INCITEMENT

INCITEMENT is an acclaimed docudrama from Israel that follows a college student in the year leading up to his assassination of Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Told from the assassin’s point of view, INCITEMENT is more of a docudrama than a thriller and seems to let the assassin off the hook by blaming the conservative opponents of Rabin for inciting the assassin.

The movie opens with a man cleaning graves and a real-life speech from Prime Minister Rabin at the White House alongside President Bill Clinton. Rabin has just signed the Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat, the terrorist leader of the Palestinians. Rabin talks about peace, respect and wanting to end hostility. This speech, along with him joining forces with Clinton and Arafat, enrage many Israelis, especially a young man named Yigal.

Yigal is a college student studying law. He’s very well-educated and went to many good schools throughout his education career. He is sitting at home with his family when watching another one of Rabin’s speeches and is completely enraged, and it’s made very known to the audience because his father turns the TV off.

This is when Yigal starts studying the law and the Torah very closely and comparing them. In his mind he convinces himself that because of the position in which Prime Minister Rabin has put the country, and because of all the innocent people dying from Palestinian acts of terror, that it would be okay to murder Rabin. However, even when he comes to this conclusion, he is torn within himself on what to do about the situation. He believes democracy will take over by giving more power to the Palestinians and hurt more Jews.

Yigal sets off on a mission to make his plan come to fruition. Along with trying to recruit others to help him, he also wants to continue to get approval from Rabbi’s that what he wants to do is okay within his religion. Yigal consults many, and none of them tell him outright either way what to do, although Yigal assumes that, deep down, they also want the Prime Minister dead.

Along the way, Yigal is also focused on his love life. He has been raised to find a wife, and he thinks he’s found her. However, when both families are critical about the other, it ends his plans, and he is forced to start over. However, it doesn’t take him long to find someone else that could meet his desire.

Yigal and a few of his friends believe they’ve found a way to get rid of Rabin without anyone knowing it was them. That plan fails, however, and they’re forced to plan a much more public way to get rid of the Prime Minister. This plan takes places during election time when throngs of people are gathered outside to listen to Rabin speak.

Based on real interviews with the assassin, INCITEMENT is an inside look at the mind of the assassin who killed Prime Minister Rabin. The movie is not so much a thriller as it is a docudrama that uses footage from the real events intertwined with the assassin’s story of Yigal. The movie is sometimes hard to follow because of the subtitles and could also be hard to follow if the viewer doesn’t know anything about the Oslo Accords or the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin.

INCITEMENT has some moral, biblical elements. For example, many Jewish, biblical religious traditions and teachings are discussed. Also, the assassin’s father puts an importance on family and education. He also tells his son that violence isn’t the answer. However, the movie blames Rabin’s conservative political opponents for the assassination, which is like blaming Bernie Sanders for the Bernie Sanders supporter who tried to murder Republican congressmen on a baseball field in 2017. This seems to let the assassin off the hook for his own evil actions. Thus, the filmmakers seem to take a politically correct view because they like Rabin’s liberal policies and hate the policies of Rabin’s conservative opponents. Also, INCITEMENT contains a lot of violence. A killing is depicted, dead bodies covered in blood are shown, and there are many conversations about whether it’s right or wrong to assassinate someone doing his country wrong.