Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son has been criticized for staying in Miami while reservists returned home to fight Hamas.
Yair Netanyahu, 32, has been in Florida since at least April after his father told him to stop making inflammatory posts on social media, prompting him to be sued multiple times for defamation.
An unprecedented 360,000 reservists have now been called up – many of them dropping everything to fly back to Israel and even foregoing their honeymoon.
But Yair has remained in Miami, to the chagrin of some troops. “Yair is enjoying his life in Miami Beach while I am at the front,” one soldier, a volunteer serving on Israel’s northern front, told The Times.
“We are the ones who leave our jobs, our families, our children to protect our families at home and in the country, not the people who are responsible for this situation.”
“Our brothers, our fathers and sons are all going to the front, but Yair is still not here. “It doesn’t help build trust in the country’s leadership.”
Netanyahu is pictured in Fort Lauderdale on October 17, working with the NGO Yedidim USA to sort donated supplies for IDF soldiers and Israeli families affected by the Israel-Hamas war
Yair Netanyahu, 32, appeared in a photo with his father earlier this year. Yair has been living in the United States since at least April
Another, stationed at the Gaza border, told the newspaper: “I flew back from the States, where I have a job, a life, my family.”
“At this critical time, there is no way I can stay there and abandon my country, my people.” Where is the Prime Minister’s son? Why isn’t he in Israel?
“It is the most unifying moment for us Israelis in our recent history and every single one of us should be here now, including the prime minister’s son.”
Yair, who studied theater in high school, did military service and worked in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman unit rather than as a combat soldier.
From the age of 18, military service is compulsory for the majority of Israelis. Men have to serve 32 months and women 24 months.
After that, in the event of a national emergency, most of them can be called up into reserve units up to the age of 40 or even older and fight alongside the regular troops in times of war. Reservists are also deployed in non-combat roles, meaning Yair’s lack of front-line experience would not automatically exempt him.
Israelis abroad are using WhatsApp chats to organize their return and share information about where to find available flights, said Yedidya Shalman, 26, who was on his honeymoon in Thailand when violence erupted in Gaza.
“(We) have set up WhatsApp groups almost all over the world, we have called for people to join them and we have been slowly working to bring as many reservists back to Israel as possible,” he told Portal, explaining that he and his wife did not hesitate to shorten their vacation.
“Of course we didn’t think about it for long and are currently on the way home with an El Al plane,” he said via WhatsApp.
Yair Netanyahu is pictured in New York City in a photo released in October 2022
Yair poses in a July 4th post shared to Instagram
Yair is seen as a seven-year-old child visiting the Western Wall with his father
Yair and his brother Avner are pictured with their mother Sara and Bill Clinton at the White House
The Netanyahus are visited by Disney characters at the prime minister’s residence in Israel
Yair accompanied his parents to a meeting with Vladimir Putin in Jerusalem in January 2020
Oren Saar, 37, runs food delivery startup WoodSpoon in New York City, where he lives with his wife and three young sons.
A former captain in the Israeli army, he immediately acknowledged the call-up but did not tell his children what he was doing.
“The kids are very young and it’s not really something you want to explain.” “We told them I was going to Israel on a business trip,” he said, adding that it would be “difficult” to get his new business in to keep things going in his absence.
“But you know, there is no question about what to do when my friends, my family and my country are in danger,” he said.
Nimrod Nedan, a 23-year-old studying medicine in Lithuania, said friends and relatives had died or were missing as a result of the surprise Hamas attack, spurring him to action.
“I can’t sit here and study medicine while I know my friends are fighting and my family needs protection.” “This is my time,” he said.
LK – a 37-year-old reservist who served as an Air Force pilot for 13 years and asked to be identified only by his initials for security reasons – felt exactly the same.
He works for a technology company in New York and left his home, his wife and his children to return to his squadron.
“There’s no other place in the world I’d rather be.” “If I had to sit in my beautiful apartment on the Upper West Side and look at that, I would never forgive myself,” he said.
Yair Netanyahu has a long affinity with the United States.
His father studied at MIT and Harvard before joining the Boston Consulting Group, where he worked alongside Mitt Romney and served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. Yair was born three years after Benjamin Netanyahu’s departure from New York.
Yair’s Instagram page shows him and his younger brother Avner with Bill Clinton in the White House: As an adult, Yair roamed the United States, spending time in Manhattan, Seattle and Washington DC.
He is also seen with Vladimir Putin and greeting Donald and Melania Trump in Jerusalem – where he reportedly told Melania that he sympathized with her son Barron.
Yair is shown meeting Donald and Melania Trump with his parents and Jared Kushner – a family friend of the Netanyahus
Yair celebrated his 32nd birthday earlier this year
On October 5, two days before the Hamas terrorist attack, it became clear that he wanted to remain in the United States permanently.
As Haaretz reported, Yair was overheard at a wedding in London over the summer fearing he would be turned away by U.S. authorities because of the Biden administration’s frostiness toward Netanyahu.
