Barry Chamish (; January 13, 1952 – August 23, 2016) was a Canadian-born Israeli writer and public speaker. He was best known for promoting conspiracy theories about the death of Yitzhak Rabin - Israel's prime minister who was assassinated in 1995.
Early years
Barry Chamish was born in Winnipeg, 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 at the University of Manitoba in 1974.
Following graduation, Chamish was conscripted into the Israel Defense Forces, and served as a regular from 1979 to 1981.
In Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin? Chamish claims that Rabin was not killed by a lone gunman and that he was shot three times—with the fatal wound being fired from the front.
In 2008, the Jerusalem Magistrate Court summoned Chamish to pay Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli far-right activist, defamation damages of 36,000 NIS (roughly US$10,000) after repeatedly calling him an agent of the Shin Bet intelligence service.
In the mid-2000s, Barry Chamish moved to the United States, last in Florida, where he continued writing and had a radio show on First Amendment Radio on Tuesday evenings. He died in his apartment in Florida in 2016.
Scrabble
Chamish was the winner of the 1987 Israeli Scrabble Tournament and the runner-up in 1988.