[cheers and applause] >> ladies and gentlemen -- [inaudible] the festival is now over. i want to thank you my staff kim, danny isabelle and kenny. you guys were amazing. thank you. thanks so much. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail to booktv it's c-span.org, tweet us @booktv or post on our wall, facebook.com/booktv. >> dan ephron, what happened on november 4 1995? >> guest: well, that was the day that the israeli prime minister was assassinated, and it was the first time an israeli leader was murdered. he was killed by a right-wing extremist, a jewish extremist, and it was a shock to the country, a trauma to the country, of course, because of the assassination itself, but i would say doubly because the assassin was a fellow israeli and a fellow jew. >> host: who was the prime minister? what was his -- what were his politics? >> guest: yeah. itself sakara bean i think he would describe himself as a lifelong military man.

that was certainly his demeanor. he was the commander of the six-day war with israel captured the west bank in gaza and other territory, a pivotal moment. i think over course of the research for the book, i came to think of rabin as a man of first. he was the first native-born israeli to become prime minister, to be elected prime minister. he was the first israeli leader to really embrace the palestinians and try to resolve that conflict once and for all including to shake hands with yasser arafat who was really the embodiment of terrorism and evil. and then, of course, he was the first and only israeli prime minister to be assassinated and to be assassinated by a fellow israeli. >> host: and why was he assassinated? who was his assassin, first of all? >> guest: the assassin was a 25-year-old law student at time

of the murder. and a real extremist an extremist, i would say, through and through. he was exceedingly are religious. every word of the bible of the jewish torah was literal truth. exceedingly radical politically. so the peace process that rabin had started was for amir a betrayal of judaism a betrayal because it involved handing back some territory that god had promised to the jews according to his interpretation. he was also exceedingly smart. when he is caught and convicted and at some point in prison, psychiatrists administer an iq test and he scores above 140. so he's a smart guy who is just a real extremist. >> host: was it planned? >> guest: meticulously, yeah. over the course of two years.

amir started plotting the day after rabin shakes hands with arafat on the white house lawn in september, 1993. and it takes him about two years, and he makes several attempts. amir is, has military training. he served in an infantry unit in the israeli army, so he knows about guns, and he knows how to use them. he has a beretta a small handgun that he keeps wedged in his pocket everywhere he goes, and he stalks rabin. he goes to different event where is rabin shows up about three or four times before he finally manages to get to a place where he sees an opening moves in and shoots him. >> host: now, in "killing a king," i got the sense that israeli prime ministers are not as surrounded by protection as an american president may be. is that fair? >> guest: i think that that was true at the time. it's really not true now and you see it when israeli leaders

travel around in israel and, certainly, when they come abroad, they're surrounded by 20 or 30 secret service people, the israeli equivalent of that. at the time, first of all the idea that a palestinian might take a shot at a prime minister was certainly on the minds of israelis who protected rabin but the idea that an israeli or a fellow jew would do that even in this period of the peace process when there are threats against rabin from the israeli right, i think it's very hard for the secret service people, the body guards to get out of the mindset that they're looking for a palestinian. you know, their profile for the would-be assassination the would-be assassin is an arab. so the idea that a jew might move in and kill them, i think almost didn't dawn on them. >> host: dan ephron, how popular politically was chris yitzhak rabin in

1995? >> guest: israel was and remains a divided society and divided over the very issues rabin took on. rabin wanted to end israel's military occupation of the west bank and gaza israel's military rule over millions of palestinians. and he was elected by a small margin. so, you know, i think at the time -- and i covered israel at the time. i remember people talking about the country being divided about 50/50 between people who are in favor of handing back some of this territory and people who are absolutely against it. and during the course of his term his popularity waxed and waned in part because his peace process set off a backlash of violence by the extremists on both sides, certainly on the palestinian side with hamas, the islamic group. this was the era where we see the first suicide bombings by palestinians against israelis and that eroded popularity, the popularity of the peace process

