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Twitter is poking fun at President Joe Biden for stumbling on his "note cards" during a meeting with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin.

As Yesh Atid party leader MK Yair Lapid was reportedly set to formally announce Tuesday that he had managed to put together a coalition after marathon overnight talks, the legal adviser to the president pushed back against a claim by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party that the nascent government could not have Yamina’s Naftali Bennett serve as its first premier. The legal adviser to the office of President Reuven Rivlin, Udit Corinaldi-Sirkis, said in a statement that there was no legal reason why the MK entrusted with forming the coalition should not serve as alternate prime minister during the...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned the mandate to form a government to President Reuven Rivlin minutes after the end of the Simhat Torah holiday Monday night. President Reuven Rivlin received the message from Netanyahu. He will hold consultations with faction representatives and by law has three days to give the mandate to another candidate.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin will tap Likud Chair and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the task of forming a ruling coalition, after meeting Wednesday evening with Netanyahu and his main challenger, Blue and White Chair Benny Gantz. The announcement comes after Rivlin received the official election results earlier Wednesday and as he encourages Gantz and Netanyahu to form a unity government.

Alice Rivlin, a leading expert on US budget policy who served as the first director of the Congressional Budget Office, has died at the age of 88. The economist, who in the 1990s became the first woman to be White House budget director and vice-chair of the Federal Reserve Board, died of cancer on Tuesday morning in Washington DC, according to the Brookings Institution think-tank, where she was a senior fellow.  Rivlin “made great and lasting contributions as a leader and economic policymaker and broke barriers as a woman in the economics profession,” Fed chair Jay Powell said in a...

[snip] Nechama Rivlin, the wife of President (Reuven Rivlin), and American first lady Melania Trump stirred emotions in Israel as photos of them holding hands emerged on Monday.

President Reuven Rivlin visited the home of Nimer Abu Amar, the 15-year-old youth from the Negev Bedouin town of Lakiya who was killed by fire from an Egyptian soldier at Israel's southern border Tuesday, to express his condolences to the boy's family. "We are all citizens of the same country." Rivlin told the boy's father. "We have come to share in your profound grief." "We are all equal in this country, and there is no difference between a child in Lakiya and a child in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or Haifa." he added. The Defense Ministry treats a child from Lakiya...

Rabbi Ya'akov Litman and his son Netanel, who were murdered in a terror attack near Hevron on Friday, were buried Saturday night in Jerusalem's Har Hamenuchot cemetery, amid scenes of heartbreaking grief. Rabbi Litman's daughter, who was supposed to be married this week, could be heard weeping loudly above the crowd of mourners who came to pay their respects. Family members had to physically support her. Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral, including President Reuven Rivlin, Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi David Lau, Jerusalem's Sephardic and Ashkenazic Chief Rabbis Shlomo Amar and Aryeh Stern, Deputy Defense Minister Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, and many...

At an event marking the end of the Ramadan fast on Sunday, President Reuven Rivlin spoke with Arabic language mediaand discussed a number of issues, chief among them the relations between Arabs and Jews in Israel. At the outset, Rivlin noted that both Jews and Muslims had fasted on Sunday – the latter for Ramadan, and the former for the Seventeenth Day of Tammuz, commemorating the events leading up to the destruction of the Holy Temples in Jerusalem. A common fast, said Rivlin, could help build a bridge to understanding to both communities. “I am aware of the distress and...

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who is visiting the United States this week, has declined to meet with Barack Hussein Obama. Rivlin will be in New York this week to speak at UN Headquarters, for an International Holocaust Remembrance Day event. The President’s Residence had informed U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro in early December of Rivlin’s planned visit, and the information was conveyed to the White House.A senior Israeli official said that at first Rivlin did not want to impose himself on Obama, and that he would be happy to go to Washington if invited by the White House. The deputy...

