chauffeur on the night of Rabin’s death. He was a last-minute replacement for Rabin’s usual driver, Yehezkel Sharabi. Why?

Chamish isn’t the only one who thinks Rabin was shot on the way to the hospital. Researcher Natan Gefen concludes the same in his upcoming book, The Fatal Sting. So does the soon-to-be-released Lies, Israeli Secret Service and the Rabin Assassination, by David Morrison.

A feature on NBC news hinted that the assassination was a high-level plot. “Look how the bodyguard shoves him into the car for the four-block ride to Ichilov Hospital,” chirped the NBC anchorman in a profile on Barry Chamish last year. He continues: “Conspiracy theorists believe the real gunman was hiding in the car. It took the driver more than eight minutes to get to the hospital. He claims he got lost. In heavy midday Tel Aviv traffic, it took our crew only two minutes, eighteen seconds. What happened in those eight minutes? Could there have been another shooting? The ballistics test on Rabin’s clothing indicated he was shot at point-blank range, but let’s look again at the home video. Amir appears to be several feet away.

“One thing for sure,” the anchor signs off, “this case has a lot more questions than answers.”

Chamish says, “Today we know there was a fourth person in the car, and who it was — and it’s a real surprise ending to the mystery. It wasn’t the murderer. It was driver Menachem Damti’s teenage daughter, who jumped into the car for a ride home with her dad. She was the one who slammed the door. She certainly wasn’t the murderer, but she was a witness. A friend of hers who lives in London made the mistake of announcing it in an interview on the BBC on Rabin’s yahrzeit. Her name is Ifa Barak.

Barry Chamish. Photo by Esther Tscholkowsky

“I sent a journalist to London to find her, and veteran English-language journalist Jay Bushinsky, who works for NBC, sent a crew to interview her. She told of how her friend became hysterical when Rabin was shot and then fell on top of her. That’s why the car ‘got lost.’ They had to have someone pick up this hysterical teenager and take her to the hospital for treatment of shock. Today she can’t be found. She sleeps in different places each night, living her days in terror.”

So who is the real murderer? “Today this is obvious to me,” says Chamish, unafraid of a libel suit, and in fact hoping for one in order to drag the case back into court. “Rabin’s murderer was his bodyguard Yoram Rubin, no question about it.”

Rubin initially testified that immediately after Amir shot, he flung his boss to the ground and lay on top of him to protect him. According to Rubin’s testimony, Amir then got off another shot, supposedly shattering Rubin’s elbow. Rubin did spend a week in the hospital, allegedly recovering from his wound. Yet the Kempler video doesn’t show Rabin on the ground. Witnesses agreed that he reached the car on his own two feet; he was then pushed into the back by a very able-bodied Rubin.

“Yoram Rubin’s clinical report is a beauty,” Chamish gloats. “He didn’t have a bullet entry or exit wound, and besides, there was never a bullet found. What he had was a friction wound over the elbow. According to the report, the nurse put a little iodine and antibiotic cream on his booboo and promptly released him. So what was he doing in the hospital for a week? I say he was just hiding the fact that he wasn’t shot. Leah Rabin even went to visit him to thank him for trying to save her husband!” The clinical report was sent to Chamish by Dr. David Chen, a surgeon at Kaplan Hospital in Rechovot, who became fascinated by Chamish’s investigation and has taken on his own project to track down related medical records.

Israelis grieve at the news of the assassination.

“I say that Rubin got off two shots in the car, and the final fatal shot was actually in the hospital,” Chamish explains in what initially may sound outlandish. “Rabin wasn’t shot fatally in the car; in the emergency room he starts to improve. Just look at this report. His pulse and blood pressure are back up to 130.” Chamish points enthusiastically to the precious emergency and operating room documents in his hand, acquired through hospital staff that he cannot name.

“In the operating room he’s suddenly being operated on for a frontal chest wound that shattered his spine. But he didn’t enter with such a wound. The emergency room report indicates two shots from the back. One goes from the shoulder blade to the right nipple, and the second travels from the bottom up, taking the route of abdomen-spleen-diaphragm. If Amir fired that shot, he would have had to have been underneath Rabin, shooting upward.

