Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beytenu party, is continuing with his sharp attacks against former premier Benjamin Netanyahu and has now accused the Likud leader of inspiring a "blood libel" against him, following accusations made by a former Yisrael Beytenu party activist that Liberman sought to hire him to assassinate a senior police official.

"This is a blood libel characteristic of Netanyahu's modus operandi," Liberman said. "A person 'remembers' things that happened 20 years ago and publishes them two months before elections. These are Netanyahu's methods, exactly the same methods as Goebbels and Stalin, making absurd and outrageous allegations against people and to repeat these allegations over and over again until people get used to the notion."

Liberman added that, "The strategy is obvious: They're exerting pressure on the Attorney-General to make her order the opening of an inquiry, despite this being a libel, and they want to use this against Yisrael Beytenu in the elections. Netanyahu will do anything in order to harm Avigdor Liberman and Yisrael Beytenu."

As if likening the former Prime Minister to notorious war criminals were not enough, Liberman doubled down and attacked further, accusing Netanyahu of treachery.

"Netanyahu wants to establish a fundamentalist coalition," he claimed. "We can see him entrenching himself with these ideas when he aligns with United Torah Judaism to exert pressure on the Belz Hassidic group in an effort to persuade them to abandon their core curriculum studies. He also supports the cancellation of the Law of Return. It's obvious that a coalition that includes Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and Gafni carries a price - and that price is the cancellation of the Law of Return, which is the betrayal of Zionism. Netanyahu is prepared to betray Zionism solely in order to have the legal cases against him closed."

Responding to Liberman's statements, the Likud party said, "The national agitator, Don Liberman [i.e. implying that Liberman has Mafia connections -ed.], is now panicking and has abandoned all restraint. His outrageous and false words disgrace the Holocaust, and we demand that the heads of the left-wing parties, Lapid and Gantz, immediately condemn these shocking statements."