Saar attacks Lapid over Brazil, Serbia election remarks

A sharp confrontation erupted on social media Monday morning between opposition leader Yair Lapid and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar, after Lapid responded to election results in Serbia and Brazil in which two right-wing candidates lost.

"Two more Netanyahu associates lost last night in elections because of high voter turnout and a people with national pride that refused to accept dictates from outside," Lapid said, referring to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Brazilian presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro. "Tomorrow the people of Israel begin the repair, returning Israel to a path of hope and success."

Lapid added a comment on the Brazilian results: "Let it be clear --- I am very unhappy with Lula's victory. I am always for the pro-Israel candidate, that is the most important criterion. But today, being a Netanyahu associate is political damage around the world. In Israel too."

In response, Sa'ar said that "for Lapid the slanderer, two giant friends of Israel — like Serbian President Vučić and Brazilian presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro — are 'two Netanyahu associates.' Brazilian President Lula accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, while comparing it to the murder of Jews in the Holocaust by Hitler. He also claimed that 12.3 million (!) children were killed in the bombing in the war."

"As an extra, Lapid also volunteers to parrot Lula's rhetoric about 'a people with national pride that refused to accept dictates from outside,'" Saar added. "This, after Israel's friend Bolsonaro, who promised to move his country's embassy to Jerusalem if elected, announced that he does not recognize the results due to his claim of illegal extension of voting hours. And I doubt whether Lapid has the faintest idea what Vučić did for Israel in the war."

"To turn one's back on Israel's friends and to flatter those who act against her, that is moral degradation and ethical lowness, even before we address the level of political thinking displayed here," he concluded. "He who guards his soul will distance himself from the ballot of clowns."