Rivlin: No need for Arabs to sing national anthem

President Reuven Rivlin says Israel’s Arab citizens need not sing the country’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” which speaks of the “Jewish soul” and its yearning for the land, Ynet reports.

“Every time I sing ‘Hatikvah,’ I’m moved,” he tells high school students in Jerusalem, “but I know that my non-Jewish friends don’t have a ‘yearning Jewish soul.’

President Reuven Rivlin at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem (photo credit: Hadas Parush/Flash90)

“I must insist on singing my anthem everywhere I go, but there is no need to force anyone else to sing these words,” continues Rivlin, in an apparent reference to Arab Knesset members’ conspicuous absence from the plenum during the singing of the anthem at a swearing-in ceremony for MKs.

“We live in a gallery of cultures, as citizens of the same state, which obliges all of us to listen to one another,” he says.