During the reign of Shimon Peres, now Israel's former president, the state was burdened by a man whose self-flattery destroyed the office.
From the beginning, Israel's presidency has been an almost non-political one; the president was a meeter and greeter of foreign dignitaries.
Peres, to the embarrassment of many Israelis, apparently thought his role similar to American presidents, and in the process, did as much damage to Israel as America's incumbent is doing to the United States.
Fortunately the presidency is time limited and Peres' term is, thankfully, over.
In his place Knesset Members (MK) - not the public - elected a former MK to represent Israel to the world for the next seven years.
Hopefully, Reuven Rivlin will restore honor to the office.
Changing of the guard
According to ABC News,
Israel's parliament on Tuesday chose Reuven Rivlin, a veteran nationalist politician and supporter of the Jewish settlement movement, as the country's next president, putting a man opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state into the ceremonial but influential post.
Rivlin, a stalwart in the governing Likud Party, now faces the difficult task of succeeding Shimon Peres, a Nobel peace laureate who became an all-star on the international stage.
The second paragraph of the ABC piece offers a hint of ABC's political leanings. Peres, then Foreign Minister, was given the Nobel prize in 1994, a prize he shared with then Israel Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, and the Egyptian terrorist Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa (a/k/a Yasser Arafat). This is the same prize that the U.S. president was given after less than a year in office, suggesting that in both cases the prize was granted prematurely.
Hopefully Rivlin will not, as Peres did, tell a person who had the audacity to challenge his opinion to Go back where you came from.
Rivlin who most assuredly has political opinions must understand that those opinions must be shared with the world through a proxy; that the presidency is ceremonial.
The government rests in the hands of the prime minister and his hand-picked yes men (and women). As with the current U.S. president, all power (for now) rests in the hands of the country's chief executive.
If Rivlin can restrict himself to the duties of the presidency then he may go down as the president who restored honor to the office, an office tarnished by Peres who apparently forgot his career as an MK was over before his MK cronies awarded him the prize of the presidency..
