Lapid: I’m a wild man, Gantz was cool with anti-Haredi video

Blue and White No. 2 Yair Lapid is denying reports of a rift within the party, which have multiplied in recent days after some fellow party members chided him for a video that was derided as anti-Semitic.

פאניקה בבלפור pic.twitter.com/o5mfk1rPXR

— יאיר לפיד – Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) August 4, 2019

“Every Haredi person who was outraged first laughed,” he says of the video, which portrayed ultra-Orthodox members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as money-grubbing pork-barrel politicians.

Blue and White party leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz ahead of a press conference in Tel Aviv on March 21, 2019. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

He claims aides of party leader Benny Gantz saw the video before it went out.

On Monday, Moshe Ya’alon, another member of the party’s top tier, said he and Gantz had opposed the video, which was “not their style.”

Lapid describes Gantz as “statesmanlike and levelheaded,” but says he himself is “a bit of a wild man.”

He also says an anti-Netanyahu mutiny in Likud is “already starting.”