Born Tomislav Lampel in the Serbian republic of former Yugoslavia, he and his mother fled to Budapest and the protection of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. His journalist father had been deported to Mauthausen, where he was killed two weeks before liberation. Another 11 relatives also perished.
But Hungary was no safe haven. Tomislav and his mother escaped from a round-up of Jews by the local fascist party, who shot their victims by the Danube.
With Israel’s establishment in 1948, mother and son emigrated, and he served in the Israel Defence Forces as a mechanic. While studying for a law degree from 1953-57, he worked on a Hungarian language daily paper, with satirist Ephraim Kishon as his mentor.
In 1955 he became assistant to Azriel Carlebach, founding editor of the evening paper, Ma’ariv, and changed his name to Yosef Lapid, but always remained known as Tommy.
Rising through Ma’ariv, for whom he worked as London correspondent in the 1960s, he was appointed by Prime Minister Menachem Begin as director general of the Israel Broadcasting Authority from 1979-83. But he made his name as a lively political commentator, notably on the satirical TV show, Popolitica. He won the Sokolow prize for journalism in 1998.
In its first election campaign, the militantly secular Shinui party won six Knesset seats in Israel’s 2000 general election. It was billed as a centrist party — socially conservative, ready to make peace with the Arabs, and characterised by “middle-class Ashkenazi angst”.
In the 2003 election it won 15 seats on a platform of military service for all, including the strictly Orthodox, cutting the welfare support which encouraged their large families, and lowering the taxes which funded such support.
Lapid was appointed justice minister and deputy prime minister by Ariel Sharon, then leader of the Likud party.
By mid-2004 Lapid agreed to join a unity government — in other words, a coalition including the Orthodox — to support Sharon’s pull-out from Gaza. But he left it at the end of the year.
In the 2006 election, the party lost all its seats. It had made no headway with civil marriage, acceptance of Reform converts or any other of its aims. Lapid returned to political commentary and became chairman of Yad Vashem.
A cultured, multilingual and pugnacious bon vivant, he died of cancer.
He is survived by his novelist wife, Shulamit, a son and daughter — another daughter died in a car accident — and five grandchildren.
