Murder in the Name of God

Two years after the assassination of their prime minister, Israeli journalists Karpin and Friedman have produced not only a chilling profile of the murderer but also an expose of the right-wing zealotry that created him. Throughout, they illustrate the collision between the classic Zionist vision of a democratic, humane Jewish state as a refuge for the oppressed, and religious-nationalist Zionism, which demands theocracy and Jewish occupation of the entire biblical Land of Israel as a prerequisite for the messianic age. Opponents of the 1993 Oslo agreement set out to sabotage the peace accords--first by conventional protests, then by a deliberate campaign of demonization waged against Rabin. With few exceptions, according to the authors, the mainstream right (led by Benjamin Netanyahu) failed to condemn the excesses of extremists and in many cases collaborated with them. Karpin and Friedman further contend that radical rabbis (in Israel and the U.S.) distorted ancient Jewish legal concepts to give religious sanction to ""murder in the name of God."" Even after the assassination, they say, Israel failed to confront adequately the societal cleavages that had made the unthinkable a reality. The authors debunk the various conspiracy theories concocted by the right to blame Rabin and Shimon Peres for the murder. The left, they argue, refused to call to account the extremist rabbis who ruled that Judaism permitted the murder of Rabin and who declined to expose evidence linking Netanyahu to the provocateurs. Karpin and Friedman have filled this void with a sober examination of the historical record and a plea that Israelis learn the lessons from one of their country's greatest tragedies. (Nov.)