The Prime Minister’s Office has accused former US Middle East envoy Martin Indyk of repeatedly lying over comments Indyk alleged Netanyahu made to him at the time of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral.

In an interview with PBS, Indyk – who at the time was Washington’s Ambassador to Israel – related a conversation he said he had had with then opposition leader Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu sat next to me when I was ambassador in Israel at the time of Rabin’s funeral,” Indyk said. “I remember Netanyahu saying to me: ‘Look, look at this. He’s a hero now, but if he had not been assassinated, I would have beaten him in the elections, and then he would have gone into history as a failed politician.'”

The PMO immediately dismissed the allegations as utterly fabricated – a response which was bolstered by revelations that Indyk and Netanyahu sat nowhere near one another during Rabin’s funeral.

Indyk, however, went on the defensive, saying he had never claimed the incident occurred at the funeral itself, but insisting it had occurred during a special Knesset session during which dignitaries paid their respects as the slain PM’s body lay in state.

Yet that version of events is also somewhat questionable, as the two could not possibly have say together at the ceremony, since only family members were seated.

Following Indyk’s “clarification,” the PMO issued a second statement, harshly rejecting the new story.

“After the first false version of events was disproved, Indyk has come up with a second version, which is also false,” the prime minister’s spokesman Boaz Stembler said in a statement.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu did not say the things which Indyk attributes to him.”