LIEBERMAN: "NETANYAHU INEFFECTUAL AND PARANOID"

In a savage interview, former FM Liberman charges that the prime minister lacks the will to stop Iran, indulges Hamas, appeases extremists, and is obsessed with his own survival

TIMES OF ISRAEL

Avidgdor Liberman has worked more closely than any other Israeli politician, and for longer, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Their working relationship, which began in the late 1980s as Netanyahu started his Knesset career, saw Liberman serve as director-general of Likud under opposition leader Netanyahu and of the Prime Minister’s Office under first-term prime minister Netanyahu, hold a series of ministerial posts in subsequent Netanyahu-led governments, and even formally ally their two parties — Likud and Yisrael Beytenu — on a joint slate for the 2013 elections.

After the March 17 elections, however, and despite having recommended to President Reuven Rivlin that Netanyahu again be charged with the task of building a government, Liberman opted to go into the opposition, from where he has been loudly critical of the new coalition’s agenda and the approach of the man — that long-time former political intimate of his — at its helm.

But in an interview with The Times of Israel on Tuesday in his new, small Knesset office (quite a contrast from his recent airy Foreign Ministry berth) Liberman assailed Netanyahu — his policies, his mindset, his approach, his political courage — as rarely, if ever before.

Liberman didn’t reserve all his barbs for the prime minster. He castigated the international community for its immorality in meeting, hand-shaking, dining and doing deals with representatives of an Iranian regime that makes no secret of its aim to annihilate Israel. He berated extremist politicians from the Israeli Arab community. But time and again, he returned to “Bibi”: Bibi, the big-talking politician whose sole goal is political survival. Bibi, the book-writing, speech-making opponent of deals with terrorists who does deals with terrorists. Bibi, the opposition leader vowing to bring an end to Hamas rule in Gaza who as premier is currently enabling Hamas rule, and Hamas rearming, in Gaza. Bibi, the leader obsessively preoccupied with thwarting Iran’s march to the bomb who has no intention of acting to thwart Iran’s march to the bomb.

Liberman’s political fortunes are at a low. Having abrogated his alliance with Likud and run separately in the March elections, his Yisrael Beytenu mustered only six seats, compared to the 13 MKs it boasted in the outgoing Knesset. It was harmed in part by Netanyahu’s campaign mantra that if supporters of the “national camp” wanted him reelected prime minister, they had to vote for Likud and not for satellite right-wing parties like Jewish Home, Yachad and, yes, his old colleague Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu. So there may well be a good deal of personal affront impacting upon on Liberman’s takedown of the PM.

But viewed through any filter by anybody who cares for the well-being of Israel, Liberman’s evaluation of Israel’s new-old prime minister — the seemingly perennial premier who has already served more time in that office than anyone bar David Ben-Gurion — makes for deeply dismaying reading. “This is a devastating critique,” The Times of Israel noted at one point in the interview, when we were discussing Iran. “You’re saying that the prime minister is not capable of defending the state.” Liberman, the man who knows the essence of Netanyahu better than most anybody else, did not demur.