Reuven Rivlin became Sunday the first Israeli president to attend the annual memorial ceremony to mark the 58th anniversary of the Kfar Kassem during which Israeli border police shot to death 49 Arab Israelis.
He condemned the massacre, calling it a “terrible crime” that weighed heavily on Israel’s collective conscience. But he also demanded that Arab Israeli leaders unequivocally condemn last Wednesday’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem in which a three-month-old Israeli girl, Chaya Zissel Braun, was killed when a Hamas-affiliated Palestinian resident of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan drove his car into a crowd of people in a local light rail station.
“The murder of the baby is shocking and sickening to anyone with a human heart,” he said.
“This murderous attack is another stain in the history of the tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, through which Jews and Arabs have been living and struggling for the past 150 years,” he said. “I came here not in spite of what is happening in Jerusalem but rather in light of the terror and violence rampaging through [the city]. I’ve come to reach out to you in the belief that your hand will extended back to me and the Jewish community.”
Since taking office in July, President Rivlin has made a marked effort to confront racism in Israeli society.
“The Arab population in Israel is not a marginal group,” the president said. “We are destined to live side by side and we share the same fate.”
“The criminal killing that took place in your village is an irregular and dark chapter in the history of the relationship between Arabs and Jews living here,” Rivlin said during the Kfar Kassem ceremony. “A terrible crime was committed here, illegal orders topped by a black flag were given here. We must look directly at what happened. It is our duty to teach this difficult incident and to draw lessons.”
Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, the founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel, addressed the crowd at the event as well, and stressed that he strongly condemned the killing of the Israeli baby. He went on to express hope that Jerusalem would one day become a city of peace and understanding between all religions.
In his address, Kafr Kassem Mayor Adel Badir told Rivlin : “We welcome your presence among us, and ask you to make history,” he said. “If you don’t, no-one else will.”
Badir recalled that Rivlin’s father, Prof. Yosef Yoel Rivlin, had striven to build cultural bridges between the Jewish and Arab communities before the establishment of the state and had chosen to fast on Ramadan when visiting Muslim friends. Badir surmised that Rivlin’s attitude towards equal rights for Arabs derived from what he had learned in his father’s house.
While former Israel president Shimon Peres in 2007 formally expressed regret over the massacre, local residents in Kfar Kassem were eager to see Rivlin apologize for the killings as well.