‘’It is safer to be Jew in New York than in Israel,’’ Israel’s Finance Minister Yair Lapid said at the 92Y Jewish community center in Manhattan.
Interviewed by PBS host Charlie Rose, the minister and leader of Yesh Atid party said that ‘’srael was founded as a refuge for the Jewish people, but today it isn't a safe place. It is safer to be Jew in New York’’
He continued, ‘’I want to live in a country that is not just a place, but also an idea, and Jerusalem is the heart of the idea. There may be practical considerations, but a country cannot exist without an ethos, and Jerusalem is an ethos.’’
"I like Tel Aviv; I live in Tel Aviv, but our right of return is Jerusalem. We did not return after 2,000 years for Tel Aviv, but for Jerusalem," he said, adding "Jerusalem will not be divided. It will continue to be Israel's capital."
Several members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, from both the coalition and the opposition, criticized the minister for the remarks, saying he sounded like he was discouraging aliya, the immigration of Jews in Israel.
Labor Party MK Nachman Shai said that “20,000 Jews in Berlin or a million-and-a-half in New York are not more or less safe than the 6.5 million Jews in Israel. Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people. Lapid must remember that and lead with that message.”