The current Israeli-Palestinian violence demonstrates how damaging national-religious incitement can be. But it’s not just Palestinian incitement. The extremist rabbis of the ideological West Bank settlers are as responsible for Jewish violence as Muslim clerics are for Palestinian violence.

The most blatant case of incitement-inspired Jewish political violence since the establishment of the state of Israel was the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

Dan Ephron’s Killing a King is a must-read book that follows both Rabin and his assassin, Yigal Amir, through the year or two that preceded the murder. It invites the reader to continue following these two lines – the progressive, peace-seeking Israel that Rabin led and came to represent, and the extremist, reactionary Israel – beyond the disastrous point of their intersection on November 4, 1995.

Ephron, a former correspondent with Newsweek, the Daily Beast and Reuters, mustered his outstanding reporting skills to produce a gem of a book, which the New York Times called “Exceptional” and “electrifying,” the Washington Post called “gripping,” and the Guardian called “Riveting.”

You can listen to an APN interview with Ephron here, and read our review of the book here.

Happy Chanukah!

For a donation of $108 or more, APN will send you this book. Please note that all but $18 of your donation will be tax deductible and please be sure to put “Killing a King” in the comment field. Thank you.