Avishai Raviv

Avishai Raviv was a member of Israel's Shin Bet or Shabak, Israel's Secret Police whose mission was to monitor the activities of right-wing extremists.

To attain insider information, Raviv struck up a friendship with Yigal Amir, a religious law student from Bar Ilan University, who fiercely opposed the Oslo Accords. Amir was one of the organizers of protests against the Accords. Raviv allegedly knew of Yigal Amir's plans to assassinate Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, based on a controversial classification of handing over Jewish land in the category of "din rodef" ("law of the pursuer"). According to Jewish law, anyone who is classified as a pursuer, must be killed immediately. The classification of a forfeiter of land as a rodef states that "If a Jew gives up the land of other Jews to Goyim, and he persists in this, that is, he gives up the land of three or more Jews, he is a Rodef." The Jerusalem Post, an Israeli center-left newspaper, wrote that witnesses heard Raviv tell Amir: "Be a man! Kill him already!" [Jerusalem Post May 22, 1997, "Slander and Libel from the Left" Uri Dan]

After Rabin was assassinated, the mainstream Israeli media blamed the right for the murder. Adir Zik, an Israeli media personality known for his right religious and nationalist views, and who was blacklisted from the mainstream media because of them launched his own investigation and discovered that Raviv was a paid agent of the Shabak.

Raviv was brought to trial in 2000 for not preventing Rabin's assassination. Raviv mounted a successful defense on the grounds that he had just been doing his job and events had spun out of control.

References

* [http://www.davidbenariel.org/israel/avishai-raviv-eyal-yitzhak-rabin.htm Avishai Raviv, Eyal, and Yitzhak Rabin]