Rivlin is in New York to address the official Holocaust commemorations of the United Nations. His schedule includes meetings with African-American leaders and others. According to unsourced Israeli media reports, the White House invited Rivlin to a summit meeting with Obama in Washington. Israeli media outlets, including Channel 10 and the Ynet news site, have suggested the White House invitation was meant to embarrass Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was not invited to meet with Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry during his stay in Washington to address both houses of Congress in early March. Netanyahu was invited to...

sraeli singer Amir Benayoun released a song Sunday about a theoretical Arab Israeli youth stabbing Jews, garnering accusations of racism as Israel copes with a wave of attacks by East Jerusalem residents “It’s true that I am just ungrateful scum,” Benayoun sings in “Ahmed loves Israel.” “It’s true, but I am not guilty, I wasn’t brought up on love. It’s true that the moment will come when you will turn your back on me, and I’ll stab you right in the back.” In the song, one version of “Ahmed” lives in Jerusalem, studies at the Hebrew University, and is well-liked....

ustice Minister Tzipi Livni, head of the Hatnua party, welcomed on Tuesday evening President Reuven Rivlin’s criticism of the controversial Jewish State Law. Rivlin, who spoke at a conference earlier Tuesday, said, "The State of Israel is the national state of the Jewish people. A small, abhorred minority, undermine this fact, both from within our own and from outside, and so, we must ask ourselves seriously, what is the point of the proposed law - Israel: The National State of the Jewish People." "Does the promotion of this law, not in fact, question the success of the Zionist enterprise in...

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Reuven Rivlin of the Likud party was elected president of Israel in a campaign that was fraught with scandal. Rivlin was elected in the second round of Knesset balloting on Tuesday, defeating Meir Sheetrit of the Hatnua party in a 63-53 runoff vote. The former Knesset speaker becomes Israel’s 10th president and succeeds Shimon Peres. Considered a Likud elder statesman, Rivlin was one of five candidates running for the largely ceremonial post chosen by the parliament every seven years. He will be sworn in on July 24. Eliminated in the first round of voting were former Supreme...

..... Hours after being elected president, MK Reuven Rivlin published a personal post on his Facebook page, in which he thanked the MKs who voted for him. "I want to thank you. Those who voted for me - for placing your confidence in me and those who didn’t vote for me - for placing their confidence in me in the future,” he wrote. “I hope to have the strength to fulfill the mission in a way that will meet the expectations of my supporters and a dispel the concerns of those who were opposed to me,” continued Rivlin. “I thank...

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) visited Beit El's threatened Ulpana neighborhood on Tuesday to light Hanukkah candles. Rivlin was warmly received in the neighborhood by residents and their children and lit the final Hannukah lamp in a house slated for demolition in May 2012. "I came to light on the last day of Hanukkah, to visit you, in a community the Prime Minister himself approved," Rivlin said. "We are a nation of laws, and no one is above the law. No person may sit on the land of another. But in this case the law does not go hand in...

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s debt reduction task force led by Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin has performed a public service by trying to build a consensus and for offering some worthy ideas to steer the nation away from a fiscal cliff. But here’s one set of statistics that sticks out like a sore thumb. The highest marginal income tax rate at the federal level would be about 42%, including the employer portion of payroll taxes, paid by individuals earning from $51,000 to the top of the raised ceiling for Social Security’s 12.4% payroll tax. That ceiling is now $106,800, but...

(IsraelNN.com) MK Reuven "Ruby" Rivlin wrote Wednesday in a column at Nrg that Israel needed to bomb Gaza civilians in response to the ongoing "Kassam" fire coming from Gaza. Rivlin thinks Israel should transfer a certain amount of money to the PA so that it can build shelters on the streets of Gaza. At the same time it will build improvised rockets that will resemble the fire power of the PA "Kassam" and "Grad" missiles. Israel will announce that from now on, every time the sirens sound in Sderot, Ashkelon and the Gaza perimeter, identical rockets will fall on the...

29 Tishrei 5768, October 11, '07 Published: 10/11/07, 6:03 PM Rivlin Calls on Shas: You Were Elected to Save Our Dream! by Hillel Fendel (IsraelNN.com) In a moving, emotional Knesset speech, Likud MK Ruby Rivlin said the Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu MKs must act now to save Jerusalem - or else Israel's national dreams might be lost. Rivlin, a seventh-generation Jerusalemite and a strong opponent of the Disengagement, appeared to be close to tears as he called upon his fellow MKs - especially from those of the more nationalist-bent parties in the government coalition, Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our...

Knesset Speaker: Sharon Will Divide Jerusalem 16:03 May 10, '05 / 1 Iyar 5765 Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin has leaked that once Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has completed the withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria, Sharon intends to divide Jerusalem, Israel’s capital. PM Sharon vehemently denied the claim, saying it was a “baseless lie.” Sharon added, “I am the last person who would divide Jerusalem. I have said this on many occasions. I don’t plan to discuss any division of Jerusalem.” Army Radio reported that Rivlin was planning on accusing the Prime Minister publicly during the Knesset Speaker’s Memorial Day...