Yair Lapid’s recent slip of the tongue on Nadav Perry’s podcast, when he said, “You know I’m a Zionist and a patriot, not a leftist,” reflects something deeper in Israeli public life: an almost Pavlovian demand from leftists to prove their Zionism, as if it were not self-evident. I believe that Lapid himself does not share this perception, and he clarified as much, but it is pervasive.
