Yigal Amir (יגאל עמיר; born May 31, 1970) is an Israeli right-wing extremist who assassinated incumbent Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995, at the conclusion of a rally in Tel Aviv, Israel.
At the time of the murder, he was a law student at Bar-Ilan University.
Amir is serving a life sentence for murder plus six years for injuring Rabin's bodyguard, Yoram Rubin, under aggravating circumstances.
He was later sentenced to an additional eight years for conspiracy to murder.
Amir has never expressed regret over the assassination.
Numerous radical right-wing Israeli organisations have carried out campaigns for Amir's release.
The Shin Bet security service has assessed that Amir remains a threat to national security.
The Knesset passed a law preventing the President of Israel from pardoning the assassin of a prime minister.
Amir was born in Herzliya to an Israeli Orthodox Yemenite Jewish family, one of eight children.
His father Shlomo was a sofer (Scribe) who held a post supervising the kosher slaughtering of chickens and taught Shabbat lessons at a local synagogue.
His mother Geula was a kindergarten teacher and ran a nursery school in the family home's backyard.
Amir attended an Independent Education System school in Herzliya, and a high school yeshiva in Tel Aviv.
He did his military service in the Israel Defense Forces as a Hesder student, combining army service in a religious platoon of the Golani Brigade with religious study at Yeshivat Kerem B'Yavneh.
Despite being in a religious unit, even his comrades considered him a religious fanatic.
Following his military service, Amir was nominated by the religious-Zionist youth movement Bnei Akiva to teach Judaism in Riga, Latvia, as part of the Nativ organization.
1993
In 1993, Amir began studying at Bar-Ilan University as part of its kollel program, mixing religious and secular studies.
Amir studied law and computer science, as well as Jewish law at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies.
Amir was strongly opposed to the Oslo Accords.
He participated in protest rallies against the accords on campus, was active in organizing weekend bus outings to support Israeli settlers, and helped found an illegal settlement outpost.
He was especially active in Hebron, where he led marches through the streets.
During his years as an activist, Amir became friendly with Avishai Raviv, to whom he allegedly revealed his plan to kill Rabin.
After the murder, it was revealed that Raviv, a well known right-wing extremist at the time, was in fact only posing as a right-wing radical.
In reality, he was working for Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service.
While some right-wing militants have accused the Shin Bet of having orchestrated the assassination to discredit them, a court later ruled that there was no evidence Raviv knew Amir was plotting to kill Rabin.
1994
In 1994, during his university studies, Amir met—and began a platonic relationship with—Nava Holtzman, a law student from an Orthodox Ashkenazi family.
1995
In January 1995, after five months, Holtzman ended the relationship after her parents objected due to Amir's Mizrahi background.
She married one of his friends soon afterward.
Amir, who attended the wedding, went into a deep depression.
On November 4, 1995, after a demonstration in Tel Aviv's Kings of Israel Square (now Rabin Square) in support of the Oslo Accords, Amir waited for Rabin in a parking lot adjacent to the square, close to Rabin's official limousine.
There, he shot Rabin twice with a Beretta 84F .380 ACP-caliber semi-automatic pistol, and injured Yoram Rubin, a security guard, with a third shot.
Amir was immediately seized by Rabin's bodyguards.
Rabin was rushed to Ichilov Hospital where he died on an operating table 40 minutes later of blood loss and a punctured lung.
According to the court, Yigal Amir's brother Hagai and his friend Dror Adani were his accomplices in the assassination plan.
Upon hearing that Rabin was dead, Amir told the police that he was "satisfied" and was acting on the "orders of God".
At his trial, Amir said he did not care if the outcome was death or paralysis as long as Rabin was "out of the way".
He expressed no regret for his actions.
The assassination had been preceded by three unsuccessful attempts that same year: at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, at the Nof Yerushalayim Hotel, and at a ceremony inaugurating a highway in Kfar Shmaryahu.
These plans fell through moments before implementation.
1996
Amir's trial lasted from January 23 to March 27, 1996.
He was initially defended by attorneys Yonatan Ray Goldberg and Mordechai Ofri, and later by Gabi Shachar and Shmuel Flishman.
