Joseph:
I have no idea if two major roshei yeshivos said this story over. All I know is that you, an anonymous poster, claim that two roshei yeshivos said it over. There is not exactly a plethora of their talmidim sitting next to me for me to ask, and even if I did have access to someone, it wold be hard for me to report it here without causing my own anonymity to be placed at risk, and even more so, it wouldn’t necessarily prove anything because a talmid not hearing it (or remembering it) doesn’t mean it wasn’t said. So based on the very small amount of evidence in favor of the stories, combined with the very strong evidence against the story, I cannot accept the stories as evidence of great rabbis bashing R’ Kook.
Regarding the letter from the Chofetz Chaim’s son-in-law, where exactly do you expect it to have appeared before it was printed in sefarim documenting the situation with R’ Kook?
Regarding the story about the knessia, there is an early, non-Zionist source. In ??? ????? ??? ????? ??? ??? ???? published in 1937, R’ Moshe Meir Yoshor writes (p. 160):
??? ???? ??? ???? ???”? ???? ??? ??? ???? ??? ????? ??? ????? ??? ??? ????? ?????? ??? ????? ????? ??? ?? ??????? ??????? ?? ?????? ??? ??? ? ???? ??????????? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???? ??????????? ??? ??? ???????? ?????? ??????? ???? ??? ????? ??????
I also posted a letter from the Chofetz Chaim himself to R’ Kook. The claim that the Chofetz Chaim would badmouth someone whom he knew back in Europe, (and knew that he was a talmid chacham) and that he would even believe the report in the first place, is an extraordinary claim and as such would require extraordinary evidence. I think in this case the extraordinary evidence is against the story.
Regarding R’ Soloveitchik’s view of R’ Kook:
Even if I grant that the quote from Thinking Aloud is 100% accurate and reflects R’ Soloveitchik’s official position on the matter, it is not a source which delegitimizes R’ Kook; it simply says that R’ Soloveitchik was not particularly awed by R’ Kook’s intellectual greatness. Now it happens to be that I am not ready to grant that this quote accurately reflects R’ Soloveitchik’s official position on the matter, for the reasons I mentioned in my last post (and yes, there is a big difference between an off-the-cuff discussion and a prepared talk/written essay). Furthermore, I will now add that there is a different recording of R’ Soloveitchik where you can hear him talk about R’ Kook, and you will see what he held of him (though it is not a praise of intellectual greatness). Here is a link (Moderators, there is nothing at the link other than a play button to hear the recording, if you want to allow it. If not, you can just edit out the link and I will try to transcribe the recording in a future post, though the link would be much appreciated): http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/c/2/7/c2793c7709ef7f97/Fri_16_06_06-ebick_erevshabbatbehaalot.mp3?c_id=1555275&expiration=1429415778&hwt=e922f07611f9bebac9b10a481cd9468c The discussion about R’ Kook begins at about 16:20.
And about the kol korei, your response does not address my point. The vast majority of people only saw the kol korei as printed by R’ Kasher. Which means that you have all these religious Zionists (and probably even non-Zionists and anti-Zionists) who now think that all these great rabbis signed a kol korei which said “aschalta d’geula”. These people would have no idea that this kol korei was a forged conglomeration of other things. So if Zvi Weinman informed all these rabbis of this situation, the rabbis should have done everything in there ability to correct a widespread belief that is antithetical to Torah. Speaking of the claims in general, if Weinman actually provided documentation of the original kol korei’s, it shouldn’t be that hard for someone to put it on the internet. All someone needs to do is scan the page, or take a picture of the page, or even type up the page. Note, I am not saying that this proves that Weinman did not document it; I am merely pointing out that it is odd that I can’t find it on the internet. You would think that some anti-Zionist site would want to post actual proof.