Reminiscing about Rivlin
Now that he is no longer in office, many people are trotting out with Reuven Rivlin anecdotes, many of which are being made public for the first time.
Retired journalist and former executive director of the New Israel Fund Eliezer Yaari lives some 400 meters from the southeastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Bahir, part of which was appropriated to create East Talpiot. Also close by is Kibbutz Ramat Rahel. Without any particular plan in mind, Yaari, on his daily walks, started to drop into Sur Bahir and talk to the residents about their feelings, their relations with their Jewish neighbors and their hopes. He had not realized before to what extent Jews and Arabs are integrated in different fields of activity. One resident sent him to another, and before he knew it, he had enough material for a book, which he wrote – first in Hebrew, then in English – under the title Beyond the Mountains of Darkness.
When the book was first published in 2015, Yaari, like other writers who are interested in boosting the sales of their books, sent a letter to Rivlin asking if he could personally deliver the book, whose contents he explained, and be photographed with the president. He was astonished by Rivlin’s reply. Rivlin said he would be happy to receive the book and be photographed on condition that Yaari could arrange a meeting at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel with people from Talpiot and Sur Bahir.
The kibbutz was happy to cooperate. So were people from Talpiot. But the residents of Sur Bahir were suspicious of Rivlin’s motives. It took a lot of work on Yaari’s part to convince them that Rivlin’s motives were pure.
In the end, in mid-June of 2015, Rivlin came to Ramat Rahel, where people from Talpiot and Sur Bahir were gathered, and spoke to them in Hebrew and Arabic. He asked a lot of questions, and he listened carefully to the answers, especially to those of Sur Bahir residents. The meeting lasted two hours, but as far as Yaari is aware, it was not published in any newspaper.
With hindsight, Yaari believes that it was an important turning point in confidence-building measures. The people from Sur Bahir understood that Rivlin was genuinely interested in their well-being and ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
President Isaac Herzog, when he was Labor leader, also won the trust of certain Palestinians whom he helped in resolving humane problems, and no doubt will continue to use his influence to help on humane grounds, when such help is needed.
STRANGELY, THERE was no Twitter or Facebook comment from Rivlin in the aftermath of the Euro 2020 final in which Italy beat England and took home the cup. Rivlin, who is an avid soccer fan, was doubtless glued to his television set, and ordinarily would have been called on by electronic media journalists, or would have offered a kick-by-kick analysis of the game on his social media platforms; but for whatever reason, he remained out of the public eye and ear.
MEA CULPA. In the news pages of The Jerusalem Post last week, an article about Isaac Herzog erroneously stated that he was the third Sabra president. In fact, he’s the fourth. Because presidents Yitzhak Navon and Rivlin were born in Jerusalem, there is a tendency to overlook Ezer Weizman, who was born in Tel Aviv and raised in Haifa.
HERZOG’S FIRST official duty was to speak at a memorial event for Revisionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky. It should be remembered that Herzog is a former leader of the Labor Party, but then again it should also be remembered that Jabotinsky’s remains were brought to Israel by Labor prime minister Levi Eshkol. Jabotinsky died in New York in August 1940, and had stipulated in his will that his remains should not be transferred until such time as a Jewish state was established. Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, refused to have him reinterred, but when Menachem Begin appealed to the softhearted Eshkol, he readily agreed, and Jabotinsky’s remains were brought to Mount Herzl in July 1964.
YAD VASHEM is also located on Mount Herzl, and many visiting heads of state, prime ministers and diplomats, after visiting Yad Vashem, continue to a nearby grove, specially reserved for them, and plant a sapling.
Just as Herzog and Rivlin established a tradition of the passing of the presidential standard by the outgoing president to the incoming president, so Herzog, with the encouragement of his friend Yaakov Hagoel, established a tree-planting tradition, in that the president of Israel also plants a sapling to join those planted by world leaders. It was Hagoel, who is chairman of the World Zionist Organization and acting chairman of the Jewish Agency, who suggested that Herzog plant a sapling in the grove reserved for national leaders and diplomats.
