The Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee convened Aug. 10 at the request of Knesset member and former Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman to discuss the current state of the Foreign Ministry. “There is no need to expand on the pogrom that the prime minister has been waging against the Foreign Ministry for the past few months,” Liberman said last week, lashing out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has officially filled the role of foreign minister since the last election.

In media interviews and on social networks, the former foreign minister went into great detail about how the plan to shut down seven Israeli diplomatic missions around the world, including three — Philadelphia, Atlanta and San Francisco — in the United States, will be more than just detrimental to the ministry’s staff. It will also damage Israel's national security. Liberman also warned that Israel was left vulnerable in the international arena right before two decisive diplomatic battles this September: the International Atomic Energy Agency’s vote, sponsored by Egypt and other Arab states, to impose supervision on Israel’s nuclear facilities and the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly, where a number of anti-Israel proposals are expected to be raised.

Liberman has a valid point. Israel is shuttering consulates in the United States while the two countries are facing a relationship crisis and there is a marked decline in American Jewish support for Israel. This is the time to bolster our representation in North America, not to cut it.

The chairman of Yisrael Beitenu made the decision to stay out of the government, leaving Netanyahu with a narrow and very fragile coalition of 61 Knesset members. Ever since then, he has waged a relentless campaign against the prime minister. In fact, it seems that in the last few months, he has made a point of launching at least one focused attack on Netanyahu per week, on a variety of subjects. This time his focus is the Foreign Ministry, which everyone agrees is in the worst state since its establishment. On the other hand, his taking up the cause of the Israeli Foreign Ministry requires a big dose of cynical irony on his part. After all, it was during his tenure that the Foreign Ministry began its decline. Liberman served as foreign minister for almost 6½ years, from early 2009 to May 2015 (interrupted for most of 2013 by a legal tangle in which he was acquitted).