Liberman blasts Netanyahu’s pandemic response, says it’s politically motivated

Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman criticizes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying his draconian measures are doing more harm than good and are politically motivated.

Liberman cites a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist — Michael Levit — who said earlier today that he did not believe that a large number of people would die of the virus in Israel, as well as estimates that the government’s response to the pandemic would cost the country between NIS 2.75 billion to NIS 6.6 billion a month.

“My understanding from these things is that the economic damage to Israel by Netanyahu and his government’s treatment of the coronavirus will be deadly. Netanyahu’s stubbornness to base [his response] solely on apocalyptic assessments is meant to serve him in the fight for public consciousness instead of in the fight against corona,” Liberman says.

The Yisrael Beytenu leader accuses his rival Netanyahu of trying to “silence all political and public protest” in order to avoid standing trial for the three indictments against him “even if it comes at the cost of serious damage to Israel’s economy and mass unemployment.”