An American immigration law firm, Wildes & Weinberg, then announced on Facebook that “Yair joins our list of distinguished Israeli clients with newly opened offices in Tel Aviv.”
The post boasted that the firm “represents Yair Netanyahu in connection with his international affairs” and noted that “Yair is an internationally known political speaker and journalist in Israel and abroad.”
He has made a name for himself as a right-wing podcast host and media figure, regularly sharing controversial memes and posts, resulting in several defamation cases over the years.
Yair sparked widespread anger when he called hundreds of thousands of Israelis who took to the streets against the government’s Supreme Court reforms “terrorists” and accused the United States of being behind the protests.
In August, he was ordered by a court to pay more than $34,000 in restitution and $6,000 in legal fees to a woman he claimed was having an affair with his father’s political rival.
Earlier this year, a judge ordered him to pay $18,000 to a former lawmaker from Israel’s opposition Labor Party, whom he described as “ugly.”
Yair also caused controversy when it was revealed in 2014 that he was dating a Norwegian woman – who is not Jewish.
The then 23-year-old was seen in Israel with blonde communications student Sandra Leikanger, then 25, and even visited her home country.
Their romance came about after Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg revealed that Benjamin Netanyahu had “bragged” about his son’s relationship at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Yair, then 23 years old, with his Norwegian girlfriend, communications student Sandra Leikanger, then 25
A year later, Yair had moved on with Danish-Israeli model and student Lee Levi.
That same year, 2015, Yair was secretly filmed in a limousine bragging to women and discussing a strip club.
Yair tells the son of an Israeli gas tycoon that his father approved a controversial gas deal in parliament that benefited his friend’s father.
According to The Times of Israel, Yair tried to get cash from the tycoon’s son to pay strippers.
He apologized for the “ridiculous” and “stupid” things he said.
The dispute over Netanyahu’s son came as Israel prepared for a ground offensive in Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack carried out by Hamas from the enclave that killed 1,400 Israelis.
Israel has shown little sign of slowing its offensive, despite fears about the number of civilians in Gaza and despite U.S. concerns about the lack of a clear military strategy.
According to Hamas, Israel has launched a relentless airstrikes campaign since October 7, killing 5,000 Palestinians.
On Monday, the Israeli military said it struck “over 320 military targets” overnight, in what was among the heaviest bombing raids of the war so far.
A 19-year-old Israeli soldier was killed and three others injured during a ground operation “to dismantle terrorist infrastructure… and locate missing persons and bodies.”
However, the timing of a promised full-scale ground offensive remains unclear.
“We are well prepared for ground operations in the south,” Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi told troops.
“Southern Command has high-quality operational plans. “There are tactical, operational and strategic considerations that have provided additional time,” he said.
The most important of these considerations may be the labyrinth of tunnels and bases that Hamas is believed to have constructed to thwart any Israeli invasion.
But there are also fears about how Hamas’ allies in the Middle East would respond to a ground war.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War has reported an increase in attacks on Israeli and US targets by Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
Cross-border clashes occur daily between Israel and the Iranian-backed militant Hezbollah group in Lebanon.
A three-star Marine general has been sent to Israel by the US ahead of the expected invasion of Gaza, as the Biden administration grows increasingly concerned that the IDF does not have a clear mission plan.
Israeli officials have repeatedly emphasized their goal of rooting out and destroying Hamas’ leadership.
However, they have not explained how they plan to do this or what will happen after the invasion – which worries Washington. American officials told the New York Times they had not yet seen an “actionable plan of action.”
Biden himself warned Israelis during a visit to Tel Aviv last week that they should learn from the US’s post-9/11 mistakes – a reference to the quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He said Israel needed “clarity on goals and an honest assessment of whether the path taken will achieve those goals.”
Behind closed doors, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also pressed his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant to further explain his plans.
Lloyd Austin, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, speaks with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv on October 13
Lt. Gen. James Glynn, who previously led Marine special operations and was involved in operations against ISIS in Iraq, was sent to Israel to help them prepare for the invasion of Gaza
Israeli troops are seen near the border with the Gaza Strip on Monday, and an invasion is expected at any time
Israeli forces were told to expect to move into the Gaza Strip to destroy the Hamas leadership
He warned that urban warfare was complicated and could result in the deaths of many civilians.
Austin served as chief of United States Central Command in 2016 and 2017, when U.S. forces helped Iraqi and Kurdish troops push ISIS out of Mosul.
Lt. Gen. James Glynn, who previously led Marine special operations and was involved in operations against ISIS in Iraq, was deployed to Israel to help plan for urban warfare challenges.
According to Axios, Glynn doesn’t run the operation but rather gives advice.
Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute, has pointed out that the Islamic State had only two years to prepare defenses in Mosul, but Hamas was likely far more entrenched.
He wrote earlier this month: “Hamas has had 15 years to prepare a dense ‘defense in depth’ that explosively integrates underground, ground-level and above-ground fortifications, communications tunnels, emplacements and fighting positions, as well as potential minefields and improvised explosive devices.” which were rigged as explosive booby traps.