TV panellist calls to free assassin Yigal Amir

(Times of Israel) – A MEMBER of a popular TV news show last Sunday called for the release of Yigal Amir, the right-wing extremist who is serving a life sentence for assassinating prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

The comment was made in a discussion on Channel 14’s The Patriots about a High Court ruling that a recent law passed by the Knesset was designed to specifically enable Boaz Yosef, the acting mayor of Tiberias and an associate of Shas party chair Aryeh Deri, to run for a full term in office, and therefore must only go into effect after upcoming elections.

“I am happy to hear one statement – that the High Court of Justice and Supreme Court are against personal laws. If that is so, then the time has come to release the assassin Yigal Amir because there are personal laws against him,” said Ari Shamai, a lawyer who has represented Amir in the past.

The comment received applause from some members of the audience, but other members of the panel could be heard opposing the view. Host Yinon Magal said, “We’re not getting into this.”

Channel 14, a pro-Netanyahu conservative channel sometimes likened to Fox News, quickly disavowed Shamai’s remark and said he would no longer be invited on the show or on the network.

“The serious remarks Ari Shamai said represent his views alone. In light of the seriousness of the matter, Mr Shamai will no longer be invited to appear on the channel’s programs,” the network said in a statement.

Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995, by Amir, an extremist Jew who has said he had been motivated to kill Rabin by the election results in Israel and the massacre of 29 Palestinians by Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein in Hebron in 1994. Rabin took power at the head of his Labour party following the 1992 elections and went on to sign the Oslo Accords.

Amir shot Rabin to death at the end of a mass peace rally in Tel Aviv that was called to highlight opposition to violence and to showcase public support for his efforts to negotiate with the Palestinians.

In 2001, the Knesset passed the “Yigal Amir Law,” which bars parole boards from pardoning or commuting the sentence of a prisoner convicted of murdering a prime minister for political reasons.

Amir is trying to appeal against the law at the High Court.

Both far-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current hardline coalition have made comments that appear sympathetic to Amir.

Last year, Religious Zionism party leader Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister, sparked outrage at a commemoration event by saying that responsibility for the assassination lay with Israel’s Shin Bet security service, claiming it had used “manipulations” that encouraged a right-wing extremist to go through with the murder plan. He argued that right-wing rhetoric against Rabin at the time played no role in inciting the killing.

Otzma Yehudit chairman Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister, first gained national attention in 1995 when he was interviewed after managing to steal the logo off Rabin’s vehicle. “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him too,” Ben Gvir said, weeks before the assassination.

Ben Gvir maintains that the clip was cut to not include the next section when he was asked what he would do if he reached Rabin himself, to which the young far-right activist responded, “I’d shout at him.”

But Ben Gvir went on to campaign for Amir’s release and in previous election campaigns, he vowed to secure a pardon for Amir if elected.