Haredi hooligans burn effigy of Yair Lapid for Lag Ba'Omer

No doubt, they want to ensure Lapid will remain a prominent figure in politics, despite their presumed hatred for him:

Dozens of ultra-Orthodox revelers set fire to an effigy of Finance Minister Yair Lapid Saturday night in the northern city of Tiberias, protesting what they consider his aggressive anti-religious policies.

At a gathering near the Sea of Galilee, the group of ultra-Orthodox partiers prepared a bonfire and placed a straw man with Lapid’s visage atop a mountain of wood. Jews mark Lag B’Omer, the traditional date of the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, a first-century CE sage, with celebration, bonfires and feasts.

According to the ultra-Orthodox website “Haredim 10,” each year the children of the religious community choose an enemy whose effigy will be burned on the pyre. “This year the dubious honor of unanimous Haredi public enemy was: Finance Minister Yair Lapid,” the site reported.

[...] “It is an embarrassment for the entire Jewish people that hooligans and bullies like these wear a kippa and tzitzit,” MK Rabbi Dov Lipman of Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid party said in a statement. “Their rabbis should wake up and speak out against this. And if they don’t then they are not worthy of being called leaders or rabbis. The place for these people is in jail!”

He's absolutely correct. As crummy as some of Lapid's actions have been, what they're doing is offensive and sets a very risky example. Whoever planned those bonfires should be prosecuted.