The last time that scenes of such grief and pain were seen in Israel was the night that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. Yesterday, Nov. 26, as on that night in 1995, people were standing in the Ichilov Hospital Square in Tel Aviv, waiting for someone to emerge and announce that everything would be OK. But then screams of disaster and shock were heard, accompanying the voice bringing evil tidings. Young boys and girls lit candles in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square and sang, "Where are there still people like that man." The television stations interrupted their broadcasts and adopted a mourning format; performances and events were halted and announcements were made to audiences on the loss of the special, prominent voice in their lives. The pain was of an entire country that lost something of itself.
The director of Ichilov Hospital, Gabi Barbash, went out to the journalists who waited in the entrance. In two sentences, Barbash said it all: "Twenty-five minutes ago, we declared the death of Arik Einstein. Now we have no one to sing to us anymore."
