For Israelis, the film is a long-overdue attempt to come to terms with violent forces in their own society. Punctuated by haunting choral music and a snare drum’s relentless rat-a-tat-tat, the documentary features excerpts from an exclusive phone i nterview with assassin Yigal Amir, conducted from his parents’ suburban Tel Aviv home, and a dramatization of Amir’s movements on the day of the shooting. It also contains footage of right-wing protests that had never before been seen inside Israel, even though they were familiar to some viewers abroad. Director Michael Karpin is a veteran television journalist who blames his profession for the downplaying of the extremist threat. Now, he says, ““the population is ready to deal with the subject. The who le story of the assassination was forgotten very quickly … one of the reasons why we produced the film was to bring the story back in front of the public.''
Many in Israel will feel the film came exactly a year too late. Produced on a shoestring budget of $250,000, it documents the links tying prominent politicians in the Likud and National Religious parties to a loose-knit organization of militant rig ht-wing groups called Action Headquarters. Headed by the Jerusalem-based activist Jacob Novik, Action orchestrated a vicious campaign of Rabin-bashing that commenced in the early months of 1995. Novik worked closely with Jewish settlers’ leader Uri Ariel and an up-and-coming Likud member of Parliament named Tsachi Hanegbi. Hanegbi was re-elected to the Knesset in the May 1996 poll that brought Netanyahu to power and now serves as justice minister; Ariel was appointed to a key post in the Defense Ministr y.
In the movie itself Netanyahu makes only a few cameo appearances at antigovernment rallies. But Karpin’s script draws a clear connection between Yigal Amir’s state of mind and the charged political climate in the autumn of 1995. It also reminds vie wers of Amir’s own ties to some of the groups and militant rabbis associated with Action. Some political observers have speculated that the showing of such a documentary just before last year’s close election might have tilted the outcome in favor of Rab in’s successor Shimon Peres.
No Israeli was blinder to the warning signs than Yitzhak Rabin himself. In one of the film’s more poignant sequences, Leah Rabin recounts how the famously gruff, plain-spoken prime minister would dismiss the endless stream of death threats hurled h is way. ““Nonsense,’’ he would tell his soon-to-be-widowed wife. ““It won’t happen.’’ It did, of course. ““The Government of Israel Announces With Profound Shock’’ may help millions of Israelis understand why.
