Israeli Soldier, His Father Held in Rabin Killing

Police arrested an Israeli soldier and his father in connection with the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and uncovered a cache of weapons at their home in a suburb of Tel Aviv, a government official said Saturday night.

The active-duty soldier is a 21-year-old sergeant in an elite army unit, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, and to Israel Radio. Neither of the arrested men was identified, and police declined to officially comment on the reports.

Officials said they do not believe the soldier’s arrest is an indication of further involvement by members of the army or the military Establishment in the plot to kill Rabin. Israel’s army is a citizens army in which nearly all youths--except the ultra-Orthodox--must serve.

As the shiva , or one-week mourning period, for Rabin drew to a close, the official also said that investigators were turning their attention to the extreme right-wing rabbis who may have given the prime minister’s assassin and accused accomplices religious justification for the murder.

Israel Radio reported that police had identified a rabbi believed to have been in contact with the confessed killer, Yigal Amir, a 25-year-old student who claimed he acted under instruction from God and under Jewish law.

Amir’s rabbi reportedly made a religious, or Halakhic, ruling that identified Rabin as a rodef, or pursuer of Jews, and declared him a legitimate target for killing. Many Orthodox rabbis believed Rabin was a traitor to Jews because he was about to relinquish Jewish settlements and West Bank land--which they consider to be a Jewish inheritance from God--to Palestinians.

Rabbi Yoel Ben Nun, a moderate religious leader from the West Bank settlement of Ofra, has threatened to give the country’s chief rabbis the names of a handful of his colleagues who have issued such rulings.

Hinting at a crackdown, the government official said that, if the rabbis sanctioned the killing and “said this [Halakhic ruling] is more important than the law of the country, then we have to prosecute the rabbis.”

Saturday’s arrests bring to eight the number of suspects being held in the Nov. 4 assassination, including Amir and his 27-year-old brother, Hagai. Investigators believe that the Amirs were ringleaders of a right-wing group that plotted for two years to kill Rabin.

The two initially planned to kill Rabin outside his apartment in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Aviv, using a sniper’s rifle with a telescopic sight that police have in hand, according to Israeli television.

The brothers observed Rabin’s movements, his timetable and security arrangements around the apartment building where he lived, the report said. It added that they tried to get near Rabin at five different locations.

The Amirs’ relationship with the soldier under arrest Saturday was unclear. The soldier was an observant Jew and member of a reconnaissance unit in the army’s Golani Brigade, according to the government official and broadcast reports. He lived between the Tel Aviv suburbs of Bnai Brak and Ramat Gan with his father, a dentist who was known to officials as a kind of troubadour and self-acclaimed poet who sang songs denouncing Rabin.

“He used to sing quite strong songs against Rabin. His son must have gotten some inspiration at home,” the official said.

Weapons also were found in the father’s clinic, the media said.

The soldier may have contributed to the Amirs’ arsenal, although the brothers were in the army reserves, as Israeli men must be to the age of 45, and may have had their own access to explosives. According to today’s Jerusalem Post, the soldier’s cache included grenades and explosives from the army.

Police previously had uncovered a cache of explosives in the back yard of the Amir home. Those weapons were the same kind the military has reportedly used to blow up the homes of Palestinians who have committed crimes against Israelis.

The cache found at the soldier’s home reportedly is smaller but still “pretty big,” the official said.

The detained soldier and his father are expected to be brought before a Tel Aviv magistrate today.

Police Minister Moshe Shahal appeared on television Friday to say that Rabin was the victim of an organized right-wing group that also planned the assassinations of other Israeli officials, as well as attacks against Palestinian officials and civilians.

Shahal said that Hagai Amir supplied weapons to the group and that several of the suspects in custody knew of the conspiracy to kill Rabin without participating in the actual planning.

Amir has been loosely connected with Eyal, an offshoot of Kach, an outlawed extremist anti-Arab group.