“By sheer accident, two politicians crossed paths on our television screens on Tuesday: one, Yair Lapid, on his way up, and the other, Tzipi Livni, on her way down.

He is young and fresh, with his future before him. She is wounded and defeated, with her future shrouded in fog. And as if everything else she has gone through over the last month weren’t enough, even her parting speech was pushed into second billing on the news broadcasts by Lapid’s maiden speech. Even this primacy was taken from her.

Lapid and Livni are the two politicians who, more than any others, nod and wink at what is termed “the white tribe” – the veteran Ashkenazi public. The differences between them go no deeper than the thickness of the teleprompter from which Lapid read his remarks.

One could easily envision them cooperating in the same party, though that isn’t expected to happen. What an irony it is that just as she leaves the stage, he is entering. Evidently, politics abhors a vacuum.”

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