The Guardian Proclaims The President of Israel as a Hero of 2014
A Short Comment by Gilad Atzmon
Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian’s prime Hasbara mouthpiece, praised Israeli President Reuven ‘Ruvi’ Rivlin yesterday. Freedland wrote that that in spite of being a “lifelong member of Israel’s Likud party, and on the right of that rightwing bloc… ever since his elevation to Israel’s largely ceremonial presidency in June he (President Rivlin) has acted as something like his country’s conscience.”
Let’s examine how Freedland justifies his dubious choice for 2014’s hero.
In November the Israeli cabinet backed a Jewish state bill that would enshrine discrimination against Israel’s 1.7 million Arab citizens, denying them the full rights of citizenship accorded to Jews. Liberals and leftists denounced the bill, but, according to Freedland, “ the most potent attack came from the presidential mansion.” Freedland doesn’t tell the entire truth. The Israeli ‘liberals’ (such as war criminal Tzipi Livini) and the hawk President who opposed the bill, didn’t deny that Israel is a Jewish State, instead they argued that Israel is the Jewish State anyway and the National Bill didn’t add any new powers.
Though President Rivlin spoke in favour of civil rights, his primary argument was with the true meaning of the new bill – it exposed the deep intrinsic discrepancy between ‘Jewishness’ and ‘democracy’. Speaking against the bill, Rivlin wondered, “Does this proposal (The National Bill) not in fact encourage us to seek contradiction between the Jewish and democratic characteristics of the state?” Yes it does.
