John, Bobby and Ted at the grave of Yitzhak Rabin

[WilliamPitt]

If this doesn't choke you up, I just don't know...

"On the morning of the day before the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, Senator Ted Kennedy called the White House to inquire if it was appropriate to bring to the burial some earth from Arlington National Cemetery. The answer was essentially a shrug: Who knows? Unadvised, the senator carried a shopping bag onto the plane, filled with earth he had himself dug the afternoon before from the graves of his two murdered brothers. And at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, after waiting for the crowd and the cameras to disperse, he dropped to his hands and knees, and gently placed that earth on the grave of the murdered prime minister.

No spin, no photo op; a man unreasonably familiar with bidding farewell to slain heroes, a man in mourning, quietly making tangible a miserable connection."

More: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/26/two_lio...

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Awesome.

[YOY]

2. If that's true, it's heartbreaking.

Rabin kicked ass. His death at the hands of a looney RWer assassin (that his fellow loonies are still trying to free...and that his party claimed it had no connection to) no doubt sparked something.

Perhaps, Ted knew more about their deaths than he let on.

and perhaps it was just a similar enough situation.

[babylonsister]

3. He did so many things w/o benefit of publicity, because they were

the right things to do. This doesn't surprise me, but did clear my tear ducts.

Thanks for this-I had never heard this story before.

[havocmom]

4. A man who saw the connectedness of all things

and spent his life being a conduit for good in the world.

[myrna minx]

5. .

[Hekate]

6. Oh Will...

[Fire1]

7. I can just imagine how many things he did that went

unnoticed, just because they were the right things to do. He was just that kind of person. A good soul with a big heart. Thanks for this, WilliamPitt. I've never heard this story either.

[WilliamPitt]

8. .

[maxpower]

9. What a guy

Too bad it takes death to hear these wonderful stories.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. So there is a little of Arlington at Herzl...

There are many reasons why this is more connected than people realize. And also a link between two slain progressives...

[trof]

11. I've been corresponding with your mom about your grandfather.

Amazing and interesting man.
At the crossroads of history, more than once.

[City Lights]

12. ...

[Sebastian Doyle]

13. Seems an appropriate thing to do

I see a lot of similarities in the JFK assassination and that of Rabin. And tragically, the long term effect that both have had on their respective countries (i.e. neither country seems to come up with a leader since then that isn't sold out to the right wing to one degree or another)

[mopinko]

14. a shopping bag full of heartache.

who many would deign to carry that? and to do so without pomp and circumstance. only a soldier of the heart.

[question everything]

15. Thank you for posting this

and to think that Newt felt slighted on the flight back home and then closed the government..