and the support for rabin as well. >> host: were you in israel on november 4 1995? >> guest: yes, i was. i was a young journalist, and i was sent to cover that peace rally -- >> host: by "newsweek"? >> guest: no, i worked for reuters at the time. and because rabin's popularity had been ebbing, this rally was, we all as journalists thought of it as an indicator for his, you know what his standing is. and so i'm not sure we ordinarily would have covered it so that was a significant event. i worked for a wire service so i had to file quickly. >> host: were you at the rally? >> guest: i covered the rally. >> host: how close were you to the prime minister? >> guest: well, i had actually

left as had most of the journalists, and that's why you don't see professional video footage of the assassination. there's one amateur photographer who was there who took shots who took video of it. so i had left and i was a few blocks away heading back to an apartment to file, and i got a message on what we used to use on beepers at time in the '90s saying shots fired in the vicinity of rabin, head back quickly. and i turned around and ran back to the square. >> host: was he killed immediately? >> guest: no. he was rushed to the hospital. he was shot around 20 minutes to 10 in the evening and he was pronounced dead about an hour and a half later. but the doctors i spoke to, the surgeons on the operating table said that he was pretty close to clinically dead when he arrived at the hospital. >> host: what kind of access did you have in writing "killing a

king"? >> guest: i had the cooperation of both the amirs and the rabins. i wanted to reconstruct the two years leading up to the murder the night of the murder and the period that followed. so i knew i wanted to focus on these two protagonists, and really it was critical to get the cooperation of rabin's family and then amir's family, the assassin's family. amir is still in prison. the israeli authorities don't allow prison interviews, so i couldn't speak with him himself but his brother was a co-conspirator, and he spent 17 years in prisoner and came out around the time i started working on the book. i interviewed him extensively and spent a lot of time with his family. the same on the rabin said. and so the book alternates in chapters between rabin and amir until the two of them meet. >> host: dan ephron why do you

call it "killing a king"? >> guest: well the line "killing a king" appears in a letter that amir's brother and co-conspirator wrote home in the days after the assassination. i'm paraphrasing, killing a king, and he puts the murder in the context of jewish history and biblical history, kings and prophets. and he says killing a king is profoundly significant it alters the course of the nation. i read that 7 or 18 years -- 17 or 18 years after it was written when i started researching the book and i found it chilling because it's precisely what happened. that moment, that pivot altered the course altered israel's trajectory. israel today is not what it was in 1995. >> host: you talk about israel being a small country. is mrs. rabin still alive?

has she -- did she ever connect with the amir family? >> guest: no, she died about five years after the assassination. and did not connect with the amir family. but also did not concern leah rabin largely felt that while one person was the gunman, there was incitement against rabin in the years leading up to the assassination by the right and the extreme right especially. people referred to rabin regularly as a murderer in street protests and held up signs of rabin dressed in a nazi uniform in one instance. for the family the culprit is

not just amir, but a larger section of the right wing that incited against the israeli leader. >> host: amir's family, his brother is releasedded. what's he doing today? >> guest: so he was released a little more than two years ago and he was studying physics at the time. he was a university student studying physics in 1995. spent 17 years in prison and largely returned to the life he had left. so he's back in his home back in the same room that he shared with his brother where they plotted the murder, back to studying. i think it's electrical engineering. and now -- and i think one of the things that surprised me was the extent to which he and the rest of the amir family, and they're recognized on the street, they spent enough time in front of television cameras in the reeks and months after -- weeks and months after the

assassination that people recognize them, that they live fairly normal lives, including the brother who spent all that time in the prison. >> host: will the assassin ever be released, or is he in for life? >> guest: he is in for life, and in israel a life sentence is almost automatically commuted to a period of 20-30 years. so very few people spend their entire lives in prison and die in prison. i suspect that amir will be the exception. that his -- it's hard to imagine a president in israel signing a commutation of his sentence and having him walk out of prison. i think -- i'm about 09% convinced -- 90% convinced it will ever happen. >> host: dan ephron is the