Last week we were asked to take (read: instructed) our students to attend a memorial for Rabin. Then I attended Rabbi Meir Kahane's 20th yarzeit memorial in Jerusalem. Hundreds of people showed up at the cemetery. And thousands showed up at the Ramada Hotel to hear his wife, friends, rabbis, and colleagues recount their memories of the Rabbi. There was another memorial for Rabin on Saturday night.
Many people would generally shy away from attending such a memorial. The Left did a fantastic job of demonizing Rabbi Kahane. Many things were wrongly attributed to him, such as calling all Arabs 'dogs' or wishing their death[1]; things, which the Rabbi never said and never taught his students and followers. But it seems that thousands already know that the Left, and politicians in general, lie when it suits their purposes. People realize today that Rabbi Kahane was driven not by hatred of Arabs but by Love for Jews.
Rabin’s ideologies were during his time, made with the best intentions, and a real conviction that coexistence could be attained. But Peres, Olmert, Barak, and others, who followed through without holding their counterparts accountable, brought Israel to its knees. Rabin thus, became a fool. And not as many want to attend a memorial of someone who was proven wrong years after the assassination itself brought everyone out to the streets -although as I said before it was mostly his followers who erred. To other Jews, Rabin is a painful memory of when he participated in the assassination of 19 Jews in the Altalena. To many others he was the cause of the extended rift between the religious and non-religious in our country. So when Israelis see on their TV sets that thousands attended Rabbi Kahane's memorial, it is not that we are extremists or prefer violence over peaceful resolutions, it is simply, we have learned to discern truth from the garble being fed to us by the media and those same failures that we shamefully voted for to lead us.