The idea was actually conceived as a means of rectifying a mistake by Zionist visionary Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl. During his visit to Jerusalem in 1898, Herzl planted what he presumed to be a cedar tree and wrote about it in his diary. But over the years it transpired that the sapling that he planted was in fact a cypress. In honor of Herzl, Herzog planted the sapling of a cedar.
Over the coming seven years, it won’t be Herzog’s last tree-planting effort. When Shimon Peres was president, he introduced tree planting by presidents, popes and princes in the garden of the President’s Residence, and he, and later Rivlin, joined various dignitaries in putting a hoe and a spade to the earth.
SEVERAL WORLD leaders who only a week or two ago were writing or telephoning Rivlin to bid farewell, were since last Wednesday writing or phoning congratulatory messages to Herzog. Among the people with whom he spoke were King Abdullah of Jordan and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Herzog assured Abbas that he would follow the example of his predecessors and remain in touch with him in the hope of finding a path to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
What may amaze some people who are aware of the tensions between Turkey and Israel is that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is certainly not known for being well disposed toward Israel, was included among Herzog’s interlocutors. The two presidents held a long conversation and agreed that the bilateral relationship of their countries is extremely important for the security and stability of the region.
ON WEDNESDAY evening of this week, Herzog will be the guest of honor of French Ambassador Eric Danon at the Bastille Day reception which the ambassador will host at his residence in Jaffa. Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar is also expected to attend as the representative of the government. Coincidentally, Herzog and Sa’ar enjoy a longtime friendship with each other, and have similar professional and political backgrounds, although their political affiliations are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
In the course of the evening, Danon will confer the title and decoration of Knight of the French Legion of Honor on Tel Aviv-Jaffa Mayor Ron Huldai. This is the highest civic honor that France can bestow on a noncitizen, and it is being given to Huldai in recognition of his major contribution to the bilateral cultural enhancement and advancement between Israel and France.
ALTHOUGH IT has been operating for some months from the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, from where its flag was visible at the top of the mast pole, the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates is being officially opened this week.
It must have been a dizzying experience for Ambassador Mohamed Al Khaja to meet the members of the former government before it was voted out of office, despite the fact that the Likud was way ahead of any other party in the number of Knesset seats that it won, and then have to get to know the new government in such a short period.
One thing is certain. He has not been wasting his time since his arrival in Israel at the beginning of March, and has been exploring the country’s diversity in many fields.
WHILE SOME veteran Likudiks have left the party, Moshe Feiglin, who never enjoyed a good relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu, has returned, saying that the Likud today is not the Likud of yesteryear.
Moreover, he asserts that the current government launched a putsch and has no legitimacy, particularly in view of the fact that the prime minister’s party received only six seats in the Knesset. There is something wrong with the system, he contends, if the Likud received far more votes than other parties, yet the leader of a party that received only six Knesset seats is prime minister.
Feiglin is not whitewashing Netanyahu, and still believes that Netanyahu was wrong in exchanging more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners in return for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit.
APROPOS SCHALIT, who was recently married, Ronnie Shiner, one of his former girlfriends, has been appointed parliamentary assistant to Meretz MK and faction head Michal Rozin, whom she admires greatly.
THERE ARE at least two sides to every story, and according to former MK Yehudah Glick, who was arrested by police while giving a ride to a Palestinian whose documents were not in order and who was illegally in the country, the police are not telling the truth about the incident. Their version of the story was released to the media, while Glick was still in handcuffs and had no access to the press to tell his version.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been arrested. A fervent, longtime advocate for a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, Glick has previously been arrested for his activities there, but this time, according to him, he was arrested for doing his civic duty. Following his release, he told his story to various media outlets, and it was corroborated by his wife, Hadas, who was interviewed separately.
