NAjjt/Wont.1
The Michigan Daily - Thursday, November 9, 1995 - 11A
W
Israeli authorities suspect conspiracy in assassination
Police crack Rabin's suspect's school
down on Ibarraged with accusations
extreme
Jewish right
Los Angeles Times
JERUSALEM -Launching a crack-
down on the Jewish extreme right, po-
lice yesterday announced the arrest of
the leader of an anti-Arab group and
rounded up several other far-right ac-
tivists for interrogation.
A judge in Tel Aviv ordered Avishai
Raviv, founder of the tiny Eyal move-
ment, held for a week of further inves-
tigation, accusing him of conspiracy in
the assassination of Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin.
At least three other right-wing and
religious extremists were detained for
questioning, Israel Radio reported. One
of them also was believed to be a mem-
ber of Eyal.
In addition, a seniorsecurity-services
official resigned and another was sus-
pended for failing to protect Rabin ad-
equately as he left a Tel Aviv peace
rally Saturday night. Two lower-rank-
ing security officials were transferred
to different jobs.
Rabin was shot to death by Jewish
law student Yigal Amir, 25, who was
captured at the scene. He confessed to
the murder with satisfaction, saying he
acted alone as a sacred duty, but police
have his 27-year-old brother Hagai also
in custody for allegedly altering the
bullets used in the murder.
The assassination has devastated Is-
rael and cast a giant question mark over
the prospects for Rabin's search for.
peace with Israel's Palestinian and Arab
neighbors.
Whether Rabin was murdered as part
of a conspiracy by Jewish extremists
who hated him for his willingness to
trade West Bank land for peace is a
burning issue for the shaken nation.
"There is a serious danger of a grave
disruption of the rule of order - up to
the point of another political murder,"
AP PHOTO
An Israeli naval cadet lights a memorial candle for late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at Kings Square in Tel Aviv yesterday.
Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair told
the newspaper Haaretz yesterday.
Later, Ben-Yair asked Israel radio
and television not to broadcast any new
broadsides from extremist groups. Since
the murder, there have been death threats
against successor Shimon Peres and
other Cabinet ministers.
Police told Judge Edna Beckenstein
that Raviv, 28, whom they arrested
Monday, had known in advance about
Amir's plan to kill the prime minister.
Prosecutor Nissim Daodi said Raviv
had conspired in the murder and failed
to prevent the shooting.
Beckenstein said confidential docu-
ments submitted by police justified
holding Raviv. He was ordered back on
suspicion of committing a felony and
failure to prevent a felony, said police
spokesman Eric Bar-Chen.
"Dictatorship! False arrest!" Raviv
screamed as he was led into court.
Standing before the judge with his
hands in his pockets and chewing gum,
Raviv said, "It hurt everyone" - an
apparent reference to Rabin's murder.
Police call Raviv"a catalyst"forAmir.
Raviv told the judge that Amir talked
with Eyal members about a big event he
intended but "nobody took him seri-
ously."
"Words are one thing and actions are
another. According to Jewish law, mur-
der is forbidden," Raviv said, charging
that the police are using Rabin's death
as a pretext to harass the political right.
"There are reasonable grounds to be-
lieve that this suspect, who knew the
suspected murderer, indeed failed to
prevent the crime and conspired to com-
mit the crime. For these reasons, I am
ordering him held for seven days," the
judge said.
Eyal, a Hebrew acronym for Jewish
Militant Organization, has the reputa-
tion of being a blowhard group better
known for words than action. A few
months ago, Eyal claimed responsibil-
ity for the murder of three Palestinians
in the Arab village of Halhoul, but they
were later discovered to have been killed
by fellow Arabs.
"They brag and posture, talk about
the 'underground,' like to be thought of
as 'Arab killers,' that sort of thing,"
said Ehud Sprinzak, a specialist in Jew-
ish extremist groups at Hebrew Univer-
sity. "Are they a threat? Every once in
a while some one may arise who takes
this seriously. Then they're a threat."
Eyal, said Sprinzak, is small, with
perhaps no more than Raviv and a lit-
eral handful of followers as members.
"Their touch with reality is not that
strong," he said.
The Washington Post
TEL AVIV, Israel - The modernis-
tic campus of Bar Ilan University, where
Yitzhak Rabin's confessed assassin
studied law and the Bible, has become
a place under siege.
Questions are being asked about the
kind of education being offered at this
religiously based institution, set in the
concrete clutter of a Tel Aviv suburb.
Some critics have gone so far as to
suggest an extreme right-wing atmo-
sphere at the school perhaps helped
condition 25-year-old Yigal Amir to
violence.
