Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel

by Dan Ephron

Overview

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History and one of the New York Times’s 100 Notable Books of the Year.

The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin remains the single most consequential event in Israel’s recent history, and one that fundamentally altered the trajectory for both Israel and the Palestinians. In Killing a King, Dan Ephron relates the parallel stories of Rabin and his stalker, Yigal Amir, over the two years leading up to the assassination, as one of them planned political deals he hoped would lead to peace, and the other plotted murder. "Carefully reported, clearly presented, concise and gripping," It stands as "a reminder that what happened on a Tel Aviv sidewalk 20 years ago is as important to understanding Israel as any of its wars" (Matti Friedman, The Washington Post).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393242102
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

An award-winning writer, Dan Ephron has served as the Jerusalem bureau chief for Newsweek and the Daily Beast and now lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Prologue 3

Chapter 1 Flight of a Skeptic 7

Chapter 2 To Fathom God's Will 33

Chapter 3 A Stray Weed 59

Chapter 4 Din Rodef 85

Chapter 5 He Told Us the Truth 109

Chapter 6 Under-the-Window Tales 133

Chapter 7 Seam Zone 159

Chapter 8 Killing a King 187

Chapter 9 The Man Who Voted Twice 211

Epilogue 237

Acknowledgments 259

Notes 261

Index 275

Editorial Reviews

Because so much of what followed in the two turbulent decades after Rabin's assassination happened in part as a result of that momentous event, a book examining the murder and its impact could potentially be little more than an exercise in rehashing what has already been written. But Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel…goes far deeper, tracing the trajectory of the crime to the present day. By providing the reader with an incisive picture of the political and religious forces that encouraged the demonization of Rabin for his perceived "treachery," a climate that made it acceptable for Amir and his friends to speak openly about Talmudic justifications for assassination, Ephron sheds new light on ultranationalism in contemporary Israel and the ways the security establishment has tended to coddle some of the country's most problematic citizens.

The New York Times Book Review - Ilene Prusher

…exceptional…Killing a King is not, at its core, a polemic about the echoing political consequences of Mr. Rabin's murder, though its subtitle might imply as much. Rather, it's an electrifying political narrative twinned with an old-fashioned crime story—of the sort that ought to be taught in journalism schools for its restraint, pacing and expert creation of suspense. The chapters alternate between Mr. Rabin's tortuous attempts to negotiate a peace agreement of mind-boggling significance and the machinations of an assassin whose sole aim was to thwart it. The book is a Greek tragedy told in split screen, a frame-for-frame chronicle of a deplorable death foretold…The real strength of this book…lurks in its hundreds of sparkling details, for which Mr. Ephron has a jewelry appraiser's eye.

The New York Times - Jennifer Senior

08/10/2015
Journalist Ephron, former Jerusalem bureau chief of Newsweek and the Daily Beast, relates the major events leading to the November 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in this clearly written, well-paced book. He tracks the activities and thoughts of both Rabin and assassin Yigal Amir, including such important ancillary matters as the rivalry between Rabin and then-foreign-minister Shimon Peres, as well as the increasingly vitriolic antigovernment rhetoric of the Israeli religious right; for example, following the signing and implementation of the Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Rabbi Eliezer Waldman accused the government of collaborating with the Arabs. Ephron addresses the assassination’s political repercussions and introduces readers to the colorful, somewhat mysterious figure of Avishai Raviv, an agent of the Shin Bet (the Israeli Security Agency) who was also a perpetrator of anti-Palestinian acts of terror. Amir never expressed remorse for the murder, and today “fully a quarter of Israelis” believe his prison sentence should be commuted. In contrast, Dalia Rabin, the late prime minister’s daughter, told Ephron, “I don’t feel I’m part of what most people in this country are willing to do.” Ephron’s book is the best account to date of the Rabin assassination and its aftermath. Illus. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Vividly written and sharply insightful, Killing a King is an important and valuable addition to our understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Literary Review - Adam Lebor

"An authoritative narrative that will serve as a valuable record of history. It is also a page-turner…practically every page carries the tense energy of fresh insight."

Moment - David K. Shipler

"A clear-eyed account…captures the way politics in this young and tiny country are uniquely and deeply personal."

The Economist

"Stunning…a chilling reminder that sometimes an assassin’s bullet really can alter the course of history. By unearthing previously confidential police and court records, Ephron gives us the definitive account of a fatal turning point for Israel. Killing a King is thorough, even-handed, and absolutely authoritative."

Kai Bird

"Riveting."

