Good afternoon. [laughter] welcome. Im deborah jacobs, cochair of the 24th edition of the book festival of the mjcca. My cochair and i are pleased to welcome you to the book festivals awardwinning afternoon featuring journalist dan ephron in conversation with nancy updike, producer for this American Life, and our second awardwinning journalist, mike kelly, in conversation with bill [inaudible] Senior Executive producer at georgia public broadcasting. We are also happy to welcome cspans booktv to our book festival programming this amp. This afternoon. On behalf of the book festival, we are truly grateful for the support of barbara exped mining and this years sponsors, wells fargo. In addition, there are over 25 valued sponsors who support our book festival year after year. We are also a proud affiliate of the Jewish Federation of greater atlanta. Please check your playbill for the lineup of our calendar of events the rest of the book festival. Tickets for all book festival events are available three different ways. You can purchase them online at atlantajcc. Org, by telephone or in person at our box office or any of our Customer Service desks here at the mjcca. The format for todays presentation is each author will be in conversation individually with their respective interviewers, then it will be followed by a solo q a. After the final q a, dan ephron will be signing his book, killing a king, and mike kelly will be signing his book, the bus on jaffa road, on main street outside the theater. Both books are available from the official bookseller of the mjcca book fest call, a cappella books. At this time we would like to welcome up to the podium rabbi Michael Bernstein who will offer a prayer for paris. The stories that we gather to hear today are about using violence and cruelty to end what is best in humanity. Friday night another 127 lives were ripped away by this violation of terrorism. Violence of terrorism to join those of the victims that continue to happen in israel, in beirut and throughout the world. In the song of songs, it says set me as a seal upon your heart, for love is stronger than death. [speaking in native tongue] these are stories not of death, but of life; the life that refuses to be snuffed out even at the hands of terror. Paris is a city of love and life. May we learn how to have love triumph over death, to have life triumph over terror. May the people of paris and the people throughout the world be safe, may those who lost their lives be remembered by their loved ones, by all they touched and the entire world, and may we see the day when peace and love truly cop kerr terror conquer terror and death. Thank you, rabbi. And now it gives us great pleasure to welcome our guests more this afternoons program. For this afternoons program. Our first interviewer this afternoon is nancy updike, one of the founding producers of this American Life. She has reported from egypt, israel, gaza, the west bank and the United States. Her iraq reporting won a Scripps Howard award, a National Journalism award and a murrow award. She was executive producer of this American LifeSecond Television season which won the emmy for outstanding nonfiction series. Dan ephron, our author, was a newsweek reporter for nearly 15 years, serving as National Security correspondent, Deputy Washington Bureau chief and Jerusalem Bureau chief. He has followed the middle east through much of his career and has covered many of the regions major events since the mid 90s. Before joining newsweek, he reported for the boston globe and reuters. His stories have also appeared in esquire, the new republic, the Village Voice and the washington monthly. He lives in new york with his wife, nancy updike. Please welcome them to our stage. [applause] so thanks, everyone, for coming. We are, were married. [laughter] i think that was buried somewhere in the introduction in case we forget to say that and have to say it halfway through. Yeah. And so this is not so much the interview format, its more of like a chaotic, you know, Dinner Party Conversation [laughter] with a lot of gesticulating. [laughter] and were going to talk about the book, about killing a king, and really how i came to write book, how and why. And also the hourlong radio story that nancy and i collaborated on for this American Life, for the show that nancy has worked for since its founding 20 year ago. And the radio story was based on some of the reporting that danny did for the book, and it was, it was an hourlong documentary about the rabin assassination. Just a show of hands, how many people heard it . Okay. And so, yeah, were going to talk a little bit about both things and how they came into existence. So the book preceded the radio show. The book really started, for me, in 2012. I was the Newsweek Bureau chief in israel. We lived in tel aviv together. Nancy newsweek had asked me to move back to israel to be the bureau chief. I had been there in the past for chunks of time, and nancy had to get permission from ira glass. This American Life doesnt usually have American Foreign correspondents. He said yes, she came with me, and we moved to tel aviv. And around 2012, about two years into the posting, i was on deadline on a particular day, i was working on a magazine story, on a story for newsweek, and it was one of those moments where youre on deadline, and you have to be really effective and just get down to business and work. And i did the thing that i often do when i need to be that way,s which is i typed in youtube into the Search Engine in my computer and then spent the afternoon looking at animals and other exotic things. [laughter] and eventually got to this clip of rabin, of yitzhak rabin. And it was a clip really of the aftermath of the shooting, right . Rabin is shot on november 4th, 20 years ago at this peace rally, in the aftermath of this peace rally. And the shooter is this jewish extremist, hes 25 