On Nov. 4, 1995, Yigal Amir, a 25-year-old Israeli resident of suburban Tel Aviv and law student at Bar-Ilan University, boarded a bus with a loaded gun and headed to a peace demonstration where 100,000 people had gathered to hear Prime Minister Ytzhak Rabin and Labor leader Shimon Peres.
Amir planned to murder both Rabin and Peres for their roles in making peace with Palestinians. Amir had been overtaken by religious zealotry that deemed the peace accords against divine law. When Peres and Rabin walked off the podium separately after the rally, Amir was left with one target. He shot Rabin as the prime minister was entering his car.
"My intention was to shoot him in a way that would prevent him from carrying on as Prime Minister," Amir said at his murder trial in January 1996. "Either paralysis or, if there was no alternative, also death."
Amir said he had decided to shoot Rabin after three years of protesting, by other means, Rabin's peace negotiations with Palestinians and the planned return of the West Bank to Palestinian control, which Amir believed against Jewish law. "I acted according to the judgment of the 'pursuer,' which is mentioned in the Torah," he said, wildly misinterpreting a Jewish law that applies to self-defense. "I didn't intend to murder Yitzhak Rabin as a person; I intended to murder the Prime Minister to deflect him from his path. I have nothing personal against him."
Amir was immediately apprehended as he was shooting Rabin. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1996. In August that year, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld Amir's conviction.
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