Marking 17 years since Rabin's murder

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Yesterday the nation remembered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the 17th anniversary of his assassination.
Youth movements organized the evening gathering in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, national leaders gave speeches at the grave site on Mount Herzl, the Knesset had a session to talk about Rabin, and Galei Zahal, the army radio, brought Rabin's family together with musically talented soldiers for a night of reminiscing and of singing the moving and appropriate songs. 

This picture of the grave was taken early one January morning when no one was there.
Someone had brought a painting and left it.
Others had put stones or memorial candles.

It was mentioned yesterday on the radio that Rabin's grave is under constant surveillance, lest vandals get any ideas.
Just two weeks ago someone defaced Moshe Dayan's tombstone in Nahalal.
The red paint said "Sar hamechdal, beshem hanoflim," meaning the minister of the failure, in the name of the fallen.

Both Yitzhak Rabin and his wife are buried here, in the cemetery of  Israel's leaders on Mt. Herzl, the Mount of Remembrance. 
Their  grave is covered by the unusual tombstones which Rabin's widow commissioned from architect Moshe Safdie.
Yitzhak Rabin is written in Hebrew on the black marble, Leah Rabin on the white.
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 A touching story was revealed by Prof. Leonard Fein of Boston and was picked up by Israel's Haaretz when Ted Kennedy died in 2009:

After Prime Minister Yitshak Rabin was assassinated (in 1995), Senator Edward Kennedy dug up some earth from the Arlington graves of his brothers John and Robert, who had also been gunned down. 

He carried the dirt onto the plane to Israel. 

After Rabin was buried on Mount Herzl, Ted waited for the crowd and the photographers to disperse. 

Then, on his hands and knees, he gently placed the American earth onto the freshly-dug Israel earth.

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May they all now rest in peace.

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A previous year's story about the Rabin remembrance day:

 http://jerusalemhillsdailyphoto.blogspot.co.il/2010/10/for-tree-of-field-is-mans-life.html

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(A post for Taphophile Tragics and Our World Tuesday.)

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