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 STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Updated: JANUARY 19, 2016 01:27
Dafna Meir, the woman who was murdered in her home in Otniel on January 17, 2016 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Dafna Meir, the woman who was murdered in her home in Otniel on January 17, 2016
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The world has stopped paying attention to Israel because of the government’s policies, claimed Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid on Monday.
“I examined the international media today,” Lapid said at a meeting of his Yesh Atid faction at the Knesset. “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 fails because the world has 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 here since the 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 needs a full-time foreign minister, a post currently held by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Lapid praised Meir, a nurse, 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.
At a meeting of the Zionist Union faction, faction head Merav Michaeli quoted Netanyahu himself in a 1996 debate against then-prime minister Shimon Peres, saying that citizens ask themselves every day when they wake 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 terrorism,” Herzog said. “He is not taking two steps necessary for security: Dealing terrorism 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.”