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Operation seduction: Lapid captures Israel’s mainstream support

Contrary to opposition leader Isaac Herzog, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid has chosen to stay stately and not to attack Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally.
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid attends a women's committee convention in Tel Aviv March 1, 2015. The era of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ending, with Israeli voters clearly more concerned about economic and social issues than about security or fears over Iran, a leading election candidate said on Monday. Lapid, a telegenic former news anchor and TV host, leads the centrist, secular Yesh Atid party ("There's a Future"), which emerged out of the cost-of-living protests that swept Israel in 2011. Picture
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Throughout the entire coalition crisis surrounding the new Public Broadcasting Corporation — with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatening early elections over its launching — Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid was careful not to veer from the campaign discipline he decreed upon himself over the past year. He kept acting in an official manner on behalf of the entire nation at any cost.

While the chairman of the opposition, Isaac Herzog (Zionist Camp), contacted various political leaders in a hopeless effort to cobble together an alternative government and made a point of announcing what he was doing in media interviews, Lapid not only distanced himself from the initiative. He even expressed his reservations about it and dismissed its feasibility.

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