In a closed session with journalists last week held in honor of Israel Independence Day, for which The Tower was in attendance, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin shared his pride in being an Israeli and in Israel’s status as a Jewish and democratic state.

I must say I was born nine years before the announcement of the independence of Israel, as a state, and I was among those people who were here to watch the flag [go] up and the British flag went down. …

When I see the Israeli flag along with the Israeli anthem … every time that I hear that … tears are getting down from my eyes, because for me til now it’s not obvious that the Israeli flag is observed and we are actually in a position when everyone recognizes Israel is a fact and Israel would last forever…

[W]e are doing the best trying to convince everyone around us that Israel is a fact and that they have to take into consideration. They have to face it as much as we have to face that Israel is a democracy … as much as that we are very proud of a Jewish state. We are saying that it is a Jewish democratic state … that there is no gap between Jewish state and democratic state. … Those two values are very dear to us and we have to watch and to keep them very precise, in the way of saying that the Jewish people have the right to recognize, to define themselves as a nation, not only as a religion as much as that and along with that going together.

We have established a Jewish state that will be a democracy and everyone is a part of the Israeli experience, whether he is a Jew, Christian or Muslim; whether he is an Arab or Israeli; every citizen in Israel has the same rights, same responsibility as much as rights … in the state of Israel.

During the session Rivlin also endorsed Pope Francis’ comment that the Armenian genocide was “the first genocide of the Twentieth Century.”

[Photo: President Reuven “Ruby” Rivlin / YouTube ]