As Knesset session starts, Speaker vows Jerusalem won’t be ‘cannon fodder’
President Rivlin calls for end to intolerance, says he was dubbed a 'traitor' during the summer conflict
As the Knesset’s winter session commenced on Monday afternoon, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein pledged that the violence in East Jerusalem would be dealt with harshly, as President Reuven Rivlin called on the Knesset members to actively combat racism.
Opening the session, Edelstein addressed the “difficult and complex summer,” in reference to the 50-day summer conflict, during which “the best of our boys paid with their lives.” With regard to the growing tension in East Jerusalem, Edelstein declared: “Ladies and gentlemen, Jerusalem will not become cannon fodder,” and the neighborhoods on its edge “won’t become the Gaza border towns.”
The Knesset speaker also criticized the Tel Aviv municipality for canceling trips to Jerusalem due to security concerns, and said it sent a “negative message of excessive caution.”
Edelstein also addressed PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s recent comments on settlement activity, which accused Israel of an “escalation” in Jerusalem, calling it “cheap demagoguery and slander of the lowest sort.” The Knesset speaker added that despite the lack of a two-state solution in sight, he called for cooperation with the Palestinians over energy, water, and development.
Addressing the Knesset for the first time since he was elected president, Rivlin said the summer conflict brought vehement criticism and racism to the fore, and called on the politicians to speak out against it.
“During this long summer, we knew how to unite against an external enemy,” he said. “But during this summer we dedicated much time, unfortunately, to mark internal enemies as well. ‘Little Jew liar,” my critics said to me, and said: ‘May your name be obliterated, Arab agent,’ ‘Go be a president in Gaza… ‘traitor,’ ‘president of Hezbollah’ and these are only some of the voices.”
But “I am not the only one, I am not alone,” he said, “adding that “we are all equal in the face of violence.”
Rivlin decried the erosion of Jewish and democratic values, and said the Knesset members must speak out against the racism prevalent on social media, at protests, and in schools.
“We cannot be silent. Our silence is dangerous. This institution has seen very difficult discussions, even screaming…. this is the way of politics,” he said. But at this point, it is the silence “which echoes the loudest,” he said.