Now that the Israeli elections are in full swing, everybody and his aunt are claiming they are “Centrists.”
You must be kidding! Yair Lapid a “centrist”? Lapid is a Two-Stater who will cede the entire ‘West Bank’ for a mere promise of a photo op with Obama. After the last Israeli elections, one of Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party’s MK’s, the American-turned-Israeli Orthodox Rabbi Dov Lipman, made the rounds in America. Lipman bragged to my group, “It was easy. We just followed the Democratic-American-pollster, Mark Mellman’s strict advice: Only talk about four focus-group-tested issues about the middle-class.”
Lapid and his party list were under strict orders from Democrat-Kerry-approved-pollster Mellman on how to hoodwink the entire Israeli public on the Israeli security issue simply by not talking about it. Lapid talks the talk of the “middle class”, but walks the walk of Two-State suicide solution. Mellman’s orders were: talk ‘middle-class,’ but don’t even mention the two-state solution, because it’ll lose votes.
Am I exaggerating? On Mark Mellman’s company website, Mellman posted an article by extreme leftist Chemi Shalev, an arch-left Haaretz piece extolling Mellman’s strategy as the “Secret of Lapid’s Success: Mark Mellman.” It’s easy to conclude that Mellman’s “success” was Israel’s catastrophic failure.
Mellman’s own words describe how Mellman played the Israeli public as utter idiots, as posted on Mellman’s own company website in order for Mellman’s Company to get more “customers” – and I’ve saved all the Mellman Groups’s web pages so don’t bother taking the article off your website:
“Mellman ascribes Lapid’s stunning success in last Tuesday’s Israeli election to the candidate’s personality and traits – and to the campaign’s decision to focus, almost exclusively, on the single message of looking out for the interests of the middle class.
“One of the key lessons of campaigning,” he [Mellman] says, “is that you have to focus, and that was our focus. Talking about other issues tended to dilute that focus. Talking about the Palestinians and the peace process may not have been detrimental, but it wasn’t helpful either. And when you’re starting from scratch, you have to gain votes, not just not lose them.” (I only added “[Mellman]” for clarity.)
In Mellman’s words, Lapid’s “Talking about the Palestinians and the peace process . . . wasn’t helpful either.” So, Mellman’s advice to Lapid and his coterie: Under penalty of electoral-death, don’t talk about the most central issue to Israelis, that Yair Lapid will support the creation of a Palestinian terrorist State that will fire Sarin-tipped katyusha rockets into Tel Aviv, just talk about the ‘middle class.’
If Likud doesn’t expose Lapid as a leftist now, be assured that Lapid’s American handler will successfully repeat his “bait and switch” on the Israeli public, and steal the moderate vote once again.