Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) was mocked by social media users Sunday after he botched a Fourth of July blessing on Twitter.
Wishing the US a happy 245th Fourth of July, Lapid tweeted a holiday message Sunday afternoon, followed by two flags, meant to represent the US-Israel alliance.
“245 years of progress, liberty, and freedom,” Lapid wrote. “Congratulations to our best friend, America. Israel has no closer ally than the US, and the US has no better friend than Israel.”
Unfortunately for the foreign minister, however, the flag he selected to accompany the Israeli flag was not the American flag but the Liberian flag, which has red and white stripes similar to the US flag, but only one star, rather than fifty.
The post quickly became the target of mockery by Twitter users.
Lapid updated the post, dropping the flag symbols altogether.
The tweet was mocked by dozens of social media users, including former Likud MK Ariel Kallner, who took aim at Lapid’s spokesperson.
“Listen Yair, until you get a spokesperson who knows English, just write in Hebrew and run it through Google Translate. It’ll still turn out better than this embarrassment.”
“And one more question to [Lapid’s] followers: If this had been a Likud minister whose family didn’t come from Europe who would have written this way, how do you think the media would have responded to this, and why?”
Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair Netanyahu, also ridiculed Lapid’s tweet, calling it ‘eighth grade English’.
“Is this real? What is this eighth grade English coming from a Foreign Minister? The fact that he didn’t pass high school English is his problem, not the state’s. Why doesn’t he hire an English spokesperson who can write his tweets in English for him? What an embarrassment.”