President Reuven Rivlin addressed Shas leader Aryeh Deri’s complaints about his lack of response to the widespread incitement against the religious population during the election campaign on Twitter on Sunday evening.

Deri had written on Twitter on Sunday: “Yesterday, in a shul in Jerusalem, I asked President Reuven Rivlin why he doesn’t protest against the call to boycott the Chareidim. Why doesn’t he demand from Lapid, Gantz and Liberman to refrain from boycotting entire communities only because they are Shomrei Shabbos, put on tefillin and eat kosher? To my sorrow, the president was silent. Reporters who asked for a response were also not answered. Sad.”

Deri later tweeted: “If I would call for a government without Russians, Israel would erupt in a storm. If I would call for a government without Arabs, they would complain against me and perhaps open an investigation into racist incitement. When they call for a secular government, without traditional people, religious people and Chareidim, it’s legitimate in Lapid’s eyes. Double standard.”

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Rivlin responded on Sunday to Deri’s statements: “My friend Rav Aryeh – anyone who knows me is well aware how much it pains me to hear incitement against communities in Israel, among them the Chareidi community, and the level of harsh dialogue that we’ve been dragged into during the election period. No one knows better than you about the activities in the President’s Residence, some carried out together with you as a shared basis between the Chareidi community and other communities in Israel.”

“At my age, I still remember the days of ‘Without Cheirut and without Maki’ [a reference to a refrain that David Ben-Gurion coined in order to discredit Menachem Begin’s right-wing Cheirut party and insinuate that it was as delegitimate as Maki, the Communist party] and I’m pained by what seems to be a painful reminder from different sides of the political map to those statements that were offensive to me then as they are now. In these days of the month of Elul and the election period, I chose to act like the Navi Amos’s statement: ‘The wise one will be silent at that time.'”

Deri responded to Rivlin by writing: “Honored President, there’s a statement in the Gemara ‘מדשתקי רבנן שמע מינה דניחא להו״.’ If the wise ones are silent it means that they agree.”

“When Liberman announced ‘a government without Chareidim’ everyone was silent. And then Lapid and Gantz joined in the boycott of Chareidim as well as the religious and traditional. Half of Am Yisrael is illegitimate in a secular government.”

“Honored President, there are matters on which it’s forbidden to remain silent.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)