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Thank you, Ruby: the president who balanced the days when Netanyahu tried to disintegrate Israeliness

In the second half of the Netanyahu era - the man who did everything to prevent him from being elected president - Rivlin was exactly the president we needed: the man who tried to keep the state photographer and the remnants of government sanity - and won.

Not only him, we too.

The full column - today in Maariv

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• Ben Mercury

• Rubi Rivlin

• the president

• Reuven Rivlin

Ben Mercury

Friday, 02 July 2021, 10:20 Updated: 10:23

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A 26-year-old man once stood in front of the President's House in Jerusalem and demonstrated against the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany. The country, like him, was young and innocent. He was an energetic, enthusiastic political activist, an outstanding student of Jabotinsky, the man of majesty, Jerusalem and Betar. His name was Reuven, but the members of Herut knew him as "Ruby". 56 years have passed since then. But for the past seven years he has not been protesting in front of the president's house, but living in it. Everything else has changed beyond recognition. Another Germany, another Israel, the world is completely different. Last Thursday, in his last official activity as president of the Jewish state, Rivlin hosted the same presidential residence. In the same Jerusalem, the President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

A few days before he ended his tenure as the tenth president of the State of Israel, Rivlin told his German counterpart about the way he had gone, that the country had gone, that the world had passed since the Sixties, a time when everyone was demonstrative, just, optimistic and innocent.

"Over the last few years I have gone on a journey with you," Rivlin told Steinmeier, "I have been privileged to walk with you on an instructive journey along the hardest, most painful past common to our two peoples, a journey that has always progressed toward the future."

More on Walla!

On his farewell trip to the United States, Rivlin also celebrated his release from Netanyahu

To the full article

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In the video: Rivlin congratulates Herzog on his election as president (Photo: GPO)

This was not the only perfect closing of the circle that Rivlin had in the twilight of his tenure.

Although it seemed absurd until a few weeks ago, Rivlin's presidency lasted beyond Netanyahu's eternal tenure as prime minister.

Rivlin will not say a word about it, but it seems that this matter did not cost him his health, but quite the opposite.

Netanyahu did everything, including everything, to prevent him from being elected president.

This is despite the fact that Rivlin comes from the same party, from the same Torah, from the same city and from the same habitat.

Netanyahu offered the presidency to every leper, even trying to abolish the Mossad itself, just to get rid of Robbie.

He did it for no apparent real reason, other than pure madness.

At the end of the day, Netanyahu was defeated and Rivlin was elected.

Netanyahu was unable to get rid of Ruby.

In fact, Ruby is the one who got rid of Netanyahu.

We'll get back to that, and in detail.

Exactly the president we needed at this time.

Rivlin (Photo: Government Press Office)

He does not deserve Rivlin to summarize his tenure only according to Netanyahu's clock.

He was a worthy, good, honorable and honorable president.

Exactly the president we needed at this time.

I was ashamed, I did not support his choice.

I thought he was too right-wing, too nationalistic, too sentimental, laden with too much pathos.

He was one of the few who dared to oppose, more than seven years ago, the two-state solution and to think out loud about the one-state option.

We, who have become accustomed to blatant right-wingers adapting their opinions and actions to circumstances and reality, did not know how to eat Rivlin who rose up and rebelled even with his close friend and admirer, Ariel Sharon, when it decided to turn over the settlement enterprise and carry out the disengagement.

Today, at the end of an exhausting tenure, laden with hair-raising dramas, upheavals and transformations, there is no choice but to admit with a full mouth: I was wrong.

The kingdom defeated the king.

Netanyahu and Rivlin (Photo: Official Website, Roi Avraham, GPO)

Rivlin was the sane, unifying and necessary state alternative in the second half of the Netanyahu era, in which the prime minister became a violent virus fighting the host body and stormed in full force on the delicate and important fabric that holds us together here.

Rivlin was the balancing, absorbing, reassuring factor that tried to keep the state photographer and the remnants of government sanity.

He was the soul machine within the general sense of suffocation that surrounded us.

Although in recent years he seemed to be losing, in the end he won.

Not just him.

We too.

The kingdom defeated the king.

Right and left, center and periphery people, ultra-Orthodox and secular, religious Zionism, Arabs, Ashkenazis and Sephardim.

Anyone who thinks that Israel is above all, that the state is more important than its leaders.

Anyone who believes we should continue to live here together.

All of these breathed a sigh of relief three weeks ago.

Rivlin, too.

The full column today in Maariv

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