Barry Chamish
Encyclopedia
Barry Chamish is a Canadian-Israeli writer and public speaker. Chamish is known for his controversial views regarding the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin took place on November 4, 1995 at 21:30, at the end of a rally in support of the Oslo Accords at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv...

.

Early years

Barry Chamish was born in Winnipeg
Winnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...

, Manitoba, Canada.

In the first half of the 1970s, Chamish had three novels and a book of short stories published in his native Canada. His novel Mack won a Canada Council Award worth several thousand dollars. In 1976, his book Alice in Newfoundland won a Manitoba Arts Council Award.

Chamish earned a Bachelor of Arts degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

 at the University of Manitoba
University of Manitoba
The University of Manitoba , in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, is the largest university in the province of Manitoba. It is Manitoba's most comprehensive and only research-intensive post-secondary educational institution. It was founded in 1877, making it Western Canada’s first university. It placed...

 in 1974. In 1975, Chamish moved to Israel, where he attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

, where he received a Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 degree in 1979.

Following graduation, Chamish was conscripted into the Israeli Defense Forces, and served as a regular from 1979 to 1981. He was mobilized as a reservist
Reservist
A reservist is a person who is a member of a military reserve force. They are otherwise civilians, and in peacetime have careers outside the military. Reservists usually go for training on an annual basis to refresh their skills. This person is usually a former active-duty member of the armed...

 in 1982 and fought in the 1982 Lebanon war
1982 Lebanon War
The 1982 Lebanon War , , called Operation Peace for Galilee by Israel, and later known in Israel as the Lebanon War and First Lebanon War, began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon...

, in which he operated a Redeye anti-aircraft missile
FIM-43 Redeye
The General Dynamics FIM-43 Redeye was a man-portable surface-to-air missile system. It used infrared homing to track its target. Production was terminated in September 1969 after about 85,000 rounds had been built - in anticipation of the Redeye II, which later became the FIM-92 Stinger...

.

Career

Chamish began to work as a free-lance writer
Freelancer
A freelancer, freelance worker, or freelance is somebody who is self-employed and is not committed to a particular employer long term. These workers are often represented by a company or an agency that resells their labor and that of others to its clients with or without project management and...

, publishing material in a range of publications including The Atlantic, National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...

,
and the New York Newsday. Chamish established a news service to distribute his work called "Profiles of Israel," which he continued throughout the decade of the 1980s.

During the 1990s, Chamish wrote extensively on Unidentified Flying Objects, investigating a spate of sightings in Israel during that period. Chamish's work was featured on four episodes of the NBC-TV program Sightings as well as a half-hour of primetime coverage on FOX-TV
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...

.

From the 1990s, Chamish began publishing a series of books charging acts of treachery against the state of Israel, including Traitors and Carpetbaggers in the Promised Land (1997), The Final Days of Israel (2000), Israel Betrayed (2001), and Bye Bye Gaza (2006). In these and similar works, Chamish charged that an array of external and internal forces had "corrupted the country's leaders" and engaged in a "determined agenda aimed at the demise of the Jewish state."

Chamish wrote a book, Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin? (1998) in which he challenged the official account of the event placing blame on a lone Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 gunman. One of the central assertions of Chamish's book was that Rabin was not shot twice in the back as the government concluded, but was actually shot three times—with the fatal wound being fired from the front. By the end of 2005 the book had sold 39,000 copies and had been published in seven different languages.

In 2008 the Magistrate Court in Jerusalem summoned Chamish to pay Itamar Ben-Gvir defamation damages of 36,000 NIS (roughly US$10,000) after repeatedly calling him an agent of the Shin Bet.

Scrabble

Chamish was the winner of the 1987 Israeli Scrabble
Scrabble
Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 grid. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works provide a list...

 Tournament and the runner-up in 1988.

Books

  • The Devil Wore an Angel's Suit. Winnipeg, MB: Split Level, 1972.
  • Keep Stillman: A Pun. Winnipeg: Split Level, 1973.
  • Mack. Winnipeg: Split Level, 1974.
  • Alice in Newfoundland. Winnipeg: Split Level, 1976.
  • The Fall of Israel. Edinburgh, Scotland: Canongate
    Canongate Books
    Canongate Books is a Scottish independent publishing firm based in Edinburgh; it is named for The Canongate, an area of the city. It is most recognised for publishing the Booker Prizewinner Life of Pi...

    , 1992. ISBN 0-86241-355-9
  • Traitors and Carpetbaggers in the Promised Land. Oklahoma City: Hearthstone, 1997. ISBN 1-57558-017-9
  • Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin? Venice, CA: Feral
    Feral House
    Feral House is a book publisher owned and operated by Adam Parfrey. The publisher itself describes the books it sells as "pure information", and says the topics of the books are "forbidden"....

    , 1998. ISBN 0-922915-50-4
  • Return of the Giants. Sun Lakes, AZ: Book World/Blue Star
    Book World/Blue Star
    Blue Star Productions was a Sun Lakes, Arizona-based publishing imprint of Book World, Inc. of mostly comparative spiritual traditions, mystical, metaphysical, new age, paranormal, ufology, philosophy, non-fiction, and fiction books.-Books:...

    , 2000. ISBN 1-881542-66-1
  • The Final Days of Israel. Tempe, AZ: Dandelion, 2000. ISBN 1-893302-16-4
  • Israel Betrayed. Ainsworth, NE: Counting Coup, 2001. ISBN 0-9708598-5-6
  • Shabtai Tzvi, Labor Zionism and the Holocaust. Knoxville, TN: Master Press, 2005. ISBN 965-90766-1-4
  • Bye Bye Gaza. Raleigh, NC: Lulu, 2006. ISBN 978-1-4457-1528-5
  • With the Kennedys. Raleigh, NC: Lulu, 2006. ISBN 978-1-4457-1530-8
  • THE conPromised Land. Raleigh, NC: Lulu, 2010. ISBN 978-1-4457-1258-1

External links

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