Lapid: Zero relevance

In “We’re not stupid” (August 2), Blue and White #2 (Yair Lapid) puts forward his views; the title of his column is meant to imply that if readers are not stupid they will vote for his empty platitudes.

Recently, I attended a wonderful two-day conference in Jerusalem, devoted to three troubling topics, Hezbollah, Hamas and BDS. Speakers with military and legal backgrounds made excellent contributions to understanding and defending against these entities.

In addition, there were two Israeli political guest speakers, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett. Bennett went straight to the point, the missiles facing us from Hezbollah, the severity of the problem and what might be done about it.

Lapid’s speech? “Netanyahu is bad; Israeli democracy is under threat” A speech that could have been given in Acre, Ashdod, Holon or anywhere in Israel, but bearing zero relevance to the conference theme.

That was stupid.

Lapid’s article was vague – deliberately I suspect – but his notion that either all the residents in the areas of the Palestinian Authority be given a vote or Israel is no longer a democracy, is nonsense. Various creative solutions have been proposed that retain Israel as a functioning democracy in which loyal Arab citizens have all the voting powers and opportunities for professional self-expression, while those who support the Jew-hating Abbas-Hamas approach, support terrorism, and consistently refuse to accept a State of Israel, do not have such privileges in the State of Israel, but only in their own autonomous areas. JOSEPH BERGER Netanya