Thirty Years Since the Assassination: Evolving Attitudes within the Israeli Right Toward the Murder of Yitzhak Rabin

ABSTRACT: This article traces the changes within Israel's right-wing camp in its attitudes toward the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the evolving meanings of that event in Israeli history. It identifies four distinct stages in the right's response to the assassination—beginning with early efforts at collective reflection alongside attempts to portray Yigal Amir as a mere "wild weed" within the religious-Zionist community; continuing with interpretations that drew causal links between the assassination to Rabin's role in the Altalena Affair and and culminating in claims that compare the incitement against Rabin during the Oslo process with the protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since his indictment. These shifting perceptions, the article argues, originate from three major ideological shifts that have shaped Israeli society over the past decades: the spread of neoliberal ideas, the decline of statism (mamlachtiyut), and the rise of populist patterns in Israeli politics. Together, these changes have not only enabled but actively influenced the right-wing camp's evolving interpretations of Rabin's assassination and its ways of commemoration.