Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is apparently feeling the heat after a former aide accused him of criminal acts, has resorted to his usual modus operandi – attacking others, especially former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, whom he called “trash of the human race” last week and Charedim. But this time he went too far and was condemned by politicians from the left to the right after comparing Netanyahu to Goebbels and Stalin.

“This is a blood libel which is characteristic of Netanyahu’s methods,” Lieberman said to reporters on Sunday about the accusations against him [which have no connection with Netanyahu].

“A person ‘remembers’ events of 20 years ago and publicizes them two months before elections. These are Netanyahu’s methods, exactly like the methods of Goebbels and Stalin – to make the harshest and most absurd accusations, to repeat it a million times until the people get used to the absurdity.”

Lieberman then heightened his rhetoric by accusing Netanyahu of treachery and of course, attacking Chareidim and the Religious Zionist sector as well. “Netanyahu wants to form his fundamentalist coalition. We see him siding with those in UTJ who are pressuring Belz to cancel core curriculum studies. We see him supporting the revocation of the Law of Return. It’s clear that the coalition with Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and Gafni has a price – and that’s the revocation of the Law of Return – which is a betrayal of Zionism. Netanyahu is prepared to betray Zionism solely in order to have the legal cases against him closed.”

The Likud party said in response: “The national instigator is in an unrestrained panic. His false and outrageous words are a disgrace to the Holocaust. We demand that the leaders of the left, Lapid and Gantz, immediately condemn this shocking statement.”

“Lieberman is the most dangerous politician in Israel,” responded Religious Zionist chairman Betzalel Smotrich. “A bully provocateur, lacking values and goals, who for years has been functioning as an agent of chaos spreading hatred and boycotts and dragging the State of Israel into the abyss due to his personal affairs. Now he also disgraces the memory of the Holocaust. The Israeli public must remove him in order to transform Israel into a better place.”

Lapid and Gantz both issued statements condemning Lieberman’s use of Holocaust comparisons.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)