Such accusations
are deeply resented -
here. Administra- m ere
tors and students
say Amir could not talk of #
have learned vio- N
lence at the school, Vi/ ience
whatever his poli-
tics - and what- -
ever the politics of An Arab stu
the campus. Mem- Unive
bers of the BarlIlan Rabin's as
community have
struck back with a
charge of their own: that there is a
political offensive underway to smear
not only the school but also the reli-
gious-political segment of Israeli soci-
ety that opposed Rabin's efforts to make
peace with the Palestinians.
"There is no question that there is a
minority who are taking this opportu-
nity to knock at us," said Shlomo
Eckstein, university president.
A law student who identified him-
selfas Oren was more emphatic. "Some
of the people who backed Rabin are
trying to throw mud on a whole group
of people to neutralize them," he said.
"They are trying to isolate us as if we
are not part of Israel," remarked an-
other student, named Ido, who wore the
skullcap that identifies him as a strict
observer of religious practices. "It can
only keep us divided."
Bar Ilan's defenders say the criti-
cism of their institution, as well as of
the mainstream Israeli right, has a crass
political motive: to steamroll opposi-
tion to Israel's withdrawal from the
West Bank. The assault is not only
against people who may deserve criti-
cism, like gun-wielding settlers, but
against all opponents of the peace pro-
cess, students said.
"People will not accept being tainted
at large for the act of one man. They
can't equate opposition to leaving the
West Bank to guilt for Yitzhak Rabin's
death," said Oren, the law student.
Bar Ilan was stunned that one of its
own had acknowledged killing Rabin.
All students must take a core curricu-
lum in Jewish heritage; Amir was en-
rolled in an advanced religious depart-
ment. About two-thirds of the 20,000
r
u{
;r
sc
students are classified as religiously
oriented. Among the students is a smat-
tering of Israeli Arabs who prefer the
conservative social climate and reli-
gious studies.
The school, while rejecting the no-
tion that there are shortcomings in its
ethical teachings, nonetheless ordered
"special educational discussions" in all
classes in the wake of the assassination.
On Tuesday a lecturer spoke on the
sanctity of life. A symposium on reli-
gion and peace will be held in a nonth.
"We've been tainted and there's no
sense in trying
to ignore
Eckstein said.
has ge " What has hap-
pened now
ysiaI shakes all of Is-
raeli society,
and Bar Ilan is
part of Israeli
AbdaIlah Daqwa scey v
dent at Bar Ilan have to have
sity, the school opendiscussion
sassin attended of it."
Uni ve rsity
s p o k e sir a n
David Weinberg said the school is not
rightist-oriented, although he noted that
in the religious communities of Israel,
there has been a rightward trend in
politics. Bar Ilan supports a satellite
campus in Ariel, a large West Bank
settlement.
Abdallah Daqwa, an Arab student,
said a right-wing atmosphere in the
school has thickened since Rabin began
to make concrete plans for withdrawal
from the West Bank. He said he has had
violent debates with students over~the
peace process. "There has been talk of
physical violence," he said.
Oren said that if anyone had an in-
citement problem it was Rabin, arguing
that the prime minister had dismissed
the legitimate concerns of the Israeli
opposition. "In particular ... there are
people on the left who hate the religious
people and simply want to batterus," he
said.
The passion of the responses seemed
to reflect a division beyond the one over
the Palestinians. Israel has long been
beset by disputes between secular and
pious citizens over issues of law and
custom. Some liberal observers fear
that religious indoctrination is leading
to a rejection of secular democratic
values. This broader debate has touched
issues as diverse as whether non-kosher
food should be served in Israel, whether
civil marriages are really marriages, even
whether secular Jews are really Jews.
Shmuel, a religion student, said that
if the accusations keep flying, Israel
will be divided into several parts, with
religious people withdrawing into their
own realm and ignoring if not opposing
the state.
Shin Bet housecleaning begins after Rabin's death
Los Angeles Times
JERUSALEM - A senior Shin Bet
-- official resigned and another was sus-
pended for failing to protect Prime Min-
ister Yitzhak Rabin from an assassin
Saturday night, government officials
confirmed yesterday.
The housecleaning, which also in-
cluded the transfer of two lower-rank-
ing officials, came after an internal in-
quiry concluded that there were serious
flaws in the plan for protecting Rabin at
a mass peace rally in Tel Aviv's Kings
of Israel Square. The inquiry commit-
tee also said the prime minister's body-
guards may have discounted the possi-
bility of an attack by a Jew because they
were indoctrinated to focus on Arabs as
a security threat.
Analysts said the committee's report
is the most damning indictment of Shin
Bet's practices in the history of the
organization, which was created by
Prime Minister David Ben Gurion in
1948.
"Each of Israel's intelligence agen-
cies have had their colossal failures,"
said Yossi Melman, a specialist on
Israel's intelligence community who
has published several books on the sub-
ject. "This failure is to the Shin Bet
what the 1973 Yom Kippur War was for
ix military intelligence." In 1973, military
intelligence failed to predict the sur-
prise attack by the Syrian and Egyptian
armies that nearly overwhelmed Israel's
defensive lines.
