Ever since Finance Minister Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) announced that the looming budget crisis would require a round of austerity measures and budget cuts, his north Tel Aviv home has seen weekly gatherings of protesters who decry his focus on middle-class economic issues, which comes at the expense, they say, of the poor.
Last Thursday night, with dozens of protesters outside, the minister’s 17-year-old son, Lior, took a page out of the protesters’ playbook. He greeted the assembled crowd (from behind police protection) and addressed them with one of their megaphones.
Explaining that there wasn’t anyone else at home, Lior Lapid said he had “taken it upon myself” to come out and listen, prompting the protesters to cheer enthusiastically with cries of “Great!” and “We love you!”
The protests have not “fallen of deaf ears,” Lapid junior said. “We will do our best to help the middle-class and the poor.”
And that was it. The young Lapid handed the megaphone back to the protesters and went back in, amid cries for him to tell his father about mortgage troubles and other issues.
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Could this be the start of a brilliant new career for the scion of a dynasty of successful journalists and politicians? Or was it a new ruse in the finance minister’s ongoing attempt to avoid engaging with the public and the media outside Facebook? Only time will tell.
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