Rivlin took issue with his idol Menachem Begin’s justification for the 1982 war in Lebanon, which was to “prevent another Treblinka.” He said that such an approach consigns the justification for Israel’s very existence to preventing another Holocaust. He described the approach as “dangerous,” one in which “every threat is existential and every enemy is Hitler.” He decried the division of the world to either “righteous gentiles or anti-Semitic Nazis,” a separation that transforms any criticism against Israel to an expression of anti-Semitism. Instead, Rivlin offered what he described as “a third way’ that combines the Israeli vow of never again, accentuates Jewish solidarity throughout the world and adopts the Jewish value of respecting all men and women, regardless of their religion or race.