At the official ceremony on Ammunition Hill to mark the 50th anniversary of Jerusalem's reunification, President of Israel Reuven Rivlin said, "We can't sing the praises of a united Jerusalem in which 40% of the population live in what is the most impoverished urban area in Israel. We must not accept that 50 years after the reunification of the Jerusalem, the situation of Jerusalem, capital of the State of Israel, has declined, so that it is now ranked among the lowest socio-economic clusters in the country." Not for the first time, Rivlin’s remarks interrupted a series of impassioned cliches May 24. As has happened before, the president told Israelis the way things really are.

Rivlin had shown the same courage during the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony exactly one month earlier. At that event, he pleaded with Israelis to stop using the Holocaust as "the prism through which we view the world," to steer clear of a tendency toward victimhood and to adopt a perspective based on inner strength and self-confidence.

This week, the Jerusalem-born Rivlin, a member of the Likud, presented Israelis with an unflattering view of what is actually happening in the capital city. He did not bring up partition, nor did he doubt for a moment that Jews have historical and emotional ties to the city. What he did tell them about was the city's 323,000 Arab residents, who live in poverty and neglect in East Jerusalem's neighborhoods. It is hard to recall another speech at an event like this in which an official figure dared to taint the celebrations with a message so important and so sad.

The jubilee celebrating Jerusalem's reunification was marked by relatively few problems. This year, organizers tried to make the event more grandiose than usual. The budget for the main parade, known as the "Dance of the Flags," was increased from 300,000 to half a million shekels (from $84,000 to $140,000). A record 60,000 people participated in the march, which passed through the main streets of East Jerusalem for the first time in years. In the past, police had kept it off that route out of concern for a possible eruption of violence between Jewish marchers and local Arab residents. This year, the police increased their presence along the route significantly to secure the marchers, many of whom were young people from the religious Zionist sector.