TEL AVIV, Israel—The Israeli politician who may stand the best chance of defeating long-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in this month’s election has little name recognition abroad and one simple message at home: sanity.
That’s the main slogan of opposition leader Yair Lapid’s campaign that will culminate on March 23, when Israelis go to the polls for a fourth time in just two years. In an interview in his Tel Aviv offices earlier this week, Lapid said Netanyahu had fostered a politics of darkness and was taking Israel down a ruinous path.
“You have a prime minister with three serious criminal indictments against him and who has defined the future government he wants to form as a coalition … with the worst kind of dark, racist, ultra-nationalist, and bigoted [forces],” he said. “There’s a fierce attack ongoing against the rule of law, the Supreme Court, the media, and the entire concept of Israel as a liberal country.”
In recent polling, Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid party is running a strong second place behind Netanyahu’s Likud. More importantly, a bloc of parties committed to toppling Netanyahu holds a razor-thin lead over Netanyahu’s potential coalition of ultra-Orthodox, religious, and far-right pro-settler parties. Notably, the latter includes the Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”) faction, a fascist movement spiritually tied to the late Rabbi Meir Kahane (who was barred from politics in the late 1980s for his anti-Arab racism).
As the leader of what will likely be the largest party in the anti-Netanyahu camp, Lapid stands at least a reasonable chance of becoming Israel’s next prime minister.
But forming such a governing coalition in Israel’s fractious multiparty system won’t be easy—“chaos,” as Lapid put it with a smile. “But there is a real need here,” he went on, “for sane and balanced leadership, and the current [poll] numbers show that there’s an audience for it.”
At 57, Lapid is a natural standard-bearer for liberal Israel—but also in some ways an unlikely one.
A former prominent columnist and author, he spent years in the public spotlight as a broadcaster—first hosting his own late-night talk show and then anchoring the country’s most watched Friday night newscast.
He is also the son of another journalist-turned-politician, Yosef “Tommy” Lapid, who served as a government minister in the early 2000s.
As a journalist, the younger Lapid wrote columns that reflected the opinions and concerns of secular Jewish Israelis—often from the vantage point of upscale north Tel Aviv, where he lives. But his TV roles, showcasing his telegenic good looks and on-air charisma, gave him broader appeal and made him a mainstream celebrity—the kind called upon to host public events like the annual remembrance day ceremony for Israel’s fallen soldiers.
Source : France Press
