Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin

On the evening of 4 November 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot at Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv immediately after addressing a rally of more than 100,000 people held in support of the Oslo Accords peace process. As Rabin walked to his car, Yigal Amir, a 25-year-old Bar-Ilan University law student and far-right ultranationalist, approached from behind and fired two shots from a Beretta 84F semi-automatic pistol, striking Rabin in the abdomen and chest. Amir also fired a third shot during the ensuing struggle, lightly wounding bodyguard Yoram Rubin. Amir was subdued and arrested at the scene with the murder weapon.

Rabin was driven to Ichilov Hospital at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. He arrived without a pulse or breath; doctors briefly stabilized him after draining air from his chest cavity and performed surgery, but his condition deteriorated. He was pronounced dead at 11:02 p.m., roughly ninety minutes after the shooting. An autopsy found that one bullet had ruptured his spleen and punctured his left lung while the other pierced his right lung, and that a resulting air embolism had reached his brain and hindered resuscitation efforts. Chief of Staff Eitan Haber announced Rabin's death to media outside the hospital shortly after 11 p.m.

The assassination followed months of intense right-wing opposition to the Oslo Accords, including rallies where Rabin was depicted in Nazi imagery and protesters chanted for his death. Amir had come to believe Rabin was a "rodef" (pursuer) endangering Jewish lives under a traditional Jewish legal concept, and told associates in advance that the prime minister should be killed; Israel's internal security service, Shin Bet, had information on Amir's extremist activity but not on specific assassination threats he had voiced.

Under interrogation, Amir confessed and reportedly expressed satisfaction on learning Rabin had died. His brother, Hagai Amir, was arrested as an implicated accomplice, along with Dror Adani. Yigal Amir was tried and convicted of Rabin's murder and of injuring Yoram Rubin, receiving a life sentence plus six years; his sentence has not been reduced, and a subsequent law (the "Yigal Amir Law") bars parole-board recommendations for a pardon or sentence reduction for a prime minister's assassin. Hagai Amir was convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to 12 years, later increased to 16 on appeal, with an additional year for a separate threat against a later prime minister; he was released in 2012. Dror Adani was sentenced to seven years and released in 2002. A separate Shin Bet informer, Avishai Raviv, was acquitted of failing to prevent the assassination after a court found no evidence he knew of Amir's specific plot.

Rabin was buried at Mount Herzl cemetery in Jerusalem on 6 November 1995 following a funeral attended by roughly 80 heads of state. Shimon Peres became acting and then confirmed prime minister; a government inquiry, the Shamgar Commission, later criticized Shin Bet for security failures. The assassination is widely viewed as a turning point in Israeli politics and the trajectory of the Oslo peace process.