Indyk says his and Netanyahu’s exchange on Rabin took place outside of Knesset

Martin Indyk, US ambassador to Israel during the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, says that as the late Israeli leader’s coffin was placed in the Knesset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed disappointment that Rabin’s untimely death would mean he’d go down in history as a “hero.”

Indyk’s clarification comes after he earlier said the exchange occurred during Rabin’s funeral.

Indyk claimed that Netanyahu, then the leader of the opposition, sat next to him and said: “Look, look at this. He’s a hero now, but if he had not been assassinated, I would have beaten him in the elections, and then he would have gone into history as a failed politician.”

Hours after Indyk’s account was aired Tuesday night in a two-hour-long PBS “Frontline” documentary on the relationship between Netanyahu and the White House, the Prime Minister’s Office put out a terse response asserting that “these things never happened.”

Photos from the 1995 funeral carried by Israeli media showed Netanyahu sitting between former president Moshe Katsav and businessman Martin Schlaff. Indyk was not seen in the photos.

However, in the transcript of the “Frontline” interview, Indyk had noted vaguely that “Netanyahu sat next to me when I was ambassador in Israel at the time of Rabin’s funeral,” such that it wasn’t clear whether the conversation, as recalled by Indyk, took place at the funeral itself or at another ceremony at the time of Rabin’s burial.