In interview with Haaretz, President Reuven Rivlin opens up about his working relationship with the prime minister, his vision for the country and hate crimes against Palestinians.
The arson attack that killed 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsheh in the West Bank last Friday shocked President Reuven Rivlin, but it hardly surprised him. For years, he has been monitoring closely the escalating number of racist and physical attacks on innocent Palestinians, and he has tried to convince settlers to renounce such actions.
“I know [the settlers] from the days when I would travel around Samaria,” Rivlin told Haaretz in an interview this week, “and would say to them we don’t need to build the land [of Israel] out of revenge or ‘price tag’ attacks – we are building the country because of our love for Israel, and because the entire world understands the moral side of the existence of the State of Israel.
“To throw a firebomb into a house where people might be is an atrocious act, there are no other words for it. Firstly, this horror damages the morality of our desire to settle in the Land of Israel,” said Rivlin.
The president’s strong, unambiguous words about the attack triggered dozens of death threats against him this week, mostly on social media sites. “On a personal level, I’m not someone who is caught up in any such fears. I don’t suffer from paranoia,” he said about the threats. “This atmosphere is mostly from people who are not willing to hear anything but what they want to hear.”
Rivlin rejects out of hand claims heard from right-wingers this week that he was inciting against the settlers. “First, there are acts of terror and then they say we’re ‘inciting against the right and settlers.’ No, no. We are not inciting against the settlers, but speaking out against terror … We need, as a country, as a people and as moral [people], to prevent every possibility of terror. Jewish terrorism is a danger to the State of Israel, just as Arab terrorism is,” he said.
“Since I have never been a commentator, I only say these things – you can interpret them as you wish. Especially since, today, Netanyahu is the leader of Israel’s political system with no replacement [in sight]. I told him many times, ‘One of your tragedies is that you don’t have a rival, since if you had a [potential] replacement, you would be a thousand times better.’”