NOA BEN - ARTZI PHILOSOF
RABIN'S GRANDDAUGHTER:
Forgive me if I do not want to talk about peace. I want to talk about my grandfather. You always awake from a nightmare by since yesterday I only awake into a night-mare --- the nightmare of life without you and that is impossible to fathom.
The television does not stop broadcasting your pictures and you are so alive and real that I can almost touch you, but only just, because I canot anymore.
Grandfather, you were the pillar of fire in front of the camp and now we are just a camp left alone in the dark and we are so cold and sad.
I know they are speaking in terms of a national disaster. But how can you try to console an entire nation or let it share in your private pain when grandmother cannot stop crying and we are mute, feeling the vast emptiness now that you are gone?
Few really knew you. They can say many things about you but I feel they do not know at all the enormous exten of the pain and tragedy.
And yes, this is a holocaust -- at least for us, the family and friends -- because we are left without a pillar of fire.
Grandfather, you were and still are our hero. I wanted you to know that in everything I�ve done in life, I saw you before my eyes.
Your esteem and love were with us in every step we took and along every road we walked. We live in the light of your values, always.
You never abandoned us and now you have been abandoned. And now here you are, my eternal hero, cold and alone and I can do nothing to save you. You are so wonderful.
Great men have already eulogized you but no one has felt, like I have, the caress of your warm and soft hands, or your warm embrace which was reserved for us alone and your half-smile which always told me so much. That same smile, is no longer and froze with you.
I harbor no feelings of revenge because the pain and my loss are so great -- too great. The earth crumbled under our feet and somehow we are trying to sit in the empty space that is left -- but with little success.
I cannot finish but apparently a strange hand, a miserable hand has already finished for me.
Given no choice, I part with you, my hero, and ask you to rest in peace and think of us and miss us because here down below we love you so much.
Angels in heaven who are with you now, I ask you to protect him, and protect him well because you are deserving of this protection.
We love you, grandfather, forever.
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