At least 70,000 people showed up tonight at Rabin Square in a rally marking the 21st anniversary of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination.
The rally this year was organized by the Zionist Camp coalition whose leaders, Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, intended an “apolitical event” in order to attract a wider audience.
This move was criticized by Meretz Chairwoman Zehava Galon, one of tonight’s many speakers:
“How can you put together an apolitical rally in memory of a leader who was assassinated on political grounds.
… The murder was a result of an incitement machine. The prime minister who stood on the balcony and incited back then continues to this day, against the Supreme Court, protectors of the law, human rights organizations, Arab citizens and leftists.
Rabin was a political leader, who was murdered for political reasons, by a political person – because he believed in ending the occupation and the division of the country.”