Lapid: Why is Dafna Meir's face not on the front page of every newspaper?
Yesh Atid leader says Israeli public diplomacy has failed because the world had stopped paying attention to the current government.
By Gil Hoffman / Jan. 18, 2016
The Israeli government failed to take advantage of Sunday's murder of nurse Dafna Meir in her home for public relations purposes, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid complained at a meeting of his Yesh Atid faction at the Knesset on Monday.
Lapid praised Meir for spending her life saving the lives of others and vowed that security forces would capture what he called the "vile people" responsible for her murder and bring them to justice.
"I examined the international media today," Lapid said. "How is it that Dafna’s face is not on the front page of every newspaper? How did we get to a point when the world looks at us and doesn’t care that a woman was stabbed at the entrance to her home.”
Lapid answered his own question by saying that Israeli public diplomacy was failing because the world had stopped paying attention to the current government, because of its policies. He said he was embarrassed that when he went to Brussels for meetings with top European officials he found out that no ministers had been there since the current government was formed in May.
"The sanctions released on Iran are not our fault but we caused the world to stop listening to us," Lapid said, saying that Israel desperately needed a full-time foreign minister, a post currently held by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At a meeting of the Zionist Union faction, the faction head Merav Michaeli quoted Netanyahu himself in a 1996 debate against then-prime minister Shimon Peres saying that citizens asked themselves every day when they woke whether the next terrorist attack would happen that day.
"Until we have security we will not be able to speak about other things and there is no security," Michaeli said.
Zionist Union head Isaac Herzog said he would reveal an extensive security plan in a speech he will deliver Tuesday night at a conference organized by the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
"Our prime minister likes to make bombastic statements but bombastic statements do not end terror," Herzog said. "He is not taking two steps necessary for security: Dealing terror a harsh blow and separating from the Palestinians. He is not doing what is necessary for our security because he is being held captive by the extreme Right." http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Lapid-Israels-PR-failed-to-take- advantage-of-Dafna-Meirs-murder-441924