Where is Quentin Tarantino when we need him? As we know, his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, now nominated for a Best Picture Oscar among many other awards, turns on the conceit of what if, the fantasy that the Manson murders on August 9, 1969 had a different outcome. Yaron Zilberman’s Incitement, a powerful recreation of the events leading to November 4, 1995, climaxes in the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv following his triumph with the Oslo Accords. The fiction film opens in New York this month, after screening in the current New York Jewish Film Festive, and at East Hampton’s Guild Hall this weekend, presented by HamptonsFilm. You watch, knowing the end, wishing history could be averted, hoping somehow that the murder of peace-loving Prime Minister Rabin would have stalled, and peace would prevail. Alas, instead Zilberman leads us through the “incitement” to the cataclysmic moment, exploring the mindset of Yigal Amir, an aspiring law student and orthodox Jew of Yemeni descent, whose violent act has led us to Bibi Netanyahu’s election, to a regime that remains strongly right wing, taking the region closer to chaos and war, and keeping peace an illusion.

Even for those who have been following the news in Israel over the past two decades, the connections Zilberman has mapped out seem fresh, going back to Baruch Goldberg’s one-man massacre at a mosque, through the spiraling retribution: suicide bombings on buses and in markets, non-military places now famous for mass deaths. Why after Oslo, does violence not end? It cannot end. Zilberman’s research took him to prison where he interviewed Amir, who has never shown remorse. It was important to show him as a human who claimed support from scripture, who sought rabbinical approval, a young man from a loving family, whose father is peace loving, the director said following a NYJFF screening this week. Amir, we learn is now out of prison after 16 years, and many applaud his action. Yet Zilberman’s position on this divisive political moment is clear: this is what happens when manipulative leadership incites violence.