Mr Benjamin Netanyahu's predilection for world-class cigars is burning a 11,700-shekel (£2,000) hole in his taxpayers' pockets each month, an Israeli newspaper has claimed, writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem.
The newspaper noted pointedly that the sum was roughly the cost of maintaining a home for battered women or paying four workers a minimum wage.
Mr Netanyahu was a cigar aficionado long before he became prime minister two years ago. But two things about his habit have changed: first, he no longer has to foot the bill himself - the costly, hand-rolled smokes are ordered and paid for by the prime minister's office; second, he has switched from Cuban cigars to those produced in the Dominican Republic - to avoid antagonising the Americans.
Several of Mr Netanyahu's top aides now also share his passion, including his youthful spokesman, Shai Bazak, and his cabinet secretary, Danny Naveh, who is fast shedding his former shy, Jewish-seminary educated persona.
The prime minister apparently drives his advisers to despair by happily lighting up at inopportune moments - including during a recent visit to Europe, at a time when trade unions were holding a major strike over work conditions back home. Indeed, Mr Netanyahu's aides prevented publication of some photographs of him puffing away, for fear of antagonising jobless Israelis.
In response to the newspaper allegations, Mr Netanyahu's spokesman insisted there was nothing irregular about the cigar purchases, and that the prime minister, in providing cigars and other such products for himself and his guests, was acting precisely as his predecessors had done.
However, it has never been claimed that the late Yitzhak Rabin got his office to finance his fearsome cigarette consumption. And Yitzhak Shamir, another recent prime minister from Mr Netanyahu's own Likud party, called the purchases out of line and wasteful. "Nobody ever greeted me by offering me a cigar," Mr Shamir noted dryly. "And I used to welcome my guests with a cup of tea."