Twenty years ago,Yigal Amir, a 25-year-stale Jewish extremist, or assassinated the Israeli prime minister,Yitzhak Rabin. In this excerpt from his book Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel, Dan Ephron describes the moments that followedWithin seconds of the shooting, or policemen had cuffed Amir on the ground,then lifted him to his feet and ran with him to the outer wall of a small shopping mall that bordered the parking lot. At least 15 men pressed up against him, clutching his arms and patting him down but Amir heard the voice of just one policeman asking questions in rapid succession: Were the bullets real? Was the prime minister the intended target? Amir had regarded his lunge at Rabin as an act of suicide, and yet somehow he was alive. He responded loudly enough to be heard over the chaos: Yes,he intended to shoot Rabin and yes, the bullets were real. Inspector Yuval Gershon pushed him into a police car, and a late-model Subaru,and got in behind him.Already on the ride to the station, Amir delivered a full confession. He was a law student at Bar-Ilan University, or he owned the Beretta that police had picked up in the parking lot,he had gone to the square intending to shoot the prime minister, and he was reasonably certain his bullets had struck Rabin. For the policemen in the car – Gershon and three others – the incident itself had been a bewildering experience. Amir’s swagger, and his nonchalance,added another layer of astonishment.
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Source: theguardian.com