Lapid spoofs Bibi’s UN bomb scare

Yair Lapid on Tuesday lampooned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s headline-making Iranian bomb diagram in lambasting what he called the government’s destructive economic policy.

Speaking at an economic conference in Tel Aviv, the Yesh Atid party leader railed against what he called the government’s exploitation of the middle class.

“If the prime minister is too shortsighted to see the Israeli middle class, perhaps the time has come to speak to him in language he understands,” the Yesh Atid party leader said.

After briefly fumbling under the lectern, Lapid then proceeded to pull out a diagram of a bomb identical to the one Netanyahu wielded at the United Nations General Assembly this fall to demonstrate the imperative for swift action against Iran’s unsanctioned nuclear program.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sets out his ‘red line’ for Iran on a cartoon bomb drawing during a September 27 speech to the General Assembly (photo credit: Avi Ohayun, GPO)

But instead of lines on the bomb indicating Iran’s nuclear-enrichment progress, Lapid’s diagram delineated cost-of-living increases resulting from tax increases and other policies enacted by the Netanyahu government — including electricity, gas, water, and rent prices. He accused the Netanyahu government of planning to raise taxes further in order to finance the new budget.

“Netanyahu will levy more taxes on the Israeli middle class and won’t make cuts on [allocations for] the ultra-Orthodox, the settlers, or the large unions,” he charged.

Mimicking Netanyahu’s UN speech, which called for action to prevent Iran from weaponizing its uranium and producing a bomb, Lapid posed the rhetorical question of where the red line should be drawn.

“The next tax hike will be our red line,” he said.

“We won’t let this happen. We won’t abide this abuse of productive citizens who served in the army and learned a profession and work, and pull the whole Israeli wagon, to continue.”

In spoofing the prime minister’s cartoon antics, Lapid joined the illustrious elite of Netanyahu-parodists, whose magnificent works include Wile E. Coyote and Daffy Duck.

An edited photo of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivering his speech to the United Nations in September depicts the prime minister as the bumbling cartoon character Wile E. Coyote.