Gun used to assassinate Rabin is featured in show-and-tell by Israel’s chief archivist

Go to minute 27 of this video tour of featured holdings of the Israel State Archives, and chief archivist Yaacov Lozowick opens a brown archive case, and then a blue box to reveal the gun used to kill Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Lozowick picks up the gun to display it for the camera, held by a rightwing blogger, Elder of Ziyon.

Here’s the chatter, published Dec. 24, 2013:

Lozowick: The final document is not really a document at all, it’s an artifact. And this is Yigal Amir’s pistol. OK?

Elder of Ziyon: [Chuckling.] Wow.

Lozowick: This is the pistol that killed Yitzhak Rabin. The reason we have it here– normally we don’t collect artifacts at the State Archives. But this is part of the indictment in the trial proceedings, that of course is an important document. And so the decision was made in this case that the pistol itself would also be brought to the State Archive. So we have the pistol and we have the bullets that were extracted from his body, and so on and so forth. So that’s this document.

Elder of Ziyon: Wow.

Lozowick: So that’s the last document.

Elder of Ziyon: Wow.

All the while Lozowick is handling the gun (said to be a Beretta semi-automatic pistol) with no more respect than if he were unpacking the groceries. The gun follows Ottoman land records and peace agreements and instructions about the conquest of Jerusalem.

We were both surprised by the casual treatment of a gruesome implement that may have changed Israeli history, as well as of objects taken from Rabin’s body, without apology or solemnity. Nineteen years after the fact, Rabin’s assassination is still a deep wound for many in the country. Possibly this video speaks to the broad antipathy to Rabin’s policies that exists in rightwing Zionist circles (the Elder of Ziyon himself has used Obama’s citation of Rabin’s words to smear Obama as justifying terrorism), or the ways that extremism has become normalized in Israeli political culture.

Lozowick responds to our question about the tour, that the list of tour exhibits was established by a predecessor. As for the gun: “I’ve even tried to take it off a couple times, but word is out that we show it and folks keep on asking for it. So it’s still there. Rather bad taste, if you ask me, and also not particularly important: it’s just a piece of metal. The story is about the man who used it, and the man it was used on.”

We are told that the U.S. National Archives holds Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle in a secure location and does not casually display it on tours. The National Parks Foundation allows Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site to display Booth’s deringer behind a glass case– from the Lincoln assassination 150 years ago.

Elder of Ziyon is a rightwing Zionist who does not live in Israel (and justifies his anonymity here). Lozowick was born in Germany. He is former director of the archives at Yad Vashem and author of the book, Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel’s Wars.

Thanks to Scott Roth, who retweeted Elder of Ziyon when he tweeted the video last week as a favorite of the preceding year, describing it as: “Yaacov Lozowick gives Elder of Ziyon a tour of the Israel State Archives, which are not available to the public.”