The New York Times · New York, New York · 12 November 1995

CP-1995-016

Zeal of Rabin’s Assassin Linked To Rabbis of the Religious Right

By JOHN KIFNER

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Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM, Nov. 11 — The men arrested in the killing of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin are part of a new, deeply religious Jewish underground movement whose fury was fueled by the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, Israeli police officials and political analysts say.

A week after the assassination, the picture emerging from the police investigation is of a small band with many of its adherents coming out of religious schools, a spinoff from the Kach organization founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane that revolved around the killer, Yigal Amir, and his brother Hagai. The Amir brothers come from a religious family of Yemeni origin.

Their father is a Torah scribe, who painstakingly copies the holy words on parchment with a quill pen. The brothers learned combat skills in the Israeli Army and stole arms and explosives. But what is most shocking to many in this already stunned country is that, according to the police, the killing of the Jewish leader of the Jewish state had the blessing of a rabbi.

The Israeli police say they believe that a religious decree in effect declaring Mr. Rabin a mortal enemy of the Jewish people who must be killed, compelled Yigal Amir, an intense 25-year-old religious scholar, to sidle up to the Prime Minister at a peace rally in Tel Aviv and fire three shots from a 9-millimeter Beretta pistol.

Israeli military radio reported today that an Israeli Army solider and his father had been taken into custody in connection with the assassination. [Page 12.] Of the eight men now under arrest, five are Israeli-born religious students.

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