years old. And hes pounced on right at the scene in the parking lot and taken to a Police Station in tel aviv a few blocks away. And the video shows the interrogation of emir. And its a very short clip. I watched it, and well show it to you in a second. Its really the quality is terrible, you know . Its dark, hes kind of in the shadow, he is sitting opposite three or four policemen. Later one of the interrogators told us they brought him to the wrong room. They have a room where the camera is better, and they would have seen him kind of in better quality, but they were so rushed, they just said lets put him in here. The video i found mesmerizing. I found it mesmerizing in part because i had reported in israel in the mid 90s and had been sent to that rally, to that peace rally to write a story. I reported for reuters at the time, its a news agency. And the story was supposed to be a very short three or four paragraphs, it was supposed to tell readers whether rabins Peace Process had the support of israelis or didnt. This was toes low Peace Process that the oslo Peace Process that had begun in 1993, and the support for rabin and the toes low deal waxed and waned. In those moments of hope, many israelis supported it, maybe most, but it also set off violence. And this was the period where the suicide bombings of hamas begin. And when theres a lot of violence, you know, rabins popularity and the popularity of the Peace Process quos down. Goes down. So the whole idea was go to this peace rally, see how many people show up and then write a story that says a lot of people came, and that means one thing for the Peace Process or not very many people showed up. And, of course, a lot of people were there. There were 100,000 people. Its a square in tel aviv about the size of, i dont know, a few football fields. And ark mir wait amir waits and then shoots rabin in the parking lot after the rally and then is taken to this Police Station. So lets see, lets see this first video, and ill show you, ill show you what i mean. Its bad quality, but its not [inaudible] okay, this is amir on the left. [speaking in native tongue] we turn up the volume a little bit . By the way, how many people understand some hebrew . Okay. And then how many people have been to israel . Right, okay. So when i talk about the kings of israel square, the place where rabin was assassinated, most of you probably know where it is. Today its called rabin square. What amirs saying here is the things that i did, i did out of a sense of religious obligation. And, of course, hes talking about having shot rabin. Rabin is not dead yet. This is about 15, 20 minutes after the shooting. It takes about an hour and a half until doctors, surgeons are working on rabin and eventually pronounce him dead. But i think the thing that was most striking for me about the video is just how calm amir is, you know, hes kind of leaning forward, and he says at some point are you taking this down, writing this down, because the interrogator on the right side, and its the guy in the white shirt sort of in the middle of the pack, i think there are four people on the right side, the interrogator is writing down every word by hand. This is the way interrogations were conducted at the time. You know, the interrogator asks a question, and then he tells the suspect to slow down, you know, repeat that x. At some point yigal amir says did you take that down, did you hear what i said. That was striking because what i remember from that night was at the moment of the shooting israel was plunged into a state of trauma. Theres no tradition of assassinations in israel. Certainly, the idea that an israeli leader would ever be killed, i think israelis thought it would be a palestinian or an arab who would assassinate an israeli leader. Pretty quickly after the shooting it becomes clear on the media that the guy who shot rabin is a fellow israeli and a fellow jew. And in some ways this is, you know, people talk about the assassination as the israeli kennedy assassination. In most ways its not like the kennedy assassination. But in this one way, it is. This idea that the country is plunged into trauma and a real state of fear about what this means for the future. And hes very calm because he has sort of defied the odds. He feels like what he has done has been inspired by god. Or god even helped him do it. And well explain a little bit later why he comes to that decision. So the we decided to do a radio story based on some of the reporting in the book partly because of this video and others like it, because this was such a welldocumented event. Theres not only this one, theres hours and hours and hours of other interrogations of yigal amir where he is saying every beat of this is what happened, this is what i did, this is why i did it, this is when i started thinking about it, this is how i started thinking about it. And also besides the fact that these videos exist, theres a video of the assassination itself which well show you later. But this only happened 20 years ago. And a lot of the people who were directly involved in, you know, responding to it, who were there that night are till alive. Still alive. Including this guy in the be white shirt, this Police Interrogator. And when danny started watching the interrogation videos, we didnt know his name. But you cant see it so well in this shot, but in other parts of the video you can see that hes smoking a pipe which we just hadnt really seen any other israeli smoking a pipe. [laughter] never met an israeli who was a pipe smoker. So danny, you know, we started inquiring with people who worked this in security worked in security and the police at the time. There was a guy interrogating amir the night of the assassination smoking a pipe, and everybody said, oh, thats moti. Because they had never met anyone else in israel who smoked a pipe either. [laughter] let me just say, so, i mean, the pipe