On the evening of Feb. 22, the chair of the Yisrael Beitenu party, former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, dropped a bomb in the Channel 12 “Meet the Press” studio. He revealed — in violation of the military censor’s gag order — that the head of the Mossad and the military commander of Israel’s southern front had visited Qatar two weeks ago at the behest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“They simply begged the Qataris to keep sending money to Hamas after March 30. The Qataris have said they will stop sending money on March 30,” Liberman said, striking at his rival’s soft underbelly. “Suddenly Netanyahu appears as the defender of Hamas, as though it was an environmental organization,” he added, reminding viewers that in 2019, Hamas fired 1,500 rockets at Israel, killing four civilians. “This is a policy of submission to terror … and paying protection money [to Hamas to buy calm]," lashed out the man who holds the balance of power in Israeli politics these days and will likely determine who the next prime minister will be after the March 2 elections.

Unfortunately, the experienced interviewer, Rina Matzliah, failed to ask Liberman what he himself had talked about with Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani during a meeting on June 22, 2018, at Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus. Did then-Defense Minister Liberman not ask the Qatari minister to help the Gaza environmental group to preserve the enclave’s wildlife?

The deluge of spins dumped on the Israeli public in these pre-election days makes a shambles of the collective memory and of the voters’ judgment. Who remembers now, as residents of the town of Ashkelon are under rocket bombardment from Gaza, the Likud party’s 2006 election slogan, “Strong on Hamas — Benjamin Netanyahu,” and his 2009 pre-election pledge to residents of southern towns, “We will bring down the Hamas terrorists. We will restore security to residents of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Sderot and Beersheba”?