Bar-Ilan University on Wednesday censured Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a member of the university’s faculty, over his claims that convicted assassin Yigal Amir was not actually responsible for the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The university announced Wednesday afternoon that it had dropped Kedar from a planned trip to South America, where he was to have represented the university at an academic conference.
“The Bar-Ilan University administration strongly condemns Dr. Kedar’s comments,” the university said in a statement. “The things he said were said on his own accord, and in no way represent the university or its members. We believe that there is no place for these kinds of statements in Israeli society.”
Later, Bar-Ilan added that Dr. Kedar would not be permitted to speak on the university’s behalf and that he had been dropped from a planned trip to South America.
At a pro-Netanyahu rally Tuesday evening, Kedar claimed that Rabin had been the victim of a political conspiracy, and that Amir was not the actual assassin.
“Rabin’s murderer was a man with the initials Y.R. – not Yitzhak Rabin. Y.R. The person behind this was, apparently, a leading politician who wanted to eliminate Yitzhak Rabin because he wanted to ditch the Oslo Accords.”
The Left had then turned the assassination into a political weapon against the Right for something “Yigal Amir might not have done”.
“Why is he sitting in solitary confinement? So that he won’t tell people the truth,” continued Kedar, before calling for a “real investigation” into Rabin’s assassination.
While the State of Israel’s Shamgar Commission, and the trial of Yigal Amir both found the then-25-year-old Bar-Ilan University law student responsible for the killing, numerous conspiracy theories have been promoted over the years suggesting that Amir may not have been the actual murderer.