WHETHER IN the East or the West, there are always venture capitalists heading global companies who want to either employ or buy out Israelis. Last week, there was the announcement that former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, who has minimal if any experience in investment or the nitty-gritty of technology but is very good at making connections, was hired to head the Israel office of SoftBank. That may be the reason that Masayoshi Son, who heads SoftBank, the world’s largest venture capital company specializing in technologies, decided to hire him.
Son already has several major investments in Israel, and has also dealt with Israelis living in the US such as WeWork founder Adam Neumann, who was ousted from the company after it was bought out by Softbank. There was an acrimonious battle between him and the Japanese billionaire, but they eventually settled their differences and resumed their friendship, even though Neumann was not reinstated.
Now American-based (but Israeli-led) GigCapital, which is involved in technology, media, telecom, special purpose acquisition companies, health and more, has appointed former Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman Tov as a director of the company.
A distinguished visiting fellow of the Institute of National Security Studies, Bar Siman Tov was a frequent figure on television in the initial phase of the COVID19 pandemic, and spearheaded several national efforts to prevent its spread. Before joining the Health Ministry in 2015, he spent 11 years at the Finance Ministry and served also as economic attaché at the Israel Embassy in Washington.
Curiously, on the day following the announcement of his new appointment, he was interviewed on electronic media and was asked his opinion about the most recent Health Ministry decisions on vaccinations. It was quite a lengthy interview, and Bar Siman Tov sounded so au fait with the current situation that one might think that he was still part of the Health Ministry triumvirate.
NEW SOUTH Wales in Australia is not to be confused with South Wales, a territorial region of Wales, which borders England and is the most heavily populated area in the country. While Israeli broadcasters do not translate New York as York Hahadash, they seem to think that New South Wales, deserves translation. Worse still, they translate only the latter two words, omitting all reference to “New.”
New South Wales is a state on the east coast of the island continent, sandwiched between Queensland in the north and Victoria in the south. Its population is in excess of eight million, and its capital is Sydney. It was founded as a British penal colony in 1788 after James Cook, a British explorer, charted the unmapped eastern coast of the continent previously known as New Holland, having been initially discovered by a series of Dutch explorers, the first of whom was Willen Janszoon in 1505.
The indigenous aborigines, who had lived on the continent for thousands of years, were no match for the white conquerors from Europe, who killed many of them and confined others to reservations, thereby curbing their nomadic existence. Going on walkabout is a rite of passage in aboriginal culture. Aboriginal mythology and religion are referred to as Dreamtime.
Though many aboriginals have become westernized and have entered the white-collar professions of the white man, others continue to practice the traditions of their respective tribes. This is most commonly expressed in aboriginal art.
New South Wales has recorded 77 new COVID-19 cases and one death, and the premier doesn’t expect the numbers to fall anytime soon. On Sunday morning, Gladys Berejiklian said she expected many more cases over the coming days. “I’m anticipating the numbers in New South Wales will be greater than 100 tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll be shocked if it’s less than 100 this time tomorrow.”
THE INTEGRITY of Polish Ambassador Marek Magierowski has been previously noted in this column, and in light of controversies surrounding any suggestion that Poles collaborated with the occupying German forces during the Holocaust era, his honesty and courage deserve further mention.
In the Jedwabne massacre, at least 340 Jewish men, women and children were murdered by some 40 ethnic Poles, while German military police looked on and witnessed the pogrom. Three hundred of the victims were locked in a barn that was set on fire.
The horrific incident lay dormant in the consciousness of the Polish people while Poland was under Nazi and later Communist rule, but from approximately 1999 onward, there was considerable interest, as filmmakers, academics and authors began exploring Poland’s wartime history and coming up with unsavory episodes.
There is no doubt that the Poles themselves suffered terribly under the Germans, but there is equally no doubt that some of them of them were no less barbaric than their Nazi persecutors in inflicting harm on Jews.
Following a three-year investigation by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, which confirmed the identity and culpability of the perpetrators of the Jedwabne massacre, post-Communist Poles went into shock.
