Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid, speaking in France, said Israel is not a colonialist project and that Jews live on their biblical homeland. The remark, reported by Israeli media, is part of a broader pushback against delegitimization narratives in European diplomatic circles.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid, speaking during a visit to France, stated that Israel is not a colonial enterprise and that the Jewish people live on their biblical homeland. The remarks, attributed to Lapid by Israeli media, come amid a renewed push by European states and NGOs to frame Israeli policy in Judea and Samaria as a colonial occupation. Lapid's phrasing — deliberately invoking the biblical connection to the land — mirrors a longstanding Israeli diplomatic effort to counter such accusations with historical and religious grounding. As The Zioneer has reported in previous threads, this is not the first time an Israeli centrist figure has used theological or historical arguments on the European diplomatic stage to push back against the 'colonialist' label, a recurring theme in Israeli public diplomacy since at least the 2023 diplomatic tensions with several EU members.
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