Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair accused Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein of conspiring with Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman to overthrow his father in a tweet that he later erased on Saturday night.
The younger Netanyahu had reacted to Liberman, who appeared on Channel 12’s Meet the Press program on Saturday evening and said that he would like to see a prime minister from Likud who is not Netanyahu.
“Edelstein could be head of the Likud,” Liberman suggested.
Yair Netanyahu tweeted in response, “OK, so Liberman revealed now by mistake on live TV the putsch he planned with Yuli Edelstein,” tagging the Knesset speaker’s Twitter handle.
Yair Netanyahu, who has gotten in trouble with controversial statements in the past, added, “And they say it’s me who doesn’t know how to watch his mouth.”
Shortly after posting the tweet, Yair Netanyahu erased it. But he did not erase a tweet in which he posted a picture of Liberman alongside a photograph of a sea lion, implying that the two looked similar. That tweet received more than 200 likes on Saturday night.
— Yair Netanyahu (@YairNetanyahu) August 3, 2019Yair Netanyahu later tweeted that his Edelstein comment was not his father's opinion.
When Shabbat concluded, Edelstein released a statement saying that “Netanyahu is the only candidate of the Likud for prime minister,” and that suggesting replacements is “yet another in attempt to delegitimize the elected leader of the party.”
Edelstein added that he would not let anyone harm the unity in the party.