Six years after his predecessor last advocated a two-state solution before the United Nations General Assembly, Yair Lapid revived the Israeli prime minister’s commitment to that vision in his inaugural address on Thursday — and hired both the Palestinians and his own Israeli electorate clear sign selection.
In 2016, from the same platform, Benjamin Netanyahu not only committed himself to “a vision of peace based on two states for two peoples,” but even went so far as to invite Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to address the Knesset to speak, and offered to do so “to address the Palestinian Parliament in Ramallah.”
But the advance announcement that Lapid would be on the world stage confirming his longstanding belief that a peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel represented the best prospect for both peoples’ future had provoked a domestic political storm more than a day before he even got to speak.
And it wasn’t just Netanyahu who castigated him, but also members of Lapid’s own outgoing coalition – many of whom he will need as allies if he is to have any chance of remaining in power.
Forty days before Israel went to the polls for the fifth time in three and a half years, Lapid’s carefully crafted, impassioned, and sometimes personal address contained many passages aimed at world leaders and audiences across the region.
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But his vision of a prosperous, powerful Israel that aggressively protects its security while proactively seeking reconciliation will be meaningless if it fails to keep Netanyahu in check on November 1st. And Netanyahu gets 60 to 61 seats in the 120-member Knesset.
Thus, Lapid sought to differentiate himself from the Likud leader for both a domestic audience and a global one by endorsing the two-state goal on which the Jewish state was revived by the United Nations 75 years ago.
Knowing that the current Palestinian leadership is unwilling and unable to take up the challenge, and that this is unlikely to change anytime soon, he nonetheless tried to persuade some of the undecided watching at home – and perhaps particularly so the unmotivated Arabs Israeli voters on whom his electoral prospects may depend – that his approach is worth supporting.
“There are Arab ministers in the government I lead. There is an Arab party as a member of our coalition. We have Arab judges in our Supreme Court. Arab doctors save lives in our hospitals,” he said early on. “Israeli Arabs are not our enemies. They are our partners in life.”
Confronted with his hosts, he denounces Iran
As soon as Lapid left the General Assembly podium, Netanyahu, uncharacteristically staying away from the venue where he was so frequently present, released a video in which he called the speech “weak” and “defeatist” and chastised Lapid for saying: that he is putting Palestinian statehood back in focus and doing nothing to stop Iran.
Avoiding Netanyahu’s use of images and cartoons at the UN to support his arguments, Lapid was indeed persistent in his comments on Iran, denouncing the positions and decisions of his UN hosts and harsh in telling the Palestinians and their supporters made clear their independence will not be achieved by remotely threatening that of Israel.
In world leader mode, Lapid lamented the poisoning of democracies “by lies and fake news” and warned that “ruthless politicians, totalitarian states and radical organizations are undermining our perception of reality”.
He gave a striking example of this toxic strategy being used against Israel, citing the case of a “three-year-old Palestinian girl,” Malak al-Tanani, who was allegedly killed along with her parents in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza last May became. In fact, the “heartbreaking picture” was of a girl from Russia; “Malak al-Tanani does not exist.”
The child in this photo was not a victim of an airstrike in Gaza.
The photo was taken in Moscow in 2018. Source: https://t.co/HDX9EASjLM According to recent photos on Instagram, the child is doing well. Please stop posting this photo. pic.twitter.com/uHicR0PqH6— HoaxEye (@hoaxeye) May 15, 2021
From there he moved on to the broader effort to delegitimize Israel – “in the media, on college campuses and on social media” and, he outraged, at the UN itself, among the pathetically reliable majority of nations who are Oppose Israel on almost every forum, to the delight of liars and scammers.
“The question is not why they do it, but why you are willing to listen,” Lapid said accusingly, setting this willful international blindness as a repetition of anti-Semitism, for which he provided two definitions: “Anti-Semitism is the willingness, the worst to believe the Jews without asking,” he said resonantly. “Anti-Semitism judges Israel by a different standard than any other country,” he continued, using a more familiar phrasing.
“I’m not a guest in this building,” he added in another powerful accusation. “Israel is a proud sovereign nation and an equal member of the United Nations. We will not remain silent when those who want to harm us use this very platform to spread lies about us.”
Referring to Iran, Lapid referred to the current anti-regime protests there sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody, and protested the world’s silence as “young Iranians are suffering and struggling under the shackles of the Iranian regime… [and] Cry for help on social media.”
