Likud fumbles criticizing Lapid’s English

Sources in Likud admitted that both the decision to include a clip from Netanyahu threatening to attack Iraq and the questioning of the word conundrum were errors.

By GIL HOFFMAN
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at American Independence Day celebration in Jerusalem July 2019 (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at American Independence Day celebration in Jerusalem July 2019
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
The Likud created a conundrum over whether conundrum is a word on Monday in an unsuccessful attempt to criticize the English of Blue and White MK Yair Lapid.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party released a new campaign ad that compares his English to that of Lapid. The ad included a clip from Lapid’s interview last week with CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour.
The ad showed Lapid hesitating and saying "eh" a lot as he said “This is why the political fight or conundrum in Israel…”
Netanyahu spokesman Jonathan Urich tweeted the ad and said the Likud had opened a betting pool on the best explanation for the word “conuntrum.”

Lapid responded on Netanyahu’s Twitter page: “Bibi, let me help you” and posted the definition of conundrum as “a confusing and difficult problem or question.”

Roy Konkol, Lapid’s spokesman, posted a picture on Netanyahu’s page of the prime minister with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and mocked his success in foreign relations.
Channel 12 political correspondent Amit Segal pointed out that in the portion of the ad in which Netanyahu is speaking, he appeared to take credit for an attack on a Hizbullah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard base in Iraq over the weekend.
 

Stay updated with the latest news!

Subscribe to The Jerusalem Post Newsletter

Subscribe Now
Sources in Likud admitted that both the decision to include a clip from Netanyahu threatening to attack Iraq and the questioning of the word conundrum were errors.
But the sources said the contrast between the eloquence of Netanyahu and his competitors in English had been delivered successfully by the ad.