Published: 22 June 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
GIL HOFFMANN: Those who praised Lapid will now be looking to see what results he delivers as foreign minister and what the new government can deliver
BEFORE FOREIGN MINISTER Yair Lapid’s first day at work, he was already being praised around the world for his accomplishments.
The praise did not come for anything he did at the ministry, or for anything the international community hopes he will do in the future.
Rather, it was Lapid’s political prowess in masterminding the new government’s formation, bringing diverse parties together and ousting former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that impressed movers and shakers around the world and across the political spectrum.
“One lesson from Israel: to defeat an autocrat who attacks democratic norms and institutions, oppositions need to unify under a big tent,” American political commentator Ben Rhodes wrote on Twitter. “In Israel’s case, that even led Lapid to compromise on who would start as prime minister, but he understood the imperative of getting Bibi out first.”
A former deputy national security adviser under former US president Barack Obama, Rhodes wrote that in Hungary, opposition parties have agreed to put aside differences and unify in next year’s election to oust Netanyahu’s friend and fellow nationalist leader Viktor Orban.
“This is an increasingly common and necessary strategy around the world,” Rhodes wrote.
FULL STORY: How Yair Lapid changed the world with his government-building strategy
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