Former president Yitzhak Navon buried in state ceremony
Israel’s fifth president, who died Friday at 94, remembered by politicians as a beloved leader with moral courage
Former Israeli president Yitzhak Navon, who died Friday at the age of 94, was remembered as a beloved and influential figure Sunday in a funeral attended by current and former leaders of the nation.
Navon’s body lay in state from 9 a.m. until 11 a.m. at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem. At 11:30 the formal ceremony began at the burial site on Mount Herzl, with speeches by President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former president Shimon Peres, cabinet members and family and friends of Israel’s fifth president.
The funeral was open to the public.
Navon’s widow, Miri, expressed gratitude at the funeral for “having won the privilege to be with you and live with you for 20 years. I had the privilege and saw the great, true love the people of this country gave you,” she said. Navon said her husband always strove for equality and fought racism, discrimination, xenophobia and all expressions of violence. “You were a real democrat, a liberal, a feminist and a fighter for justice,” she said.
Navon’s daughter, Na’ama, spoke of the “public dad and personal dad” she grew up with. “My personal dad took me to see cows beig milked when I was a child, so that we would have a strong bond to the land. He never missed a parent-teacher meeting even when he was minister of education,” she said.
“My public father represents the Israeli story, the generation that fought and built. He belonged to the leadership that believed in providing solutions, a leadership that demanded of itself to do the best for coming generations,” she added.
President Reuven Rivlin, addressing Navon, said that he always “shared with you the love for Jerusalem.” He incanted a prayer in Ladino, an ancient Hebrew-Spanish dialect, at the end of his eulogy.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the funeral shortly before taking off to the United States, where he is due to meet with President Barack Obama for the first time in more than a year.
“Ytzhak Navon was a gem among the stones of Jerusalem our capital, Jerusalem played the strings of his soul,” he said. The prime minister said his son Avner once played in “Spanish Grove,” a play written by Navon. “Yitzhak Navon knew well my father’s research on the expulsion of Jews from Spain. We talked about it several times,” Netanyahu said, referring to Navon’s lineage, going back to a family that came to live in Jerusalem in 1620. Netanyahu’s father, Bentzion, was a historian who specialized in the history of the expulsion from Spain and the Murano Jews.
Former president Shimon Peres said Navon “was a president of the people, not just the state. He was beloved by his people because he remained loyal to his path – a path of respect and education for love of the land.
“Like our great teacher [former prime minister] David Ben-Gurion, he studied not only what the people wanted but also what was necessary for the people,” Peres said.
