Entrapment is a dishonest way of turning law-abiding citizens into criminals.
At least two recent cases of apparent FBI entrapment or near entrapment stand out. One involved the supposed plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. The more that was known about the story via the trial, the more it seemed the drivers were FBI informants and agents. And, of course, January 6th. Belatedly, we were told that there were federal assets in the crowd. We have not been told what they were doing. The Democrat's vigorous attempts to keep Pam Bondi out of the Department of Justice and Kash Patel away from the FBI would appear to be in part related to their determination to find out what their respective departments were up to during the past decade. Should we learn that the FBI agents in the J6 crowd actively encouraged illegal activity, such as entering the Capitol and doing damage there, the entire Democratic narrative of an insurrection would finally go completely up in smoke. One might add the pipe bomb caper in Washington to the list of FBI-driven criminality, but too little is still known about who planted them and who altered video evidence of the event.
I mention these apparent cases of entrapment because of a recent book and documentary that came out in Israel. While I am always frustrated when the FBI catches a murderer 30 years after the event, apparently, some things require the passage of time before we can fully understand what happened. Some of the players who stonewalled are dead, while the living feels less threatened to tell the truth about what happened. The story in question aired by Channel 14 relates to the Oslo period after 1993. Yitzchak Rabin and Shimon Peres had a problem. They were committed to turning the West Bank over to the nascent Palestinian Authority (PA), but there were Jews living there. How could they get the Jews to leave and turn the policing and governing over to the PA as they had promised Arafat in exchange for his telling Israeli Arabs to vote for Labor? The answer appears to involve creating a false narrative about “settlers” so that Israel could justify their removal.
The Shabak and Mossad in Israel are loosely what the FBI and the CIA are in the US. While the Shabak generally deals with things in Israel or the territories, its focus is heavily on anti-terror activity. There is within the Shabak a “Jewish desk” that is supposed to deal with Jewish extremists and terrorists. And while Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Arabs at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, there was at the time—and still today—very little “Jewish terror”. According to the documentary and those interviewed, Rabin believed that the best way to get the Jews out of Hebron was to create the impression that they were a bunch of terrorists involved in violent acts against Palestinian Arabs. So the Shabak sent several provocateurs, their leader being a young Avishai Raviv. Raviv and his comrades presented as regular settlers, followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. One woman interviewed for the documentary said that her husband used her and the two children they had solely as a cover for his Shabak activities. A woman who dated Raviv said he never lacked money, cars, or weapons. Raviv was personally involved in attacks on Palestinians, and he tried to goad other Jews in Hebron to participate in assassinations or other anti-Arab activities. The settlers became suspicious of him and, when speaking amongst themselves, found that he offered different people the same pitch, such as to kill a Jordanian official passing through Israel.
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Apparently, Rabin’s plan worked so well that it got him killed. Raviv got two young brothers to attempt an assassination of “the first Arab who came by.” They were given two M-16s. When a young Arab came by, the first brother fired his rifle, but it did not shoot. All present were in a state of shock. The second brother tried his gun, but it did not fire. The Arab man ran away, and the two brothers drove right into a police roadblock waiting for them. The Arab man involved later sued the Shabak for harassment and won a small judgment.
Yigal Amir, at that time, was also in Hebron. According to the book and documentary, he expressed interest in killing Rabin and, on several occasions, started out to do exactly that. It is claimed that Raviv encouraged him and asked if he was really man enough to kill the prime minister. Amir was given a gun and made his way to Tel Aviv. What is very interesting is that when he fired on Rabin, someone screamed, “Srak! Srak!” which translates to mean blanks. Apparently the weapon he was provided had blanks for bullets. It would appear that the goal was to have a failed assassination attempt on the prime minister, an act that would be the final word on removing the Jews from the West Bank as terrorists and attempted murderers. It would also appear that Amir switched bullets from those he was given to different ones that he acquired. Rabin died of his wounds, and Amir still sits in jail today.
The murder of Rabin is as murky as that of JFK. The one video showing the shooting is suddenly cut off. One can see the gun firing, with Rabin turning around to look. Any serious handgun would have sent him flying. A bullet hole in his shirt in the front does not match Amir’s shots from the back. Certain individuals associated with the attack died suddenly while evidence vanished. In the end, the governmental attempt to turn the Jews of Hebron from religious, nationalistic Kahane followers into actual terrorists led to the death of the person who got the ball rolling against them. There can be a fine line between observing a criminal enterprise and creating one. The Shabak and certain IDF units have very famous “mitsta’arvim” who dress up as Arabs to get information or capture or kill wanted terrorists. My wife knows a young woman, blond and blue-eyed, whose job was to go to the Casbah in Nablus and just listen for any information that could be important for the security services. Many have seen videos of such fighters jumping out of a van and grabbing somebody or entering a hospital to finish off a wanted terrorist. In this area, these special units are second to none.
The recent revelations of the Rabin government and the continued questions about the FBI’s role in J6 remind us that governments can go too far. Rather than admit that domestic terror is a relatively small problem, they can try to make it much larger than it really is. Some people may be passionate about an issue but are not ready to move to illegality or violence. Sending agents to attempt to push them over that red line of protected speech and action into criminality is something that no Western government should ever consider. The problem is that some governments consider it a kosher part of their arsenal to deal with domestic enemies. We need to know the role of federal agents and informants on J6 and ensure that law enforcement lives up to its name and does not become the cause of law-breaking.