“Now in the operating room he has a third wound, which pierced the chest from the front and shattered the D 5-6 vertebrae. That’s the shot that killed him, according to the death certificate. I say this shot was fired somewhere between the emergency room and the operating theater. It had to have occurred when Rabin wasn’t wearing his clothes, because his clothes only indicated two bullet holes from the back. We know that Rubin came into the hospital with his gun. But it was never seen again. It was never checked by the ballistics lab. It just disappeared off the face of the earth.”

Assuming Chamish’s theory is on the money, two large questions still loom. First, what was Yigal Amir’s role in the assassination? He admitted killing Rabin and even seems to boast about it. Second, who was behind the real assassination?

“I think Amir must have been under some sort of mind control because of his reaction that night. The first thing he said to the police was, ‘Why are you arresting me? I did what I was supposed to do, now it’s your turn.’ He thought he was on some sort of mission, perhaps a training mission. Certainly the guards didn’t stop him from entering the sterile area. Amir had close ties to the Shin Bet. He had even received a substantial advance on a book about his years as a Shin Bet agent. It’s been confirmed that he received Shin Bet training, and it is acknowledged that he worked for Nativ, a front for aliyah activism in the former Soviet Union that is known to be a den of spies.

“Of course, the Shin Bet would prefer the story that Avishai Raviv provoked Amir into the shooting. It’s a better scenario than the truth.”

The front page of Yediot Aharonot, with a still from the Roni Kempler video. Yigal Amir is at the right edge of the circle. The gun flashes near Rabin’s shoulder. Yoram Rubin is at the upper left of the circle.

If so, why is Raviv free while Amir serves a life sentence? “First of all,” Chamish thinks, “I don’t know if Amir was at this time an official Shin Bet agent. I don’t think he got a salary like Raviv. The big question is, why keep him alive? Perhaps to be a scapegoat, which would make sense, assuming he stays consistent with his story that he killed Rabin and is proud of it. Remember, at first he really didn’t lie. Up until his hearing on December 3rd, he insisted that he wasn’t the murderer. On his way into court, he yelled to reporters, ‘People will forgive me when they know the truth. I didn’t know they were going to start killing people. When the truth comes out, there is going to be an uprising in this country.’ ”

After his hearing, Amir was kept in seclusion for the six weeks until his trial, with no lawyer and no visitors. Chamish suspects that during this time Amir was “strongly advised” to change his story. Wouldn’t it be better to serve a life sentence in a comfortable cell with a computer, VCR, and other gadgets than to be killed or have a family member killed? After all, Rabin wasn’t the only one assassinated. It is known that at least one Shin Bet agent who was about to talk was buried the following week in a midnight funeral service attended by no one but close family, with the entire graveyard surrounded by Shin Bet agents. (The story was leaked by a member of the Tel Aviv chevra kadisha who was on duty that night.)

Chamish suspects that Rabin’s assassination was ordered by the Prime Minister’s enemies at the highest levels of the Israeli government, under international pressure, because he had backtracked on the peace process. “Rabin went to Washington on October 20th, two weeks before his murder, and told Clinton and [Middle East Envoy] Dennis Ross that he wanted out of the peace process. On October 23rd, he even helped pass two congressional bills: one that if the PLO declared an independent state American aid would stop, and the second that Jerusalem would never be divided. Rabin wanted out, and in so doing signed his death warrant.”

Chamish continues: “He knew he was risking his life. He was well aware of what happened that summer to his friend General Motta Gur, whose own doctors were convinced that his apparent suicide was a Shin Bet hit. I think Rabin knew he was next.” Motta Gur opposed the peace process and favored Jewish settlements in the territories. Following successful treatment for a brain tumor, he was found shot dead several months before the Rabin murder, next to a note in which he allegedly scribbled that he didn’t want his family to suffer. Gur’s physician was astounded; a recent checkup had determined that the cancer was gone.

For years, Barry Chamish has hammered out his Inside Israel newsletter and sent out political exposés to anyone who would read them. It was the Rabin assassination that gave him his big break, bringing him the international credibility that eluded him for so long. He says he really lucked out when Labor MK Ofir Pines tried to have his book banned. “That was the best thing that ever happened to me. Suddenly everyone wanted the book.”

Chamish is suing Pines for interfering with his livelihood and calling him a liar in public. The case is going to trial shortly, and Chamish hopes to reopen the assassination file through his courtroom testimonies from doctors and anyone else he subpoenas. Until then, to quote the NBC anchor, this case has a lot more questions than answers.

Rachel Ginsberg, a Contributing Editor, lives in Betar Illit, Israel.