By the time we left Independence Hall, a substitute bus was waiting for us with our luggage on it. It took us to Yitzhak Rabin Square. Before we entered the square, our guide Muki let us in on a little secret: while he keeps strictly to the schedule when someone wants to make a shopping detour, he suddenly becomes more flexible when someone suggests a coffee break. That's exactly what happened, and the group descended upon the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf shop around the corner from the square. The staff was not equipped for such a big group, and what should have taken 10 minutes took about 30. Nonetheless, with coffee in hand we went to Yitzhak Rabin Square where, on November 4, 1995, Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist, Yigal Amir.
The area has several different tributes. There is a timeline of Rabin's life, a copy of the speech he gave just before he was shot (though we couldn't read it because of construcion in the area). Photographs of the grief that followed, including memorial candles that were lit across the country and the bloodstained copy of "Song of Peace" that had been in his breast pocket when he was shot, align the opposite wall. There are markings in the pavement where Rabin, his security detail and the murderer stood at the moment the shots were fired. And most moving of all is the relief sculpture built into the ground that represents an earthquake in Israeli society.
Muki and I were both there the night of the assassination, and we each shared our experience of the evening and the grief that followed.
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