Lapid fumbles July 4 message with tweet of Liberia flag

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid made a flag faux pas Sunday when he congratulated the United States on its independence day in a tweet that included the flag of Liberia instead of the Stars and Stripes.

The African nation’s flag resembles the Star-Spangled Banner, with eleven red and white stripes and a white star on a blue square background in the top left corner.

In a tweet, Lapid wrote: “245 years of prosperity, liberty, and freedom. Congratulations to our best friend, America. Israel does not have a closer ally than the United States and the United States does not have a better friend than Israel.”

He ended the tweet with two emojis — the flag of Israel and that of Liberia, Channel 12 news reported.

The tweet was soon taken down and replaced with another containing the same message but minus the flags.

However, by then sharp-eyed Twitter users had already noticed the flag foul-up and roasted the foreign minister, who has been on the job for just three weeks.

כששר החוץ לפיד חגג עצמאות לארה"ב עם דגל ליבריה (בקטן בסיום הכיתוב). pic.twitter.com/7T3KwrWr8w

— שלמה ריזל (@shlomo_rizel) July 4, 2021

The similarity between the US and Liberian flags is not accidental. Liberia was formed by freed former Black slaves from the United States and the Caribbean, with the help of the US and the privately run American Colonization Society.

The eleven stripes symbolize those who signed the Liberian Declaration of Independence on July 26, 1847. The white star indicates it was the first independent republic in Africa and the blue square is for the African continent.