Tabloid man turned tide for Labour

THE ISRAELI election was decided yesterday by two central issues: did Benjamin Netanyahu deserve a second term? And could the secular majority free itself from the stranglehold of the Jewish religious parties, which have held - and exploited - the balance between left and right for the past 22 years?

One man fanned and focused the anti-clerical resentment, and in the process helped to turn the tide against Mr Netanyahu. He is Tommy Lapid, a robust, 67-year-old tabloid commentator and television polemicist.

Shinui (Change), a splinter group of a party, invited him to head its list. Mr Lapid grabbed the opportunity, mounted a stridently anti-religious campaign, and was tipped to take four or five seats on the slogan: "A government without the ultra-orthodox."

"The major social issue," he said yesterday, "now that people know there is going to be a peace agreement with the Arabs, is whether Israel is going to be a liberal, enlightened, Western-orientated society, or whether we're going to fall under the growing influence of the fundamentalist parties. There is increasing frustration in the secular public."

Mr Netanyahu had no chance of forming a coalition without the religious parties. Unlike the Labour challenger, Ehud Barak, the Likud leader could not distance himself from them.

Ironically, the Hungarian-born Mr Lapid was known as a right-winger. A Holocaust survivor, he embraced the Zionism of sovereignty and self- defence, but rejected the messianism of the West Bank settlers.

Asked whether he would like to be a minister, he replied: "I will not sit in a government with the ultra-orthodox parties. But if Barak offers me a seat without them, I'm ready and willing. I want to be Minister of Justice to defend our judicial system from the fundamentalists who are attacking it."