In February, Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid was a guest at the Globes Conference, where he explained why the left would not win an Israeli election in the next 20 years. Lapid argued, “You see it demographically, by age and by opinion. Every year, people who believe in leftist ideas die, and people with right-wing and centrist ideas are born. People see that they are stabbed with knives and see the madness of the world around us, and the numbers say that the left will not win an election here. The center will. That’s where we’re headed. No one could sell me as a leftist; my father was a [Menachem] Begin man.”
This statement, backed by moves, actions and declarations, explain Lapid’s rise, which reached its latest zenith in a Sept. 6 poll that indicates his party would have won the most Knesset seats had elections taken place that day.