They claim Rabin’s driver was nefariously “switched” at the last minute. False. (Actually, Rabin had several drivers and no one was switched.) They claim the lone person recording the events on a camcorder was a Shin Bet agent. False. They claim the film of the shooting was “suppressed” by the Israeli government for years. False. They claim one can see on news tapes mysterious additional people getting in and out of Rabin’s car. False.
What about Avishai Raviv, the “mole” police agent running the radical right-wing organization (Ayal) to which Yigal Amir belonged? Did not the conspiracists do remarkable work in exposing Raviv?
Actually, the conspiracists had nothing to do with the exposure of the role of Raviv. The story was a scoop by journalists at the left-wing newspaper Haaretz – proving that the Israeli media are perfectly capable of uncovering real misdeeds, as opposed to imaginary ones. Raviv’s role was to infiltrate far right and potentially violent groups in Israel. Given Amir’s later behavior, such surveillance was clearly justified.
Raviv evidently was also improperly used to conduct Nixon-style “dirty tricks” to discredit the Israeli Right. However, Raviv’s only “role” in the Rabin assassination was that he misjudged Amir’s talk about “getting Rabin” as mere bravado. Raviv was cleared of “failure to stop the assassination” by an Israeli court, as indeed he should have been. Whether he and his bosses should have been investigated for the “dirty tricks” campaign is a separate issue (I happen to think they should have), but the answer to that is unrelated to the lunatic theories of the conspiracists about the assassination.
What about the conviction of Amir’s girlfriend, Margalit Har-Shefi, for “failure to stop a crime”? She should not have been convicted, but her arguably unjust conviction hardly proves that the conspiracy theories have any validity at all.
Ultimately the real damage done by Israeli conspiracism is significant. The failure on the part of many in the movement opposed to the Oslo peace process to disassociate themselves from and renounce the conspiracist nonsense has served to discredit all opposition to the policies of the Left, and has resulted in the perpetuation of those policies.