He ridiculed the “industry of hate” in which the regime produces vast quantities of the flag of an Israel it detests only to burn. But he also strongly warned: “If the Iranian regime gets a nuclear weapon, it will use it.”
Contrary to the US approach, Lapid argued, just as he publicly disagreed with visiting US President Joe Biden in July, that only a “credible military threat” would stop Iran from bombing. Only when Iran is deterred is it time to “negotiate a longer and stronger deal with them.”
But if the world continues to choose the easy option – choose not to “believe the worst despite all the evidence to the contrary” – then Israel will act, he made clear: “We have capabilities and we are not afraid to use them.” We will do whatever is necessary. Iran will not get a nuclear weapon. We will not stand idly by when there are people trying to kill us. Not again. Never again.”
“Put Down Your Weapons”
Lapid began his speech by reporting on the Israeli and Arab foreign ministers at the Negev summit in March, in which they opposed a deadly terrorist attack in Hadera during their meeting and issued a joint statement “condemning the attack and the Sanctifying life and working together, and our belief that there is another way.” Shortly after his address on Thursday night, in yet another bloody confirmation of pervasive hostility, eight Israelis were slightly wounded in a terrorist attack near Modiin.
Returning to the Palestinian issue and terrorism near the end of his address, he attempted to reframe the Israel-Goliath/Palestinian-David narrative by reminding the watching world that Israel lives in a predatory neighborhood — with Syria’s murderous regime , Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on its borders – where to drop your vigilance is to jeopardize your very existence.
“You can ask us to live by the values of the UN Charter, but you cannot ask us to die for it,” he said.
“My father was a child in[Budapester]Ghetto, my grandfather was murdered in a concentration camp,” Lapid continued, mentioning his family history as he often does. Then, less significantly, he spoke of his autistic daughter, Yaeli, whom he had to wake up in the middle of the night last May, “and had to run to the air-raid shelter with her because rockets were exploding over our house. Alle, die über die Bedeutung des Friedens predigen, können gerne versuchen, um 3 Uhr morgens mit einem Mädchen, das nicht spricht, in einen Luftschutzkeller zu rennen.“[Budapest}Ghettomygrandfatherwasmurderedinaconcentrationcamp”LapidwentonmentioninghisfamilyhistoryasheoftenhasHethenalsospokelesscharacteristicallyofhisautisticdaughterYaeliwhomhehadtowakeinthemiddleofthenightlastMay“andrundownwithhertothebombshelterbecausemissileswereexplodingaboveourhomeAllthosewhopreachabouttheimportanceofpeacearewelcometotryrunningtoabombshelterat3amwithagirlwhodoesnotspeak”[Budapest}Ghettomygrandfatherwasmurderedinaconcentrationcamp”LapidwentonmentioninghisfamilyhistoryasheoftenhasHethenalsospokelesscharacteristicallyofhisautisticdaughterYaeliwhomhehadtowakeinthemiddleofthenightlastMay“andrundownwithhertothebombshelterbecausemissileswereexplodingaboveourhomeAllthosewhopreachabouttheimportanceofpeacearewelcometotryrunningtoabombshelterat3amwithagirlwhodoesnotspeak”
“Put down your arms and prove that Hamas and Islamic Jihad will not take over the Palestinian state you want to create,” he urged the Palestinians, then summed up the simple narrative of Israeli would-be peacemakers: “Lay down Lay down your arms and there will be peace.”
Lapid debunked the myth of Israel and the Jewish people as illegitimate colonizers alien to the region, as perpetuated by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, among others, and insisted: “We’re not going anywhere. The Middle East is our home.”
But Israel is also strong enough, he said, to confidently seek peace with “every Muslim country — from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia.” Echoing the Declaration of Independence, he promised: “Our hand is stretched out in peace.”
Netanyahu, his electoral rival, has drifted further and further away from the two-state vision over the past six years. Far from inviting Mahmoud Abbas to the Knesset these days, he has recently been working to strengthen representation for the Religious Zionism party, whose leader Bezalel Smotrich would ban Mansour Abbas and other current Arab-Israeli politicians from parliament.
Lapid’s speech was the speech of an Israeli centrist, an interim prime minister who knows it will be a struggle to muster a parliamentary majority in an Israel that has gradually turned right, but perhaps not as far as Netanyahu.
He stood up for his country, underlined his power and offered his cooperation in this first speech to the UN General Assembly. In forty days we’ll see if the Israeli electorate makes this a one-time thing or a habit.