Avishai Raviv

Avishai Raviv was a member of Israel's Shabak, Israel's Secret Police, whose mission was to monitor the activities of right-wing extremists. It is unclear to date which part of his activities were on his own initiative and which ones were directed by Shabak operators.

Raviv married a national religious woman after he already worked for the Shabak. He founded the Eyal youth movement that objected to the Oslo Accords and used harsh language against the government officials who supported it, notably Israel prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The pictures of Eyal in a nightly meeting at the Baruch Goldstein grave were broadcast in the Israeli news.

Raviv also struck up a friendship with Yigal Amir, a religious law student from Bar Ilan University, who organized protests against the Accords. Raviv allegedly knew of Yigal Amir's plans to assassinate Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, based on a controversial reading of a Jewish law, "din rodef" ("law of the pursuer"), which some rabbis interpret as sanctioning the killing of another Jew to prevent him from handing Jewish land over to non-Jews: "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, wrote that witnesses heard Raviv tell Amir: "Be a man! Kill him already!"

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

"Slander and Libel from the Left," Uri Dan, Jerusalem Post, May 22, 1997