Rabin was shot three times at point-
blank range Saturday by Yigal Amir, a
Jewish extremist who said he wanted to
stop Rabin's peacemaking efforts with
the Palestinians. Although Amir had
participated in anti-government dem-
onstrations and admitted to planning on
two previous occasions to assassinate
the prime minister, he had no arrest
record and was not known to security
forces.
Israel's Cabinet heard Shin Bet's ac-
count of what went wrong at a closed-
door session yesterday, then voted 17-
2 to appoint a state commission of in-
quiry, headed by a former chiefjustice
of the Supreme Court, to conduct an
independent investigation. After a
heated argument, Cabinet ministers
voted to limit the committee's mandate
to investigating the agency's protection
procedures in general and the protec-
tion measures in place the night Rabin
was shot.
The state committee will have the
power to subpoena witnesses.
The senior Shin Bet official who re-
signed Tuesday night, referred to as
"D" by Israeli media because military
censors ban publication of his name,
was singled out for responsibility by an
internal Shin Bet investigating com-
mittee composed of three former senior
Shin Bet officials.
Holding a rank equivalent to general
in the Israeli army, the senior official
who resigned was in charge of the pro-
tection division of Shin Bet. That divi-
sion provides security to Israeli offi-
cials here and abroad, to Israeli embas-
sies and to Israeli delegations traveling
abroad.
"D's'" deputy in charge of guarding
officials here, whose rank is equivalent
to major general, was suspended. The
head of Rabin's bodyguard unit and
another lower-ranking Shin Bet official
were transferred to other jobs.
"I appreciate what the Shin Bet has
done," said Ori Orr, chairman of the
Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee. "They came up with all the
hard decisions by themselves, even be-
fore an outside investigation was
launched."
The internal investigation also re-
portedly found that Rabin's bodyguards
were unprepared for an attack on the
prime minister by a Jew.
Orr said yesterday that such a finding
did not surprise him.
"Even though the head of the Shin
Bet came to us, to political leaders, and
said that he was worried about right-
wing extremists, and even though we
shared his concerns, deep in our hearts,
we didn't believe it was possible for a
Jew to kill the prime minister," Orr
said. "We lost our prime minister. The
Shin Bet failed. We don't need any
more details than that."
The internal committee praised the
actions of the single bodyguard who
threw himself atop Rabin after the
prime minister was shot and fell to the
ground that night. The bodyguard was
himself shot in the hand before he
hustled the prime minister into his
armor-plated Cadillac and ordered the
driver to head for nearby Ichilov Hos-
pital.
The inquiry committee said that the
bodyguard behaved "by the book" in
getting the prime minister away from
the scene as quickly as possible.
But former Shin Bet officials said
yesterday that the internal inquiry re-
vealed a shocking collapse in security
procedures the night of the mass rally,
which drew more than 100,000 people.
Yaacov Peri, a former head of Shin Bet
told Army Radio yesterday that he be-
lieves the current head of Shin Bet
should resign.
Still, the government must be careful
not to be too sweeping in its critique of
Shin Bet, Melman argued. "They don't
want to throw the baby out with the
bathwater," he said. "They still need
the Shin Bet, and its main task is still
dealing with terrorism, and this threat
will continue."
Shin Bet has stepped up its surveil-
lance ofright-wing groups, but Melman
said the agency will now give greater
attention to infiltrating such organiza-
tions.
S THESEASON
ANNOUNCING
A NEW SET OF COURSE OFFERINGS
IN MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY
WINTER 1996
The Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Depart-
ment of Biology will be continuing and expanding a series of
courses set in a modular format, Each one credit module runs for
one third of a semester. In some cases multiple modules can be
combined to make up a traditional course. Students may choose
from the various modules to create a program that best fits their
educational objectives and interests.
Microbiology 606,607, and 608 are three modules focusing on
microbial physiology and pathogenesis. They are designed for
upperclass advanced undergraduates and graduate students
interested in the health sciences. These modules will be offered
conscutively and will meet TTY from 10- 11:30 AM in 5623
Medical Science Building II.
Prerequisites for all three modules - first year biochemistry and
genetics or permission of course director.
Module I (1/11-2/13)
Microbiology 606 - Microbial Physiology & Metabolism (1 credit)
Module II (2/15-3/19)
Microbiology 607 - Microbial Pathogenesis I (1 credit)
Module III (3/21- 4/23)
Microbiology 608 - Microbial Pathogenesis 11(1 credit)
The first module will focus on the metabolism and physiology of ,
growth. The second module deals with colonization mechanisms'
and attributes of pathogens. The third module focuses on molecu-
lar mechanisms underlying bacterial infectious disease.
Microbiology 641 and 642 are two modules focusing on molecular
and cellular events in the immune response. They are designed for
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