smoking is not evident on in the video. But what happens is when i watched the video, it occurred to me if theres 20 seconds of it, there must be hours of it. If police are turning on the tape recorder or the video camera in the interrogation room, they probably left it on for hours, for the duration of the interrogation. And my thought was if i could view all of it or if i could view some amount of it, it would tell me something about the psyche of yigal amir, of this guy who killed the israeli leader. And eventually i got my hands on about 10 or 12 hours of it and viewed it all over a long weekend. And it does say a lot. It did tell me quite a lot. And ill talk a little bit about that. But, yeah. So one of the other things is this pipesmoking Police Interrogator, moti. And we found him, and we went to interview him, we wanted to know what it was like to interrogate yigal amir s. And really the question is the country is falling apart all around you. Its in a state of trauma. And how are you managing to compose yourself, and what are the questions youre asking. And when we, when we talked to him about that, he said, well, you know, its funny because when he the first time he saw himself in this video interrogating yigal amir was when he was preparing for the trial of amir, the murder trial which danny also covered. And when he saw the video of himself, he almost started getting mad at himself, you know, how could you be so calm . How could you just sit there, you know . Youre sitting across from the man who just shot the Prime Minister. And, again, this is even before either one of them knows that rabin is dead. They just know that hes been shot. So moti was telling us that and this is in the radio story for those of you who heard it was telling us about how, you know, he was an experienced Police Interrogator by this point. He had done, you know, murder cases and seen really terrible things, and he was used to talking to people who had killed someone. But even so he, like the rest of the country, was in turmoil facing this person who had just shot the Prime Minister. And so he talked to us about how difficult it was for him even an experienced Police Interrogator to be as calm, to keep doing his job, to be polite with this young man who was not only calm during the interrogation, but actually gleeful and triumphant in different parts of the conversation. We have to skip a slide here. And you can hear moti i naftali. One of my police come in and brought me a cup of tea. With a white styrofoam cup. Yeah. And i told to him, would you also like a cup of tea . He says this to amir. I told him, bring another one, please. And he brought him the cup of tea. And he says dont you have cookies . And i told him, oh, you are pushing your luck. [laughter] i remember is the reaction when i told him, when i accuse him and i tell him i, motti naftali, accuse you of shooting the Prime Minister and caused his death. And he was shocked to hear it. What . Did he die . Wow. And he jumped like your team make a goal. Like your team scored a goal in a soccer game, yeah, yeah. Yeah. This moment you want to come and punch him in the face. But you sit down, sit down. Would you like a cup of tea . Lets make [inaudible] he say. Lets make a toast. Lets make a toast. Yeah. And that means to life. T to make a toast to life. Yeah. To life. To life that he took. So thats motti naftali. And one of the things about reporting in israel, its a very informal country. And people dont say no usually to interview requests. And so this event, and nancy mentioned this, it was 20 years ago. People are still alive. It was very easy to get to people who were in the main actors in this event. And i think this was a turning point for us. I think the idea of being able to see a bunch of hours of video of amir and understand things about him and then get access to some of the key characters, for me i started thinking there was maybe not just a magazine story here but, you know, maybe the start of a book. The start of a book with at least one protagonist, the assassin. By the way, naftalis also a wind surfer, and when we first called him up, he said, yeah, come right over. And then he called us back and said, wait, the wind has changed, its good now, so im going to go out, and you come back later in the week . Which we did. Yeah. So what happened that night. Im going to tell you from my perspective, but also from amirs perspective. I lived in tel aviv at the time, i lived a few blocks away. I mentioned it was a reuters story that i was going to write. I left my apartment a few blocks from the square, got to the square and saw in this very large crowd entirely packing the square and people streaming in. And i spent the course of the rally interviewing people on stage and then interviewing people in the square, and then it was over, you know . Rallies in israel are often political speeches and then songs, they bring pop bands to play so its kind of somber speeches and then sort of, you know, very upbeat songs. And then they sing the national anthem, and then people started leaving, and i left as well. I was a few blocks away from the square when i got a beeper message that said shots fired near rabin, head back now. And i ran back, i ran back to the stage, and people pointed to the parking lot. And then at the parking lot i spoke to witnesses who said it looks like rabin has been hit, and he was taken to hospital. Now, amir had been stalking rabin for two years. Amir opposed rabins peace deals with the palestinians, he oppose thed the the oslo Peace Process. He felt, for one thing, it posed a Security Threat to israel. But i think moreover for him, he felt this was a betrayal of israel and a betrayal of judaism. The peace deals involved giving back at least parts of the west bank and gaza to the palestinians, and for amir whos a religious jew the idea of giving back land that was promised to the