Live UpdateFrom the Liveblog of Monday, January 2, 2023

Liberman says new Netanyahu government is ‘the end of Zionism’

By Carrie Keller-Lynn 2 January 2023, 2:48 pm 0 Edit

Carrie Keller-Lynn is a political and legal correspondent for The Times of Israel

Yisrael Beytenu party head Avigdor Liberman speaks during his party's Knesset faction, holding a copy of the recently signed coalition agreements in his left hand and a copy of Theodor Herzl's The Jewish State in his right, January 2, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman says that the new government marks “the end of Zionism.”

“It’s not the end of Israel, at least in the meantime. But certainly it is the end of Zionism,” says Liberman at the outset of his party’s first faction meeting since the new government took office on Thursday.

Holding up a copy of Theodor Herzl’s seminal work “The Jewish State,” Liberman says there is “a 100% contradiction” between the founding work of the Zionist movement and the new government’s coalition agreements.

Liberman also criticizes the new coalition for intending to shuffle around various parts of government offices, moving some sections to the authority of other ministries. The Education Ministry has been particularly affected, with several pieces to be cleaved off in promises to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s various coalition partners.