From Rabin To Netanyahu

Benjamin Netanyahu's 1996 election victory marked a major turnaround in his fortunes, for only a few months earlier his political career had seemed finished. This book examines what his victory means both domestically and internationally.

Benjamin Netanyahu's 1996 election victory marked a major turnaround in his fortunes, for only a few months earlier his political career had seemed finished. This book examines what his victory means both domestically and internationally.

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).

During the 1990s many dramatic changes influenced the basic characteristics of the Israeli democracy. This volume examines the challenges and circumstances the country has faced and addresses both the public's and leadership's singular goal of "peace and security". The book also investigates the renewed constitutional framework which attempted to meet new challenges, but in reality contributed to the evolution of "new politics" and a new party system. This new system is explored through an analytical study of the history of the party system with an emphasis on new phenomena, such as the growing fragmentation of recent years. Developments since the early 1990s are also examined, looking at the governmental periods of Prime Ministers: Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu and Barak.

"Barry Chamish is changing Israel's perspective as no other journalist in his field. His previous books: 'Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin', 'Traitors and Carpetbaggers in the Promised Land', and 'Israel Betrayed' have documented Israeli leadership controlled by dangerous, secretive European and American power brokers, using murder to push "peace" down an unwilling Israeli public's throat. His research has been accepted in Israel and worldwide. Chamish's Hebrew work has climbed to the top of the Israeli bestsellers lists, while his editions in English, Spanish, French, Russian, and German are impacting readers on 3 continents. In 'The Last Days of Israel', Chamish goes farther than ever before. He names names. He identifies Israel's hidden enemies and shows readers who really murdered Rabin. This book puts all of his previous research into highly focused perspective. When widely understood, this perspective has the potential of saving Israel. This book is a powerful tool for Israel's defense." -- from the cover

More than two decades have passed since prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995, yet he remains an unusually intriguing and admired modern leader. A native-born Israeli, Rabin became an inextricable part of his nation’s pre-state history and subsequent evolution. This revealing account of his life, character, and contributions draws not only on original research but also on the author’s recollections as one of Rabin’s closest aides.

Winner of the 2015 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History and a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. A riveting story about the murder that changed a nation: the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. 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. Killing a King 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. Dan Ephron, who reported from the Middle East for much of the past two decades, covered both the rally where Rabin was killed and the subsequent murder trial. He describes how Rabin, a former general who led the army in the Six-Day War of 1967, embraced his nemesis, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, and set about trying to resolve the twentieth century’s most vexing conflict. He recounts in agonizing detail how extremists on both sides undermined the peace process with ghastly violence. And he reconstructs the relentless scheming of Amir, a twenty-five-year-old law student and Jewish extremist who believed that Rabin’s peace effort amounted to a betrayal of Israel and the Jewish people. As Amir stalked Rabin over many months, the agency charged with safeguarding the Israeli leader missed key clues, overlooked intelligence reports, and then failed to protect him at the critical moment, exactly twenty years ago. It was the biggest security blunder in the agency’s history. Through the prism of the assassination, much about Israel today comes into focus, from the paralysis in peacemaking to the fraught relationship between current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama. Based on Israeli police reports, interviews, confessions, and the cooperation of both Rabin’s and Amir’s families, Killing a King is a tightly coiled narrative that reaches an inevitable, shattering conclusion. One can’t help but wonder what Israel would look like today had Rabin lived.

The first book to tell the complete, explosive story of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. A dramatic tale of treachery and betrayal, Murder in the Name of God investigates and recreates the historic events of November 4, 1995. On that night a twenty-five-year-old student named Yigal Amir assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, an act that abruptly changed the course of Israeli politics. Based on exhaustive research, including an exclusive interview with the assassin, Murder in the Name of God is the first book to give the full story of the people whose words and actions made Rabin's assassination inevitable: the nationalist rabbis who condemned Rabin by invoking an arcane talmudic ruling; the militant settlers and right-wing politicians who launched a sophisticated campaign of incitement against him; and the security experts who saw what was coming but failed to act. In a series of shocking revelations, the book ranges beyond Israel to expose the extent of American support--financial and ideological--for the movement that produced Rabin's killer. Far more than the tale of an assassination, Murder in the Name of God is a powerful indictment of a society's failure to examine itself honestly and to bring its own worst enemies to justice.