At a memorial ceremony in Jedwabne in 2001, then-president Aleksander Kwasniewski publicly apologized on behalf of the people of Poland, and 10 years later, the apology was repeated by then-president Bronislaw Komorowski, who has been criticized for doing so by current Polish President Andrzej Duda.
Magierowski, who likes to strike a balance, and who is proud of the thousands of Poles who risked their own lives and those of their families to save Jews, tweeted in relation to Jewabne that while he admires the conduct of thousands of Poles toward Jews during the war, there have also been dark chapters and horrific events in the common history of Jews and Poles. In commemorating the Jewish victims of the Jedwabne massacre on its 80th anniversary, Magierowski wrote, “We do not forget.”
ON A somewhat happier note that is related to the Holocaust, Jonny Daniels – a London-born Israeli activist who is living in Poland, the country from which his grandfather fled, and where Daniels works to honor Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust, rescues old Jewish cemetery headstones which have been used to pave roads, organizes trips to Poland by people of influence to help him fight antisemitism and nonrecognition of people who risked their lives to save Jews – hosted a party to celebrate the bat mitzvah of his eldest daughter, Michali. Guests included Jews and gentiles.
In recognition of what he does to help Righteous Among the Nations, financially, physically and in giving them the recognition they deserve, he was presented with honorary membership and a commemorative medal by the Polish Association of the Righteous Among Nations, which is run entirely by the last of the living among these heroes of humanity.
He is particularly appreciative of the fact that among the Righteous who attended was Jozef Walaszczyk, who is 102 years old and is believed to be the oldest living Righteous in the world. During the Second World War, he saved 54 Jews.
Daniels is also exceedingly proud of Michali, who asked that all the money that she received in bat mitzvah gifts be used for the welfare of the Righteous.
IN THE fast-moving pace of life today, people who leave any kind of enterprise, no matter how highly respected they were, or what position they occupied, are quickly forgotten. Not so Avner Shalev, who during his 27-year career at the helm of the Yad Vashem Directorate helped to bring about a complete transformation of global Holocaust remembrance, education research and documentation.
He created a new museum complex on the Mount of Remembrance, including the world-class Holocaust History Museum and Museum of Holocaust Art; he invested resources in expanding Yad Vashem’s Archives; and he brought Yad Vashem into the 21st century, creating an online presence in eight languages and a social media network spanning multiple platforms in order to make Yad Vashem’s unrivaled assets available to interested parties around the world.
In addition to the commemorative aspects that Shalev instituted, he understood the need for a central location for Holocaust education and study, which prompted him to establish Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies and International Institute for Holocaust Research, in order to ensure that memory and meanings of the Holocaust, of both its victims and its survivors, could and would be transmitted to future generations for decades to come.
Throughout his tenure, Shalev received recognition from international governments and heads of state, including the Spanish Prince of Asturias Award, the French Legion of Honor and Israel’s Presidential Medal of Distinction.
This past winter marked the conclusion of his illustrious career as Yad Vashem chairman, but his contributions to disseminating the relevance of the Holocaust continue to be recognized.
During his state visit to Israel at the beginning of this month, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, at a special event held at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, presented Shalev with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, which is the highest tribute awarded to an individual.
In addition, last week on July 5, a square in the coastal town of Torremolinos (located in the southeastern Andalusian region of Spain) was dedicated in honor of Avner Shalev in his presence. It is now known as Avner Shalev Yad Vashem Jerusalem Square, and includes a 7-meter-tall sculpture of the Yad Vashem Menorah, a six-branched candelabra symbolizing the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust.
In thanking both the president of Germany and the mayor of Torremolinos for these latest honors, Shalev noted that he saw these honors not only with regard to himself, but as a recognition of the outstanding efforts of Yad Vashem on the global stage and another example of the importance these countries attach to its ongoing efforts in the fields of Holocaust remembrance and education.