Dr. Gail Weigl, APN volunteer and a professor of art history, reviewed Dan Ephron's new book on Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, published on the 20th anniversary of the murder that changed Israel. 

Dan Ephron, Killing A King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel (New York and London, 2015), 257 pages.  $27.95

A heartbreaking chronicle of the circumstances leading to and following from the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Killing A King is a brilliant and comprehensive analysis of the quest for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and of the ultra-Orthodox opposition to that quest. While the subtitle, The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel, might sound grandiose to some, Ephron in fact convincingly proves the case that Rabin’s assassination catalyzed the remaking of an Israel increasingly dominated today by right-wing political and religious extremists. In his telling, even-handed though he may be, they are the primary if not the only villains of the piece.

Washington, DC -- On the 20th anniversary of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, Americans for Peace Now (APN) is joining four other progressive American Jewish organizations to take joint action to honor Rabin’s legacy of peace, security, political pragmatism, democracy, and tolerance.

The groups, Americans for Peace Now, Ameinu, J Street, the New Israel Fund and T’ruah, are today issuing a joint statement vowing to continue on Rabin’s path, to help provide Israelis and Palestinians with hope for the security, freedom and dignity that they so deeply desire and deserve.

In memoriam of the 20th anniversary of the assassination, we believe that uniting progressive Americans in a solemn demand for a peaceful and democratic Israel has never been more necessary.

Please join us for a briefing call on Wednesday, November 4th, at 3:00 PM (Eastern Time) with the leaders of APN, the New Israel Fund, J Street, Ameinu and T’ruah. The call, on the anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, will bring together the five organizations to help unite uniting progressive Americans in a solemn demand for a peaceful and democratic Israel has never been more necessary.

The call will bring together Daniel Sokatch, the CEO of the News Israel Fund, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the President of J Street, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the Executive Director of T’ruah, and Debra DeLee, the President and CEO of Americans for Peace Now.

The call will be moderated by JJ Goldberg of the Forward.

To join the call, RSVP here, and you will receive a call-in number with an individual pin.

The Obama Administration enters its final 14 months in office with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict escalating into daily bloodshed. This crisis is taking place to a backdrop of a fatally discredited peace process, a political clock ticking down toward American elections, and an international community awaiting direction and leadership from a White House that is providing neither. More broadly, it is taking place to the backdrop of Israeli policies - including settlement expansion, demolitions, and coercive displacements - that disclose an unmistakable drive to implement a one-state outcome, notwithstanding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's continued (if weak and intermittent) rhetorical support for a two-state solution.

It is now self-evident that Israeli-Palestinian peace will not be achieved on President Obama's watch, nor will meaningful progress towards a peace agreement come from another round of negotiations. In this context, the Obama Administration has three options: walking away, playing it safe, or charting a new course.

On the 20^th anniversary of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, Americans for Peace Now is joining four other progressive American Jewish organizations to take joint action to honor Rabin’s legacy of peace, security, political pragmatism, democracy, and tolerance. The five groups, Americans for Peace Now, Ameinu, J Street, the New Israel Fund and Truah, are today jointly issuing the following statement. The heads of the five organizations will discuss the statement, their collaboration and other related issues on a conference call next Wednesday, November 4^th, the yahrzeit of Rabin’s assassination. Further joint action will follow and be announced next Wednesday.

Israel’s Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) last week produced a new video, formatted as a “trailer,” which wars against the bi-national state reality that Israel’s right wing is imposing on the country by its diplomatic intransigence. The video, depicting the brutality that is a bi-product of a bi-national state, is hard to watch, but it does reflect that reality-in-the-making in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

On the eve of the 20^th anniversary of the assassination of Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, please join APN for a briefing call on Monday, November 2^nd, at 2:00 pm Eastern Time, with Dan Ephron, the author of a new investigative book on the murder.

In Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel, Ephron tells the parallel stories of Rabin and his assassin, Yigal Amir, during the two years leading up p to the murder, and sets the scene to the two decades that followed.

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

The details of the call are as follows:

Like all Israelis of my generation, I remember the night of Nov. 4, 1995.

Having just heard from the news desk editor at Israel’s Haaretz newspaper that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been shot, I called Palestinian officials for reaction. I was Haaretz’s Palestinian affairs correspondent at the time and was on the phone with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat when I heard on Israel Radio that Rabin’s spokesman was about to make a statement. As Eitan Haber hushed the crowed, I started translating for Erekat: “The government of Israel announces in dismay, in great sadness, and in deep sorrow, the death of Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered by an assassin, tonight in Tel Aviv.”

This week, Alpher discusses whether the set of understandings between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority regarding the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif acheived by Secretary of State Kerry will end the violence; the overall effect of the mini-intifada of the past month; why Jordan’s King Abdullah couldn’t play a more active role, without recourse to Kerry; what we are to make of bewildering statements by Netanyahu, to a World Zionist Congress audience in a speech in English, that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, suggested to Hitler in 1941 that he annihilate the Jews (“burn them”) rather than expelling them and that as prime minister he has built far less in the settlements than his predecessors;

Saturday night’s Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) rally brought out thousands of people, Israelis sick of the status quo, to protest the Netanyahu government’s intransigence, its diplomatic inaction and its fomenting of violence and brutality.

Under the slogan “There is no Security without a Political Solution,” thousands of Israelis urged their government to choose dialogue over demagoguery and incitement, diplomacy over force and subjugation, to offer Israelis hope, and to lead Israelis toward peace with the Palestinians.