The Guardian - Ian Black

"Incisive…. In a crisp and lively narrative, Ephron walks the reader through the assassination itself and its aftermath…[and] infuses his book with relevance by circling back to bigger questions."

Ilene Prusher

"Exceptional…an electrifying political narrative twinned with an old-fashioned crime story—of the sort that ought to be taught in journalism schools for its restraint, pacing and expert creation of suspense…. The book is a Greek tragedy told in split screen, a frame-for-frame chronicle of a deplorable death foretold…. This tragedy ends, as so many do, with pride, suffering and fear on terrible display. It’s the flickering reel of fateful choices and desperate last moments that I’ll remember most."

New York Times - Jennifer Senior

"If the story of Yitzhak Rabin and Yigal Amir has anything to teach, it’s that individuals matter…The opportunity that Rabin was trying to seize—however small—was there for a moment, and it may never come again."

The New Yorker - Dexter Filkins

"An illuminating version of the story…admirably concise and meticulously reported."

New York Times - A. O. Scott

"Carefully reported, clearly presented, concise and gripping…a reminder that what happened on a Tel Aviv sidewalk 20 years ago is as important to understanding Israel as any of its wars."

Matti Friedman

"With remarkable reporting, Dan Ephron has written an epic story, honestly and skillfully. Killing a King is not just about Israel’s past. It’s also an important read for anyone who wishes to truly understand the country’s disturbing present and unsettling future."

Etgar Keret

"The killing of Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish fanatic helped derail the promising but fragile Middle East peace process and plunged Israelis and Palestinians into a nightmarish era of political violence and recrimination that haunts them still. In Killing a King Ephron digs up important details that give new understanding to those terrible events and their enduring impact. His authoritative account is both a sharply etched political thriller and a meditation on all that has gone wrong in the Promised Land."

Glenn Frankel

09/15/2015
Ephron, Newsweek's Jerusalem bureau chief, tells two stories in page-turning detail: the journey of Yitzhak Rabin (1922–95), Israel's first native-born prime minister, on a peace process with Arab neighbors; and how that action incited a young ultra-Orthodox Israeli man to stalk and assassinate Rabin. Rabin's military credentials uniquely qualified him to pragmatically pursue negotiations that involved exchanging disputed land. This possibility inflamed the Israeli right, with the implicit approval of some rabbis and politicians, to the point at which Rabin was considered by some a traitor who deserved to die. Astonishingly, the assassin followed Rabin for two years, staying beneath the radar of the preeminent Israeli security services. With extensive documentation, Ephron re-creates how Rabin sought lasting security for Israel and the killer went after Rabin. The author makes a strong case that one extremist who thought he was obeying a higher law irrevocably changed the course of the Mideast peace process for the worse. VERDICT Fascinating characterizations of real people and intrigue make this book appealing to readers of both fiction and nonfiction thrillers and anyone interested in the history of Israel.—Laurie Unger Skinner, Coll. of Lake Cty., Waukegan, IL

Library Journal

2015-07-27
"Israelis had grown tired of peace conferences. And it wasn't at all clear whether the extremists, Arabs or Israelis, were declining or ascending." Those words, describing the situation in the aftermath of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, are just as true 20 years later. In a single moment, the Jewish zealot Yigal Amir derailed the Oslo negotiations and forever altered the destinies of two nations. Former Newsweek Jerusalem bureau chief Ephron argues that the murder presaged the rise of the Israeli hard right, and today, with Rabin's archrival Benjamin Netanyahu serving as prime minister and a quarter of the population supporting clemency for Amir, peace with the Palestinians seems as distant as at any time since 1948. In tense, gripping prose, the author dissects Amir's background, describing him as a bright student who, "in his own view…knew God's word better than most Jews, even most rabbis. And he was a doer—the characteristic that defined Amir more than any other, that distinguished him from his peers in school and in the military." In college, he threw himself into activism but "racked up nothing but failures: the failure to draw millions to the streets; the failure to form a serious militia; and the failure to stop Rabin." The story of Rabin's evolving relationship with Yasser Arafat and Amir's growing militancy unfold in parallel, Amir making repeated attempts to get close to his quarry as he schemed with his brother and harangued his college friends. Amir considered Rabin rodef, a villain who pursues Jews with the intent of killing them, and Ephron makes the solid point that "any honest interpretation of the Talmudic principle he fixated on would have pointed back at him. Amir was the real rodef." In a book with broad appeal, Ephron cogently analyzes the origins and ramifications of a national tragedy he reported on as a young journalist.

Kirkus Reviews