Washington Post Gives Israeli President-Elect Reuven Rivlin the Full Snide Treatment

Question: Would Booth and the Post give Mahmoud Abbas this kind of cynical treatment?

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
12 June '14..

Reuven Rivlin, the speaker of Israel’s Parliament for the last 10 years, has been chosen by his colleagues in the Knesset to succeed Shimon Peres as Israel’s 10th president. Rivlin is not well known on the international scene, but he has an impressive legislative and political record at home.

A native of Jerusalem, Rivlin has been a veteran member of the center-right Likud party. He first was elected to the Knesset in 1988 and rose to the speakership after the 2003 elections.

He is generally regarded as a fair speaker pleasing and displeasing both the left and the right. He didn’t gain popularity by resisting the expulsion of an Arab lawmaker who joined an anti-Israel flotilla that sought to break the siege of Gaza. He also resisted removal of the pension of a former lawmaker who fled Israel and assisted Hezbollah during the 2006 Second Lebanon War against Israel.

Rivlin opposed then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to deport thousands of Jews from Gaza, correctly siding with those who warned that unilateral disengagement would turn out to be a huge strategic mistake. Rivlin also clashed with Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak over the court’s authority to invalidate laws passed by the Knesset.

And he has not shied away from tangling with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even though they’re both veteran Likudniks.

Given such a résumé, how does the Washington Post report Rivlin’s accession to Israel’s presidency, a largely ceremonial post but one that has gained more visibility under Shimon Peres, who hasn’t shied away from asserting his own political views?

Far from focusing on Rivlin’s political and legislative record, William Booth, the Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief, engages in a sophomoric exercise of mockery and snide asides. Booth definitely prefers Peres over Rivlin. While Peres is “courtly and cerebral,” Booth dismisses Rivlin as a “hard-liner,” a “hard-right native son,” who’s averse to a two-state solution. The pejorative “hard-liner” label also is served up in the headline, “Parliament elects hard-liner Rivlin as Israel’s next president -- Successor to Peres has had stormy relationship with Netanyahu” June 11, Page A7.

Among the negatives trotted out by Booth is Rivlin’s support of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital --- never mind that retention of a united Jerusalem enjoys broad consensus among Israelis.

Reuven (Ruby) Rivlin, Modest, Zionist, Jewish

...And now Israel has gained him as president. The man who has visited Jabotinsky's grave on Mount Herzl and the ancient synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem more than once will proudly carry the tidings of Jerusalem and his Jewish commitment to it. We will all benefit.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
11 June '14..

Reuven (Ruby) Rivlin will be a centrist president, just like in Yehuda Amichai's poem about Jerusalem, his great love, that he has quoted more than once: "Why is Jerusalem always two, of above and of below / and I want to live in Jerusalem of in between / without hitting my head above without injuring my foot below."

He knows now to give audiences a feeling of belonging, which Shimon Peres, who is widely esteemed internationally, was as far from being able to do as New York is from Paris or Jerusalem is from Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood. Rivlin will speak to the citizens of Israel in "Jewish," and, like Menachem Begin, will pepper his speeches with biblical references and Jewish references and will take care not to desecrate the Sabbath publicly.

The president-elect wouldn't dare to celebrate birthdays with the same ostentation that marked Peres' 90th birthday party, because he just isn't like that. Rivlin is one of the people, and even if he has been "lifted," he'll remember where he came from. He might even continue living in his own apartment and commute to work at the President's Residence every day.

As president, Rivlin (full disclosure, we are friends) will not torpedo military operations in Iran. He will remain loyal to his legacy and his ideology; visit settlements and feel their pain and rejoice in their growth. In his heart, he will continue to mourn for Gush Katif, which is no longer, but he'll also know -- and recently said -- that "the obligation of the elected government to govern requires the president to give appropriate support to all its decisions, even when they don't match his personal position." Will his opinions pop up from time to time during his presidency? It's entirely possible, but there is nothing wrong with that. Peres and Weizman from the Left aren't the only ones who are allowed to do this.

The new President of Israel deserves respect by Vic Rosenthal

...“Not good enough?” Can you imagine Rabbi Yoffie interviewing Barack Obama before his election and then judging his answers “not good enough?” I can’t either.

Reuven Rivlin, newly elected
President of the State of Israel

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
11 June '14..

Reuven ‘Ruby’ Rivlin has been elected President of Israel, and it warms my heart to see an admirer of Jabotinsky replace the dangerous Shimon Peres, about whom the best I can say is “at least he’s not a convicted rapist.”

But rather than dump on Peres, to whom I wish a peaceful (and quiet) retirement, I want to use this opportunity to go after another of my favorite targets: the remarkable arrogance of the American Reform movement, which, despite its total ignorance of Israeli security issues, politics and culture, thinks that it has the right to dictate to Israel in every sphere, from its relationship to the Palestinians to the behavior of women at the Kotel.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the former President of the Union for Reform Judaism, has a problem with Rivlin, which he expressed last week in an article for Ha’aretz:

I have a question for Knesset member Reuven “Ruby” Rivlin: If he is elected president of the State of Israel, will he address Reform rabbis by the title “rabbi”?

I ask this question now, because I have asked it before, to no avail. In 2007, I was the leader of the North American Reform Judaism movement. Rivlin had announced his intention to run against Shimon Peres for president. I visited his office and asked for his assurance that he would use my rabbinic title following his election. He hedged. I asked twice more, and he still hedged. The best he would do is say that as president of Israel, his door would be open to all segments of the Jewish people.

Not good enough. I left disappointed and dismayed.

“Not good enough?” Can you imagine Rabbi Yoffie interviewing Barack Obama before his election and then judging his answers “not good enough?” I can’t either.

Fallen major’s widow pleads for Pollard, not for own home

Widow of Golani Brigade Maj. Eliraz Peretz, doesn't ask Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin to save her home from imminent demolition.


Tova Lazaroff
JPost
08 April '10

Shlomit Peretz, the widow of Golani Brigade Maj. Eliraz Peretz, did not ask Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin to save her home from imminent demolition, when he sat in her living room on Thursday, in the unauthorized Givat Hayovel outpost on the outskirts of the Eli settlement.

On the wall was a large Israel flag that the couple had used as their wedding canopy.To ward off the chill, she wore a green fleece jacket. She grasped a plastic cup filled with water.

Her husband, 31, was killed in action in the southern Gaza Strip on March 26, along with St.-Sgt. Ilan Sviatkovsky, 21. On Thursday, politicians made their way to her two-story stone home to speak with her and her four young children.

Of her husband, Shlomit told Rivlin, “He was willing to pay the price and what happened, happened.”

What was important now was to “continue in his path,” she said. “I have to be a vessel to his memory.

“He can not work physically in this world, but I am here to be a vessel for all the things that he wanted to do.”

Among these, she noted, was his desire to have 12 children of his own and to adopt a child.

“There is one thing that I will ask of you,” she told the Likud lawmaker.

“One of the ethics that was very strong for Eliraz was not to leave people behind on the battlefield,” said Shlomit who described how he had helped evacuate his wounded friends from areas under fire.

“The state has left someone in the field for 25 years. If we could return him home, it would be a form of comfort for us,” she said.

(Read full article)
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