Likud, Liberman trade barbs over Gaza war deaths, ‘support for terrorists’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party slams Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman, accusing him of having partnered with terror supporters and exploiting the deaths of Israeli soldiers.

Addressing reporters ahead of his party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset this afternoon, Liberman declared that all soldiers killed in action in recent months lost their lives “on the altar of preserving the coalition.”

“All the soldiers who fell in the past few months did not fall for the security of Israel,” he said. “They fell on the altar of coalition considerations, on the altar of preserving the coalition.”

The Haredi “draft-dodging law” being advanced by the government is “a true betrayal by the Israeli government of all IDF soldiers, regular and reserve service,” he added.

The Likud shoots back that Liberman sat in the 2021-2022 Bennett-Lapid government, which included the Arab Islamist Ra’am party.

“While the blood of our soldiers is being shed, on the mission of freeing our hostages and defeating Hamas, [Liberman] degrades and exploits their holy deaths as a tool for a shameful political game. He should be ashamed,” Likud states.

In response, a Yisrael Beytenu spokesman insists that a state commission of inquiry would one day “prove beyond any doubt that Netanyahu is the one who provided immunity to the leaders of Hamas and financed them from morning to night.”

“The October 7 government is responsible for the greatest disaster of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. It causes our heroes to falter in Gaza, transfers aid to the enemy in wartime, and endangers the lives of IDF soldiers, all for the sake of preserving the coalition. We will ensure that each and every member of the government responsible for this destruction will be held accountable,” it says.