Rabin led a 27-year career as a soldier. As a teenager he joined the Palmach, the commando force of the Yishuv. He eventually rose through its ranks to become its chief of operations during Israel's War of Independence. He joined the newly formed Israel Defense Forces in late 1948 and continued to rise as a promising officer. He helped shape the training doctrine of the IDF in the early 1950s, and led the IDF's Operations Directorate from 1959–1963. He was appointed Chief of the General Staff in 1964 and oversaw Israel's decisive victory in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Rabin served as Israel's ambassador to the United States from 1968–1973, during a period of deepening U.S.–Israel ties.

He was appointed Prime Minister of Israel in 1974, after the resignation of Golda Meir. In his first term, Rabin signed the Sinai Interim Agreement and ordered the Entebbe raid. He resigned in 1977 in the wake of a financial scandal. Rabin was Israel's minister of defense for much of the 1980s, including during the outbreak of the First Intifada.

In 1992, Rabin was re-elected as prime minister on a platform embracing the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. He signed several historic agreements with the Palestinian leadership as part of the Oslo Accords. In 1994, Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize together with long-time political rival Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. In November 1995, he was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli radical named Yigal Amir, who was opposed to the peace process.

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin took place on Saturday, 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. The assassin, an Israeli ultranationalist terrorist named Yigal Amir, strenuously opposed Rabin's peace initiative and particularly the signing of the Oslo Accords.

The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin was the culmination of Israeli right-wing dissent over the Oslo peace process. Rabin, despite his extensive service in the Israeli military, was disparaged personally by right-wing conservatives and Likud leaders who perceived the Oslo peace process as an attempt to forfeit the occupied territories.

National religious conservatives and Likud party leaders believed that withdrawing from any "Jewish" land was heresy. Rallies, organized partially by Likud, became increasingly extreme in tone. Likud leader (and future Prime Minister) Benjamin Netanyahu accused Rabin's government of being "removed from Jewish tradition ... and Jewish values." Netanyahu addressed protesters of the Oslo movement at rallies where posters portrayed Rabin in a Nazi SS uniform or being the target in the cross-hairs of a sniper. Rabin accused Netanyahu of provoking violence, a charge which Netanyahu strenuously denied.

The assassin was Yigal Amir, a former Hesder student and far-right law student at Bar-Ilan University. Amir had strenuously opposed Rabin's peace initiative, particularly the signing of the Oslo Accords, because he felt that an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank would deny Jews their "biblical heritage which they had reclaimed by establishing settlements."

After the rally, Rabin walked down the city hall steps towards the open door of his car, at which time Amir fired three shots at Rabin with a Beretta 84F .380 ACP caliber semi-automatic pistol. He was immediately subdued by Rabin's bodyguards and arrested with the murder weapon. The third shot missed Rabin and slightly wounded security guard Yoram Rubin.

Rabin was rushed to nearby Ichilov Hospital at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, where he died on the operating table from blood loss and a punctured lung within 40 minutes.