Israeli leader’s son under fire for strip-club banter
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced a new scandal Tuesday after a recording emerged of his 26-year-old stay-athome son joyriding at taxpayer expense to Tel Aviv strip clubs and bragging about how his father pushed through a controversial gas deal.
The 2015 recording, aired Monday night on Israel’s top-rated news broadcast, sparked public outrage over its misogynistic content and raised questions over why a state-funded bodyguard and driver were necessary for such a trip. The younger Netanyahu issued a quick apology, saying the remarks did not represent the values he was raised on and were made under the influence of alcohol.
But the fallout was swift. A pair of opposition lawmakers appealed to the attorney general to investigate Yair Netanyahu’s security needs, saying it was “disgraceful that public funds fuel a culture of women’s exploitation.” Others piled on. “Even big kids say what they hear at home,” said Eitan Cabel of the opposition Labor party.
In the recording, Netanyahu and his friends recount their night out on the town and make disparaging comments about strippers, waitresses and other women, including one of Netanyahu’s former girlfriends.
He is also heard drunkenly bragging to the son of an Israeli oil tycoon about how the prime minister advanced a bill in parliament that the younger Netanyahu appears to believe delivered billions of dollars to his friend’s father — a blow to the prime minister, who stands accused of accepting a fortune’s worth of cigars and champagne from rich supporters.
At one point, Yair Netanyahu cryptically refers to 400 shekels (about $115 US) paid to a prostitute. “Speaking of prostitutes, what’s open at this hour?” he asks his friends, before they settle on a well-known bistro. “It’s possible the waitresses there go with the flow,” he adds.
One of his buddies, Roman Abramov, even jokes that the security guard, who was privy to the banter, would have to be killed if he ever left his job so the conversation wouldn’t leak.