Yesh Atid's Yair Lapid
Yesh Atid's Yair LapidIsrale news photo: Flash 90

Labor party MK Erel Margalit slammed Finance Minister Yair Lapid on Tuesday after Lapid canceled finance-related events in order to focus on the hareidi-religious army recruitment debate.

Lapid cancelled a trip to a conference of OECD finance ministers that had been scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. Sources in his office said he will stay in Israel to focus on the coalition debate on “equal burden of service.”

Lapid also cancelled a planned appearance at the Knesset’s Finance Committee.

“Lapid is perspiring under his suit,” Margalit wrote on Facebook. “But unlike in television, in real life there’s no director to shout ‘Cut!’ or makeup artist to give him a touch-up.”

“When he’s afraid he cancels appearances before the Finance Committee. When he’s afraid, he forces the Yesh Atid people to write generic statuses on their [Facebook] wall and to speak with one voice. When he’s afraid, he makes vicious, unbridled attacks on the hareidi community, just to get some color back in his cheeks,” Margalit accused.

“That isn’t leadership, that’s a panic attack,” he wrote.

“It doesn’t matter how many crises he initiates, or how much he pounds on the table… It doesn’t matter how many media spins he throws into the air. The fact is, Lapid cannot be the Finance Minister,” Margalit declared.

“It seems that he doesn’t really want to be, either,” he continued. “Someone who says something like, ‘If someone thinks that I entered politics just to fix the catastrophe that the previous government left behind, they don’t understand what we’re doing here,’ does not grasp how important this position is, and does not want to change the lives of Israeli citizens for the better.”

“It turns out that in the position of Finance Minister, there are no celebrity discounts,” he concluded.