Israel’s Great Secular Hope

There is breaking news from Israel that I have been awaiting for a very, very long time.  Yair Lapid, perhaps one of Israel’s most trusted journalists, is leaving Channel 2 for a career in politics.

Yair’s father, Tommy Lapid, followed a similar trajectory much later in life when he joined the Shinui (Change) Party in 1999 and led them to ultimately win 15 seats in 2003.  Tommy Lapid, who was a Holocaust survivor and an atheist, was one of the most articulate antagonists of the Haredi camp.  Yair wrote a biography of his father, framed as Tommy’s posthumous “autobiography,” just after his father’s death, called Memories After My Death.  I highly recommend it.

Yair is expected to form his own party.  From Haaretz:

Several recent surveys forecasted that a Lapid-led party could garner between 15 and 20 mandates in the Knesset.

A recent poll stated that a party headed by Lapid would become the second largest party in the Knesset.

According to the poll, if Lapid chooses to set up a new party, it would receive 15 Knesset seats in Israel’s next elections, as opposed to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s party, Yisrael Beiteinu, which would receive 14 seats. Likud would remain the largest party in the Knesset, with 24 seats, and the Labor Party would tie in second place with Lapid’s party with 15 seats.

Some Israeli politicians are so worried about him that they have already proposed (ridiculous) legislation calling for a “cooling off” period of two years before a journalist may enter electoral politics.  Such legislation has almost no chance of passing.

As Israel’s culture war heats up, as it often does in the face of stalemates with the Palestinians, Yair Lapid may represent a great hope for secular Israelis to take their country back.  Or, like so many before him, he may fall victim to the atrocious coalition compromising that is so prevalent in Israel.