Amir, Yigal

(1970- )

   The assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin . Raised in Herzliya in a religiously observant Sephardic family, he was educated in Orthodox schools affiliated with the Ashkenazi-dominated Agudat Israel Movement. Following high school, he studied in the Karem Dyaneh yeshiva. Part of his military service was spent in the elite Golani infantry brigade. After the military, he studied law and computer science at Bar Ilan University and won a place in the university's prestigious Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies. He murdered Rabin at the conclusion of a peace rally in Tel Aviv on the evening of Saturday, 4 November 1995. He explained that he was motivated by an intense displeasure over the territorial concessions made by the Rabin government in the context of the Oslo Accords. On 27 March 1996, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder. On 28 March 1996, a commission of inquiry headed by the former president of the Supreme Court of Israel, Justice Meir Shamgar, concluded that Amir had acted alone in assassinating Rabin.