At Rabin memorial, Rivlin says democracies must denounce violence

President Reuven Rivlin leads the state tributes to Yitzhak Rabin, telling participants at a memorial service at Mount Herzl cemetery the 1995 assassination of the prime minister was “one of the greatest tragedies to befall the Israeli people.”

Addressing the state memorial marking the 22nd Hebrew anniversary of Rabin’s murder, Rivlin says the 1995 murder was “a moment in which Israeli statehood and democracy came under real danger,” adding that a “robust and lively democracy can and should allow dialogue, even it hurts.”

“But democracy,” he adds, “cannot allow for violence, and furthermore, it must denounce violence from within.”

“That violence, as Rabin said in his very last speech, erodes the foundations of democracy, and undermines pillars on which the State of Israel stands,” Rivlin says.