Another scandal for Netanyahu
PM’s bill secretly enriched friend: recording
JERUSALEM • Israel’s embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced a new scandal Tuesday after recordings emerged of his 26-year-old stay-at-home son joyriding at taxpayer expense to Tel Aviv strip clubs with his wealthy friends.
In the 2015 recording, Yair Netanyahu and his friends recount their night out on the town and make disparaging comments about strippers, waitresses and other women, including one of Yair’s former girlfriends.
He is also heard drunkenly bragging about how the prime minister advanced a bill that he appears to believe delivered billions to his friend’s father — an embarrassing blow to the premier, who stands accused of accepting a fortune’s worth of cigars and champagne from rich supporters.
The recording, aired Monday night on Israel’s top-rated news broadcast, sparked outrage over its misogynistic content and raised questions over why a state-funded bodyguard and driver were necessary to facilitate such debauchery. Adding to the anger was the fact that the salacious outing took place on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath.
Most of the public outcry, however, involves Yair’s comments to the third member of his entourage — the son of Israeli tycoon Kobi Maimon — about how the prime minister advanced a controversial gas deal in parliament that benefited his father.
“My dad arranged $20 billion for your dad, and you’re whining with me about 400 shekels,” he says, referring to money he borrowed in a strip club.
Yair Netanyahu has long drawn criticism for living a life of privilege at taxpayers’ expense, hobnobbing with ultra-rich donors and making crude social media posts, all while never holding down a job. The often combative 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.
Netanyahu called the recordings the height of a media-orchestrated witch hunt aimed at ousting him, saying the press had stooped to unprecedented “persecution, bloodletting and shaming,” and that his son had nothing to do with policymaking or security arrangements.
He accused a disgruntled driver in the prime minister’s office of making the illicit recording and attempting to sell it for a profit.