The Speaker of the Knesset Reuven “Rubi” Rivlin was ousted by Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu last week. He was the last of the Likud blue bloods to survive at the top of the party. Like former Knesset Members Dan Meridor, Benny Begin, and Michael Eitan, Rivlin personified [founder of the revisionist movement] Ze'ev Jabotinsky’s original concept of hadar (“personal nobility”) which has become part of the Likud's DNA, and provided it to the party even at its lowest ebb.
The dynastic ties of those other three men were not enough to keep them at the party’s helm. They were expunged from its Knesset list last November by the rising power of the extreme right among Likud party members. It was an act of revenge, taken after these legacy candidates tried to block legislative efforts that they deemed anti-democratic: they defended the Supreme Court and called on the government to respect its ruling to evacuate illegal outposts in the West Bank.
