Marking the 25th anniversary of the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Nazarian Center on October 28 presented a discussion of the film "Incitement" with the director and co-writer, Yaron Zilberman, and University of Maryland Prof. Yoram Peri, author of a book on the assassination and former Rabin political advisor.
Program sponsored by UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies in partnership with Murray Galinson San Diego-Israel Initiative.
About the Program
Marking the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995, the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies presented an online discussion of the film Incitement with the director and co-writer, Yaron Zilberman, and Professor Yoram Peri, the Abraham S. and Jack Kay Chair in Israel Studies and director of the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies, University of Maryland at College Park. UCLA Prof. Dov Waxman, director of the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, served as moderator and led Q&A. Speakers discussed the events depicted in Incitement, their underlying causes and their meanings for today.
Online discussion originally held October 28, 2020. Registrants were given a link to watch the film prior to discussion event.
Incitement Synopsis
In September 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin announces the Oslo Accords, which aim to achieve a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians after decades of violence. Yigal Amir, a law student and a devoted Orthodox Jew, cannot believe that his country's leader will cede territory that he and many others believe is rightfully - by the word of God - theirs.
As the prospect of a peaceful compromise approaches, Amir turns from a hot-headed political activist to a dangerous extremist, consumed by anger and delusions of grandeur. He soon learns of an ancient Jewish law, the Law of the Pursuer, that he believes gives him the right to murder Yitzhak Rabin. Convinced he must stop the signing of the peace treaty in order to fulfill his destiny and bring salvation to his people, Amir's warped mind sees only one way forward. The film (duration: 123 minutes) is in Hebrew with English subtitles.
Incitement won the Israeli Film Academy Award, the Ophir Prize, for best picture 2019 and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
About the Director
Yaron Zilberman is currently in post-production on an eight-episode drama series, Valley of Tears about the 1973 Yom Kippur war. His film Incitement about the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin won the Israeli Film Academy Award, the Ophir Prize, for best picture 2019 and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Yaron also directed, co-wrote, and produced his internationally acclaimed A Late Quartet about a world-renowned New York based string quartet as its members struggle to stay together on the eve of their 25th anniversary, starring Academy Award Winners Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken. The film premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. Yaron’s first film, the award winning feature length documentary Watermarks was co-produced with HBO and ARTE. It tells the story of the champion women swimmers of the esteemed Jewish sports club Hakoah Vienna, as they reunite in their 80s to swim together one more time in the city they were forced to escape 65 years earlier.
About the Discussant
Professor Yoram Peri is the Abraham S. and Jack Kay Chair in Israel Studies of the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies, the University of Maryland at College Park. He also served a decade as director of the Gildenhorn Institute before exiting the post in June 2020. A former political advisor to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, he is the founder and former head of Chaim Herzog Institute for Media, Politics and Society and professor of Political Sociology and Communication in the department of communication at Tel Aviv University. Peri also is former editor-in-chief of the Israeli daily, Davar. Professor Peri published extensively on Israeli society, media and politics. Among his publications are Generals in the Cabinet Room (U.S. Institute of Peace Press), The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin (Stanford University Press), and Between Battles and Ballots: Israel Military in Politics (Cambridge University Press). In addition to his academic career, Peri was a journalist and is a political commentator. He published extensively in newspapers and magazines in and outside Israel, and also was an editor and host of TV and radio programs. During Golda Meir’s term as Prime Minister, he was the spokesperson for the Israel Labor Party and its special emissary to Europe. Among his various public positions, Professor Peri was president of the Association of Editors of Israeli Dailies and a member of the Press Council.