Rivlin slams Haaretz column for 'defamation,' 'vast hatred'

President Reuven Rivlin slams the “defamation” and “vast hatred” contained in a column published by the left-wing newspaper Haaretz on Wednesday.

In his op-ed, columnist Yossi Klein called the nationalist-religious community “more dangerous than Hezbollah, more than drivers in car-ramming attacks or kids with scissors. The Arabs can be neutralized, but [nationalist-religious Israelis] cannot.”

He accused the community of hiding its true intentions, which are “to rule the country and cleanse it of Arabs.”

“Yossi Klein’s words are defamation that exposes a vast hatred and undermines any capacity to dialogue or criticize,” Rivlin says Thursday. “Religious Zionism is part of this land, better and more rooted than all its slanderers.”