After recent polls showed a significant slip in popularity for Finance Minister Yair Lapid, the Yesh Atid chairman lashed out against his detractors on Saturday, calling them "nervous schnauzers left out in the rain."
An Israel Hayom poll conducted last month indicated that 59.6 percent of Israeli Jews trust Lapid less today than they did before the election in January. A Knesset Channel poll issued last week suggested that 78% of Israelis do not trust Lapid as finance minister.
In response, Lapid wrote an email to Yesh Atid activists, saying: "Every day, we all have to deal with people who look at us like nervous schnauzers left out in the rain, telling us that they are disappointed.
"In the few times that I've managed to drag these professional disappointment-mongers to a conversation, they have always halfheartedly confessed that they realize that there was no choice but to close the deficit, that in [Israel's] legal reality one can't just go and take money out of exempt profits, and that they too understand that, for many years, no party has created such a major shift in the national agenda. We will simply have to reconcile with the many angry Israelis."
The finance minister wrote that he took his detractors seriously, and that party members would have to approach them, "one by one, if needed," and ask them one question: "Why would a politician, who wants to be popular, intentionally take steps that are clearly detrimental to his popularity-"
"The answer," Lapid wrote, "is that this is our commitment. To do what is right for the State of Israel, not what gets us popularity points."
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו
