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.
