BICOM

President Reuven Rivlin yesterday expressed deep regret at an annual memorial ceremony marking the killing of 49 Israeli Arabs by Border Police in 1956 and underscored the importance of the Arab community within Israeli society.

Rivlin became the first sitting Israeli president to attend the event. It marks the shooting of dozens of Kfar Kassem residents including women and children by Border Policemen who opened fire saying that locals had broken a curfew. Eight officers were sentenced to prison sentences ranging from seven to seventeen years. Yesterday, Rivlin said that, “A terrible crime was committed here” and that, “It is our duty to teach this difficult incident and draw conclusions.”

Although opposed to a Palestinian state, former-Likud MK Rivlin has frequently championed Arab minority rights and spoken out against so-called ‘Price Tag’ attacks aimed at Arabs. He said yesterday that although the State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, it “will also always be the homeland of the Arab population.” He continued, “The Arab population is not a marginal group in Israeli society,” and lamented that, “Many of them experience not uncommon manifestations of racism and arrogance on the part of Jews.”

Because, said Rivlin, “We are destined to live side by side,” he called for an end to violence between Arabs and Jews. He called the Kfar Kassem killings “an irregular and dark chapter in the history of the relationship between Arabs and Jews living here.” Equally, he said the terror attack last week in Jerusalem, which saw an Arab Jerusalemite ram his car into a crowd of commuters, killing a three-month-old baby “is shocking and sickening to anyone with a human heart.”

Rivlin said he had come to Kfar Kassem in light of the current violence in Jerusalem “to reach out to you in the belief that your hand will extended back to me and the Jewish community.” He hoped all Israelis can “reach out a hand and stop the cycle of bloodshed.”