Lapid, Liberman deliver foreign policy smackdown

The Knesset’s newest dynamic duo, former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman and self-appointed shadow foreign minister Yair Lapid deliver a one-two punch against Israel’s diplomatic efforts under Netanyahu, saying the country has never been in a worse position.

“Our international standing has never — in all the years of the country since 1948 — been so bad,” Lapid says at a so-called emergency conference on Diplomacy. “What makes it all the worse is that the government of Israel won’t admit it. They won’t admit that our situation is bad, but try to put on a facade of everything being OK. Everything is not OK.”

Speaking before him, Liberman accuses Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also serves as foreign minister, of not having any diplomatic strategy.

“Netanyahu is trying to take Israel’s foreign service and physically destroy it,” he charges. “The Foreign Ministry is nobody’s private domain, not even of the Netanyahu family. They can’t just take it and raze it to its foundations.”

Responding to the verbal spanking, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely accuses the two of cynicism.

“The foreign service of Israel doesn’t interest Liberman and Lapid. What interests them is censuring the Israeli foreign service via a cynical use of the ministry’s workers,” she says, according to Channel 10 news.