He is crude, arrogant, regularly insults friendly, neutral and "enemy" states with the sort of verbal "toughness" which he knows his constituency back in Israel love to hear. Neither he nor they care one iota what effect these pronouncements may have on the rest of the world. After all if they don't agree with his ridiculous ideas they must be enemies of Israel, anti-semites, self-hating Jews etc.
So if he is so bad why hasn't Netanyahu sacked him? After all he himself was Foreign Minister previously and must see the shortfall in Lieberman's performance. The answer is Netanyahu is hostage to the various parties that make up his coalition government and is aware of opinion polls showing the rise and rise of Yisrael Beiteinu (the party which Lieberman heads in the Knesset). Some pundits are saying that Lieberman is jockeying for position to be a future Prime Minister of Israel, and the precedent in the past has been that when the security situation seemed to be deteriorating Israelis vote for a "strong, uncompromising, no-nonsense, plain speaking" leader.
The left wing parties in Israel seem to be very much on the defensive and this includes Avodah and Meretz which both received much less votes in this Knesset. Also some pundits view the continuing presence of Avodah in the government coalition as making this situation far worse. In addition the fact that Barak continues to hold key posts in the government is regarded by many on the left as at best compromising but at worst an utter sell-out of the left wing.
