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

by Dan Ephron Narrated by Assaf Cohen

Overview

A riveting story about the murder that changed a nation: the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin

The assassination of 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, in November 1995. 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.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Ilene Prusher

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 - Jennifer Senior

…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.

Publishers Weekly

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.)

Literary Review - Adam Lebor

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

Moment - David K. Shipler

"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."

The Economist

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

Kai Bird

"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."

The Guardian - Ian Black

"Riveting."

Ilene Prusher

"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."

New York Times - Jennifer Senior

"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."

The New Yorker - Dexter Filkins

"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."

New York Times - A. O. Scott

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

Matti Friedman

"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."

Etgar Keret

"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."

Glenn Frankel

"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."

Library Journal

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

Kirkus Reviews

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.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169911596
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	01/19/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos