As a novice politician in late 2012, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid tried to target the political center, but with a wink and a nudge to the right.
He had lofty goals, too. He wanted to be prime minister one day, and he believed that the only way to achieve that in Israel was by moving voters from the soft right to the center. He fought hard against the BDS movement to boycott Israel, and made a big deal of every missive he fired off to some international organization or other. He built up a reputation as a patriot with hawkish security views, too. So, for instance, in his 2020 campaign, he announced that, “On our watch, the next time they shoot missiles at Israeli citizens, the heads of Hamas won’t be getting anymore suitcases stuffed with dollars. No, they’ll be getting a missile, delivered straight to their homes.”
