Rivlin has fiercely defended the Supreme Court, the rule of law, the Israeli army, the civil service and its gatekeepers, free speech and an independent media. He has stood against racism, Jewish terror and discrimination of Israel’s LGBT community. Last year, from the podium of the Knesset, he railed against the tyranny of the majority and the politicization of Israel’s most basic values. He has stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel’s Arab minority, as he had from his first days as a parliamentarian. He has lobbied on behalf of Reform and Conservative Jews, a position in sharp contrast with his approach before becoming president.
Rivlin knew full well that he would come under fierce attack from right wing loons and their parliamentary representatives after his dramatic intervention on Tuesday against legislation of the so-called Nation-State Law. The last time he expressed opposition to the law a few years ago, Rivlin was branded an anti-Semite and photoshopped in a Nazi uniform. On Tuesday, within minutes of the publication of his letter to the Knesset committee in charge of the Nation-State Law, Twitter erupted with a stream of expletives, including demagogue, charlatan, crook, Jew-hater and prisoner of the left, and these are just the descriptions that are fit to print. Right wing legislators, caught with their pants down, followed in the footsteps of the trolls.
It’s hard to understand how a right-wing coalition that wages eternal war against BDS and its activists is undeterred by the proposed Nation-State Law clause that would allow Jewish local councils to legally exclude Arabs, given the probability that it will provide a justifiable pretext to accuse Israel of apartheid. Even the more moderate members of the coalition are capitulating to the ugly tide of nationalism that is sweeping some parts of the Israeli public and bowing their heads to Netanyahu’s cynical, rabble-rousing machinations.
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