Israel Faults Secret Service in Rabin Slaying

A state inquiry into the slaying of Yitzhak Rabin concluded Thursday that Israel’s security service ignored warnings that Jewish extremists might try to kill the prime minister and exposed him to “serious risks.”

In a 368-page report, the three-member commission blamed former General Security Service chief Karmi Gillon for the agency’s failure to prevent Rabin’s assassination by a radical Jewish law student Nov. 4. It supported Gillon’s resignation earlier this year and recommended no further action against him.

The commission also said the head of the service’s VIP protection unit should be removed from his post, and the agent in charge of operations in that unit should not be allowed to hold a command post in the General Security Service, known as the Shin Bet, for four years.

The head of the Shin Bet’s security division resigned after the assassination.

The commission released its findings a day after Rabin’s 25-year-old confessed killer, Yigal Amir, was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison. Amir said he had been trying to save Israel from Rabin’s peace-for-land deal with the Palestinians.

The panel said it found no evidence of a conspiracy involving the security service in the assassination.

But it was not immediately known whether the commission drew conclusions about a possible right-wing plot to kill Rabin. About a third of the report--a 118-page appendix marked “top secret”--was released only to a handful of intelligence officials and government ministers. The confidential portion contains details about the activities of extreme right-wing organizations and undercover agents working in them.

Amir’s brother, Hagai, and their friend Dror Adani are on trial for alleged complicity in the murder. Soon after the assassination, Israeli newspapers reported that a friend of Amir, Avishai Raviv, was a Shin Bet informer, raising questions about how much the agency might have known about Amir’s plans to kill Rabin before the fact.

During Amir’s trial, his lawyers charged that Raviv encouraged their client to kill Rabin.

The public report says only that the “Avishai Raviv affair” is dealt with in the confidential section. It recommends that the agency keep its informants on a short leash and operating within the law.

While offering no real surprises, the report is a blow to the reputation of Israel’s internal security force, which is responsible for guarding Israeli officials at home and abroad.

“The Shin Bet had abundant information about the intensification of threats against the lives of prominent persons, first and foremost the prime minister,” the report said.

“The existing protection method was unreasonable and exposed the prime minister to serious risks. . . . [But] neither the head of the GSS nor the division or unit heads held any serious discussion to reevaluate the method or to adapt the protection method to the increasing risk,” it said.

The Shin Bet had focused its attention on threats from Palestinian extremists, believing, as did most Israelis, that a Jew would not kill a leader of the Jewish state. The report said that despite abundant warnings about Jewish extremists, a “conceptual routine” prevented the agency from changing its focus.

Rabin was killed as he left a Tel Aviv peace rally and walked down a flight of stairs to his car. An amateur video of the assassination showed Amir waiting in the parking lot without interference from police or security guards, then walking up behind the prime minister--who was flanked by bodyguards--and shooting Rabin in the back.

“The Shin Bet did not do enough in terms of adjusting its protection methods to the new risk to cope with the worsening threat and did not ensure that its VIP bodyguards properly understood the severity of the threat,” the report said.

The commission said Rabin’s bodyguards thought stones or tomatoes might be directed at Rabin, but not bullets.

The commission, headed by former Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar, was appointed shortly after the assassination and held 61 meetings, mostly behind closed doors. It said that its job had been narrowly defined to investigate flaws in the police and security services that allowed Amir to carry out the assassination, and not to look into the social situation in which the murder took place. But it called for national soul-searching into the climate of political violence that surrounded the attack.

Before the shooting, rightists had branded Rabin a “traitor” and “murderer” for his willingness to give up land in the West Bank that religious Jews consider to be theirs by birthright. Many feared Rabin was leaving Israel exposed militarily.

Prime Minister Shimon Peres called the report “balanced and responsible” and said the government will adopt its recommendations.

Gillon took issue with the report, saying the commission did not appreciate the problems of trying to stop a lone terrorist, particularly a “Jewish terrorist who is of our own flesh and bones.”