Kahlon attacks Lapid to get to the UTJ MKs

MK Yair Lapid has come out against the "3rd apartment tax" of Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon. Lapid's reasoning to oppose it is, as he said, that this tax will cause some apartment owner in Dimona with 3 small apartments to pay this tax while a wealthy owner of a 30 million shekel apartment in Tel Aviv won't have to pay any tax. And Moshe Kahlon is upset about Lapid's opposition and has called him out for it.
source: Behadrei and Kikar

This logic comparing the two is faulty because the 30million shekel apartment owner might also own other apartments and also have to pay tax. And the Dimona guy won't have to pay very much tax on a small apartment that is not worth all that much.

But that is not the main point I want to make. And that is, Yair Lapid is mostly irrelevant. He is a member of the opposition and has no influence on any of the coalition members. Some coalition members consider him an enemy and will not follow him at all, while others see him as a rival trying to take votes.

Yair Lapid can oppose any coalition-proposed law he wants, and that is even part of his job being in the opposition, but he has almost no influence and has no ability to block this law from happening, if the coalition wants to pass it.

So, when Moshe Kahlon chooses to attack Lapid for his opposition to the tax, it is disingenuous, and even a bit wily. Kahlon is a smart guy. Kahlon knows that Lapid's opposition is meaningless. He chose to attack Lapid instead of the MKs in his coalition who are even more vocally opposed to the tax, for very good reasons:
1. attacking coalition members could put the coalition at risk
2. By pitting Lapid as the opponent to the tax, he is putting the Haredi MKs, the more problematic (for Kahlon) opponents to the law, into a difficult situation - if they continue to oppose it, they are basically taking a line with Lapid - something they are averse to doing. Kahlon, by pitting Lapid as the main opponent, might be trying to pressure the Haredi MKs to remove their opposition to the law.

Kahlon is a smart guy. I can't wait to see if his strategy works or not.

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